Trusting Your Marketing To Teenagers (Influencer Marketing, Part I)

My company recently hired five influencer marketers. Now, as we all know, this is simply another term for: "We are hiring someone with a high social media following."

One had 33,000 followers on Facebook, another relatively similar Instagram influencer, and one had a collective 100,000 followers across multiple channels.

Three Months Went By...

Three months went by, and our margins did not go up. In fact, they decreased. Why, then, would such a supposed "successful trend" in marketing work so poorly?

Simple: they were all sixteen-year-olds, and they did not belong in business.

Hiring Zillennials To Market Us?

I exaggerated that term: "Zillennial" to make a point: though you may have access to the following, you are still reliant as a company or a public figure to do your due diligence.

Now, I am not here to judge based on age.

However, we know a lot of things about this generation from a psychosocial perspective. For one, they are known to like being known, and that seems to be the problem.

I understand the relative semblance my company was going for, which is simply trusting a trend...but it is a dangerous trend to follow. After all, they were sixteen years' old.

Zillennials Are Still Kids!

It was clear on the first day that these three marketing schematics (as I call them) would not work. I recall them greedily accepting yet another "product promotion" strategy.

But the biggest problem we experienced was with maturity.

We spent three months on a campaign, but they were only involved in the posting activities, i.e. post, collect money, run. And though we did see a rise in margins, we were excitedly waiting to see what else would come. Then came the "troll..."

With that said, they were not fond of "social listening" and "reputation management." They were sixteen-year-olds who posted a lot. In turn, whenever we sent them material to post...

It Was Just Plain Ol' Stupid

...they would ask for payment first.

We would hand them $5,000 and tell them exactly what to post. They would butcher the wording, and whenever a negative comment came through, they would resort to their immature ways, confronting potential customers. So, some tips for influence marketing.

What Is Influencer Marketing & Why Does It Matter?

Influence marketing is a new trend sweeping the social media realm. It means trusting your marketing and publicity endeavors to someone with a high following.

Now, not all are bad, and the idea is rather massive. I actually had a similar idea for my own company: "Circle 5 Books," where I wanted to niche authors as the target.

Three years later, the word appeared: "influencer marketing."

What a sham! Maker of men, creators of leaders, be careful what kind of leaders you are producing when you tell a teenager to bypass their genetic roots.

As the Marketing Manager/Creative Director, I had a bad feeling about hiring three sixteen-year-olds and trusting them in the manner that we did.

In fact, they often missed posts, scrambled deadlines, ignored direct orders, and...well, they did what teenagers do best, and in that haze of pubescent mood swings, we failed.

Be careful with influencer marketing.

And once again, I am not saying: "avoid it." It is a relatively new phenomenon, starting around 105 BC when Emperor Honorius diverted such actions in 404 CE.

Why Honorius Probably Diverted It

I can guess: it does not work as effectively as we may think. Though we can all insinuate that a high following means growth and prosperity, the influencer industry is declining.

Noted: Honorius actually found that in his efforts to market using outside sources, trading one item for another, he was robbed, stabbed, and even stoned to his death.

What caused it?

Simple: he did the same thing we are doing, and as they say: "Never shoot the messenger." I cannot fully blame the influencer marketing marketer spectrum...

But I can tell you this much: as an industry worth 13.8 billion as of 2022, it is a trend. When we hired these three individuals, we paid handsomely, only to be robbed.

Why You Should Avoid Influencer Marketing

I am here to tell you, this was a mistake. We dished out $26,000 on the likelihood of dissident teenage marketers, and that is a dangerous game to play.

After all, they were all still in school.

With that said, I was eighteen years' old when I began my career in web design and graphic design. I cannot say I did superbly well, but it does take me back a ways.

When eighteen, I thought I had it all. In fact, more often than not, I was greedy, moody, and just plain ol' pimply. Thus, nothing against this new wave of "marketers" but I do have to remind you that if you are thinking of influencer marketing as a strategy, think again.

What We Should Have Done

Now, we spent roughly 2.6 percent of our $1mm budget for that year on these three teens. If you do the math, that is around $26,000. We saw a shift in behavior.

Not from the inflencers but more importantly, from our clients.

Though we were providing the content, they would lazily take credit for this work, even going above and beyond to defame us once they were hired.

So, $26,000 later, we could have easily spent that on social media ads. Give Facebook or Instagram a $26,000 cut over a year and boom, you have a relevant and realistic number.

Influencer Marketing Is Unpredictable

The other problem is, it is not measurable.

I know of no such way to measure influencer marketing. In fact, we still have no idea how many clients came from this industry standard. All we know is, our budget of 2.6 percent of our marketing spend could have been used more wisely.

In turn, we lost out on the most valuable thing in the world: time. We wasted six months with these three pale-faced teens, only to find out that when we could not track their retention rates, they were more interested in posting about themselves.

Actual quote from one of their social media profiles, May 26th, 2022:

"So, I'm rich now...I just landed a job at [x] company, and you can all suck it."

Really? You call that professionalism? Unlucky for us, we found this post on his Facebook profile roughly six months after we had signed them up for a one year contract.

So, we abandoned the project, and I leave you here with this, as I have plenty more to write tomorrow: influencer marketing is not a fun game, even if successful.

You cannot track it; you cannot measure it. All you can do is throw money at someone and track how much of your clients or customers increase in purchasing behaviors.

Tomorrow, I will cover another concept in the Content Marketer's Diary, which you need to subscribe to: the psychology of a teenager trusted with a paycheck and a profile.

Be sure to subscribe for tomorrow's variation!