Video - Why Influencer Marketing Works with Gordon Glenister
VIDEO: 45:42 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Gordon Glenister
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Gordon Glenister. Gordon is an influencer marketing strategist trainer and speaker He is also the Global Head of Influencer Marketing at the Branded Content Marketing Association and the CEO of Membership World. Gordon was formally the Director General of the British Promotional Merchandise Association for 11 years then launched his own membership consultancy in September 2018. From there he went on to launch a new influencer marketing channel at the Branded Content Marketing Association and still remains the Global Head of Influencer Marketing. He is also the host of 'Influence' the global podcast shining a spotlight on the influencer marketing industry where he interviews all sorts of brands and influencers.
In March 2021 he had his first book released on influencer marketing strategy with global publishers Kogan Page. Within the membership community he launched Membership World in July 2020, a podcast and community site for membership professionals supported by regular CEO roundtable discussions. Gordon is also the author of the Covid19 impact study which explored the challenges faced by professional bodies, trade associations and charities in the pandemic. Gordon runs successful strategy workshops for membership bodies, mystery member audits and general advice on running successful organisations.
Why Influencer Marketing Really Does Work.
What does Influencer Marketing (IM) mean?
Just Gen Z?
What does IM done well look like?
Campaign results
What does IM done badly look like?
What do the highly successful do differently?
How to find influencers
Attribution… how to link it into PPC, SEO and content marketing activities
Where does it sit in the funnel
Gordons final words of wisdom.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:58
Hello, and welcome to the GYDA talks. And it is my absolute pleasure today to have as a guest gentleman by the name of Gordon Glenister. Gordon has written an amazing book. And I've known Gordon, I think I've known him for probably 9 or 10 years, he invited me to speak on stages in Ricoh stadium and places like that. Hello, and welcome, Gordon.
Gordon Glenister 01:22
Hello., Robert. Lovely to see you again after some years.
Robert Craven 01:27
It's absolutely fantastic. It's great. So just tell me, what are you doing now?
Gordon Glenister 01:32
So those are things to be honest. And, of course, I was the Director General of the British promotional merchandise Association. I left that in 2018 to set up my own membership consultancy, and start my own business. The first people you tend to talk to the people that perhaps you know, and one of them was Andrew Cantor, who was the Global Head of the branded content marketing association. And we sat down in a Charlotte Street hotel in Soho. And I was talking to him about perhaps some things that we could do together. I said, there's this massive growth in influences, in influencer marketing, and some of its audience getting a bit of a bad press. You know, and I'm thinking about, you know, a lot of these individuals are growing these phenomenal audiences who's looking after their interests. So what are a couple of very long story short, we decided to create a new association to represent the influencer marketing industry. So that's what we did, actually. And we launched that in July 2019. And about that particular time, I approached Kogan page, which are our global publisher. And I actually saw them at an exhibition. And I said to them, you know, I'm involved in sort of influencer marketing space doing have a book representation in our area. And fortunately for me, they didn't. So I suggested that this is something I could write about. But actually, I'm still new into the industry. That's the irony. But I was in a particularly what I would call a helicopter environment where not only did I started to get to know a lot about the industry, but I knew a lot of other people as well. So that is where I started my journey a few months ago. And of course, we're now in a situation where just recently I launched my book on influencer marketing strategy to 100 people.
Robert Craven 03:41
I mean that but for me, it has two out of the three words I love, I love marketing, I love strategy, influencer, you're gonna have to educate me. So I guess the title of this talk is really, you know, does influencer marketing really work? Why influencer marketing really does work, maybe a more positive spin on that. So just start me off because influencer marketing means many different things to many different people. So can you explain some of what the different definitions are? And I'm what it means to you.
Gordon Glenister 04:30
What I think is fascinating is in a way, it's nothing totally new. We've just created a different spin on word of mouth, word of mouth marketing and using individuals to promote a product or service. If you go back to sort of norbar Man, you know, and some of the historic characters that we all look up to even the milk tray guy you know, these are individuals and in some shape or form we've connected with What I find, I mean, the term influencer, of course, has been in some areas, demonised by the mainstream media. But it's actually still a very powerful word. And I'm an absolute fan of it, to be honest, within the industry, a lot of people see the social media influencers will often refer to themselves as content creators or digital creators. Because that's what they do. They create amazing content. And I've done but of course, you're right. An influencer could be a journalist, it could be a chemist that's have a really strong, you know, knowledge about a particular niche. Robert, you're an influencer in a digital marketing arena. You know, you have the ability to influence. You have the ability to change behaviour and people, for people to take action. I mean, I'm always fascinated why we follow certain people, and why we don't follow others. What is it that helps the, you know, makes us press follow? And largely, it's because we are either entertained, with age educated, where inspires. Sometimes we find influential people can be controversial. I mean, take, for example, Piers Morgan, you know, highly controversial character that has a huge audience, and there will be people there that don't like what he said, but actually, in a way, he is still creating influence.
Robert Craven 06:41
I guess that kind of the advantage in a way, if it works, what you're saying then is Myth number one blown? It's not just a generation Zed type thing, or Gen Z thing? I mean, it can be Dustin Hoffman, as much as it can be, Jay Z.
Gordon Glenister 07:05
Yeah, I mean, in fact, I think the oldest influence is over 80. And she's got something like nearly 4 million followers, I should have got her name actually badly. I think her name is, of course, what she's created is she's created a personality, you know, influences that the successful professional influences are very articulate at telling their story. And the reason why Gen, we talk a lot about Gen Z is because they want to connect with people that have an authentic voice, you know, something like I was reading a stat a little while ago, that they trust traditional advertising a 1% of them trust traditional advertising, which is, you know, amazing, isn't it? And that's why lots of particularly over the pandemic, the brands that have really worked, what worked well, those that even the World Health Organisation, for example, used influences. Nike, of course, embraced influences. You know, there's lots of lots of examples of where they have done it. So it's not just about young people, it is right across the age spectrum. When you could even have a fly fishing influencer, Scott, maybe just 1000 followers, but all of his content or her contents is around fly fishing. So if you were to fly fishing manufacturer, you'd want to engage with that individual, and chances are their level of engagement to what their what's being posted and potential conversion rate could be could be really high.
Robert Craven 08:47
I get the concept of influencer equals able to influence your followers. Does an influencer have to be paid by someone to use products to in your mind? In other words, you see these people going, Oh, these, I've had my hair straightened with these amazing hair straighteners, or I'm wearing this wonderful handbag. And that's kind of the idea we have about influence. Obviously, there are different levels of influence from someone who is what I would describe as an ambassador. In other words, someone who says, you know, I can't go anywhere without my Apple iPad. I love Apple iPad, I adore Apple. I can't wait for the next Apple. And they kind of bring it on stage when they interviewed and stuff. And that's like what I would call an ambassador versus someone who maybe taught themselves a bit more to get the whatever the latest makeup or again, I'm making sweeping generalisations which I apologise but there are people who you can just buy them for voice.
Gordon Glenister 10:00
Yeah, I mean, genuinely I'm supportive of influencers that are paid. Because actually to create proper content, I mean, if you think about videoing, for example, but it's not about even taking a picture or taking a video and posting it up, there's a lot of thought that the left and go into that, I've often been out with some of these fashion influencers, and they'll take eight, you know, like, 100 pictures to try and find the right one. Remember, you know, they have achieved great success in developing these audiences. And if they do not generate the content that is relevant to their audience, guess what happens? Their audience, just leave them in droves. So you will pay for an email campaign, you will pay for an advert in a magazine, you would pay for a television advert in what some of these individuals are multi talented photographers, videographers, you know, their community builders, you know, they are location scouts, you know, I've seen individuals that just blow me away with their creativity, and they bring brands to life, they bring brands to life in a way that I find really extraordinary. And so sometimes we see some of the bad publicity. It's not necessarily, you know, it's isolated instances, it's not, you know, there are lots of other examples of amazing content out there. And we're talking about Gen Z a minute ago, some of those individuals will trust their favourite content creators more than their own family. And particularly in the gaming industry, particularly the gaming industry, where there is a real connection with these individuals, and they will donate, they'll donate money to their preferred gamer because they're being entertained.
Robert Craven 11:49
And I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the YouTube festival. We're doing work with Google , an internal YouTube conference wasn't open to the public, where they were showing the latest of everything. And one of the stages was the influences. And, you know, you kind of go in with your grey hair, and you kind of go Oh, yeah, right, and agenda. And then you hear some of the numbers in terms of reach, but more importantly, you hear some of the numbers in terms of cost of customer acquisition or cost of purchase cost of purchase for the brand, and you suddenly realise that, you know, it's, we're just so old school that it doesn't, you know, the idea that we need to have a productions, we need to have an editing suite, we need to have this is what we need to do we need to brand it. And these people are on brand by definition, if you know what I mean, they are living and breathing. What their clients understand. I mean, ironically, the huge irony this is marketing, what I want to do is Theodore Levitt, 1960, Harvard Business Review. You know, segmentation and differentiation and getting your message online. So could you just give me examples of what influence marketing done well, what that looks like?
Gordon Glenister 13:37
Yeah, there's loads and loads of case studies. I'm going to give you one that sort of blew me away. And there's a Chinese influencer called Becky Lai. And if any of your listeners have heard of her, but she famously sold 100 minis in less than five minutes, run 100 minis in less than five minutes. You know, I mean, so blew me away when I sort of read that story. And that just shows you the power of influence. And these companies are carved because of somebody was a limited edition. And she wrote a blog. I wrote a blog about it, but it was the rain, which she see promoted it and bingo. And I'm also going to tell you about a lady called Tina Wilson who runs a site called Toys and Me, and she's got about 11 million followers on YouTube. She's just around 14, right. So she has an organisation called a social store, who actually set up a partnership with them to create a range of clothing for her as effectively as a licenced collaboration. And they did a pop up show, Pop Up Show in Bradford in the north of England. And there were literally 20,000 people that came to see her at this store, at seven people, queueing for more than five hours outside in the rain products were being sold every 20 seconds. You should go and come collect for those of you that are listening, it just blew me away. And that was one thing. And I was just fascinated by how she did this. So because as they got involved in actually launching this, this is the retailer. What they decided to do as a bit of experiential marketing is one of the emphases in the Astor store they recreated as her own bedroom. So when she was doing one of her content via video stories, she was talking as she was normally and then she pulled back the curtains. And there was the Asda store. There was all of their products being seen. I thought what an amazing how creative is that? So that's another example. I've got to tell you about something that the Internet Watch Foundation did. So they were working with an agency called Brave bison. And they came to their case, this is about sensitivity online, by the way. So Internet Watch foundation is trying to highlight bad practice. In other words, indecent images, all sorts of, you know, horrendous things, and how are they going to get this message over to people reporting it. So they came to the agency. And the agency employed two big influences. One was an arsenal footballer, a man and the other was a prankster influence, Aaron Kruskal. And what they decided to do was to use slight provocative comedy. So what your man did is he dressed up in his arsenal football gear, but he had Tottenham Hotspur socks on. So of course, you can imagine the reaction to his audience, what the hell no, you said, there's something right here. This doesn't look right. And Aaron was at the gym, and he was trying to lift some weights. And in the mirror behind him, you could see two people that were actually holding up the weights. It's, of course, people were active, and they said ours are right here, you know. And so the day after, or two days after story out to say you may have seen our posts, you may have further something isn't right here. Well, actually, that's what this campaign is all about. If something doesn't look right, then you must report it to the Internet Watch Foundation. And the feedback from that campaign was just incredible. I mean, it had millions of views, and engagement. It was just phenomenal. I have to say. So I think you know, when we talk about influencer marketing done well, it has a phenomenal return on investment, but it is when done well. And that's already there by researching the right type of influences that align with your brand campaign. And that means looking at their follower base. So I've had instances where people thought, Oh, yes, that person's got a million followers. But hey, 70% of our audience is in America, and we're a British brand, there's no is no relevant. There's no authentic activity, and it doesn't look quite right. There's been some real spikes here, I want to make sure that those followers are bought. So in a way, what you need to do is to do your due diligence. You also want to make sure that nobody that that particular individual hasn't worked with a competitor of you, because there's nothing worse than thinking yeah, that's gonna feel inauthentic, that one minute and they're promoting wondering brand, and then two minutes later, they'll make their nearest rival. But I have to say, the influence so wants the campaign to succeed just as much as you do. So what I would say is work with them at the earliest possible stage, don't just use influences can brand amplifies, use them as integral parts of the brainstorming, and activation because you'll be amazed what's possible, because they don't know what sort of content will work well, and they may be able to come up with some ideas or competitions. Obviously, other things that you need to do is to make sure they're briefed. Well, there's nothing worse than leaving a brief to loose because then you won't necessarily get the content that you want. That should be contracted. Just to make sure that everybody's clear on what's expected of them and when and how, you know, if there's a campaign that needs to be timed and coordinated with other activities, then that must be very specific. And yeah, I have one individual within the company that you liaise with. There is nothing worse than an influencer having to liaise with half a dozen people within a company. You know, these are busy people all the time all the good ones certainly are. So there's just a few.
Robert Craven 20:28
I totally get that. And I guess the conundrum is about how you so most digital agencies are a PPC agency or an SEO agency or content or PR or design or graphics or the summer in that the marketing continuing there might be around brand and so on and so forth. And an influencer arrives. And doesn't certainly on the performance side, it is a bit like video in a way, the PPC agencies don't know what to do with video advertising, because it's a different part of the funnel, you know, it's not down at the sales piece. It's about awareness. And it's, you know, there's this, you know, we can talk about it forever. There's, it's really about attribution, you know, most sales get clipped at about five different places, and you know, that you can only claim at once. So presumably the question I'm going to is two questions, one, where abouts in the sales cycle? Do we do influences go? Is it awareness or is it actually the purchase? And the second thing is how on earth do we measure the bang for the buck that we get from an influencer?
Gordon Glenister 21:56
Very good question. And ROI is sometimes a challenge for some organisations. When I talk about starting a campaign, you must always be very clear about the objectives that you're trying to achieve and maybe not always have too many. Because measurability is very, very important. Now, in the olden days of influencer marketing, it was largely used as brand awareness is top of the funnel, you know, for a new product startup of, you know, like a new restaurant opening or something to create a more social buzz. But, you know, influencer marketing in 2016 was worth $1.6 billion, it's now expected to be around $14 billion this year. So you know, it's been meteoric in terms of its rise, and the only reason more brands are investing in it is because it is answering that bottom of the funnel, i.e. it is driving sales, and it's driving sales. So if you just look at, for example, the likes of boohoo, particularly some of the fashion brands, you know, their massive percentage, their total marketing budget now is driven by influencer marketing. And what I mean by that is because they're able to create, you know, links 10% of links directly back to that particular shop store. And personalised so of course, you can create, you know, Louise 20, or whatever. So you can actually be nuked not only in campaigns to influence and marketing, but you can actually be directly to that individual. And then, and what I love about influencer marketing is it's very fluid you can invest in, you know, like a TV ad or a radio. Once it's down and prepared. It's gone. Whereas an influencer marketing campaign, you can optimise it, you can change it throughout the campaign. There is always going to be learning, of course, on what type of content is working when and how. Sometimes it's timing. And this is the other thing I think is fascinating is if you have a whole bunch of influences, you can see out of this group that you've got, which ones are working and why. So it's a real insight. Plus, of course, if you've got if you're using polls, you're getting valued insight and research back on what type of products that consumers are wanting, whether they prefer blue or red dresses or whatever rated for that product or this product, which is invaluable for a brand and it's so quick and swift. It's not like sending a Survey Monkey out. You're getting real time evaluation on what your consumers are seeing through the eyes of those influences. So I think to answer your question, influencer marketing works all parts of the funnel from top to bottom, it just really depends on the type of product that you're offering. I'm an infant on the b2b side of b2b marketing. You know, for example, there's no reason why you can't have influencers to promote conference tickets. You know, I'm a speaker at this conference. I've managed to get a special code, which is X Y, Zed, download this code tonight to get your ticket here, you know, three influences with respect and value to their community, and they will huge returns for you. And it's still about Robert, it's still about building a relationship, you know, 65%, I think on average of influences do not, you know, reject inbound, DMS and emails, quite hot, isn't it? And that's because the people that just reach out to them, they just see them as sales amplifiers and think, Oh, well, will they sell my product? Will they promote my product, if I give them something free, or all of them don't, because it doesn't resonate with their audience. So I will say to you, as a bit of advice to anybody, if you find a type of influencer that you want to work with, try and build up a relationship with them, you know, like some of their posts comment on them. Because it's the first stage in building up that relationship. And then actually say, I've been fascinated by what you've been doing. I really like your work. We'd love to find a way of collaborating together. And then finally, ultimately, you move from influencer to long term partnerships, Ambassador, and that is the future. The exciting part is when you really, it's not just a one off campaign, you're working with these individuals on a long term basis.
Robert Craven 26:52
So I'm sure that every influencer has a different story. But what I'm just trying to figure out is, I mean, as we know, there are so many stories now people are asking their four year old kid, what do you want to do when you grow up? It's like, I want to be exactly what happened to playing football. Or I want to be a YouTube creator. So is there a kind of a path that the people go on that they for whatever reason they're charismatic or communicative about? Whatever it is, the community builds around them. They've got 5000 - 10,000 followers, they get a little piece of work, it works. They work harder at growing the community. And then suddenly, they have 100,000 - 200,000. Or is it that I'm trying to figure out if it's a deliberate strategy that they.to become well known and inverted commas powerful? Whether they kind of fall across it? Because that's the kind of stuff that we're doing.
Gordon Glenister 28:11
Yeah, the latter. So for me, I would suggest the people that are super successful, have a passion, have a voice, have a skill, have an interest. And as that develops, other people find them. Because if you start off with thinking, I want to make money, and I want to be an influencer, it becomes inauthentic, because actually, it just doesn't really work. I think as well, it takes time. You know, some of the most successful influencers have been doing it for a long while. And I think people forget that. I mean, yes, there's stories about people that have grown audiences, you know, like a million followers in a month and stuff like that. But sometimes there would have been people that have suddenly hit Netflix, or they've been on TV. I mean, David Attenborough, of course, was famous for reaching a million followers on Instagram in ours. But then he already had a great connection, but he has, he's one of the people that I'm most influenced by, funnily enough, because he just resonates trust, who uses it, and he could send me anything David Attenborough, because I trust him. And that is at the basis of great influence. I mean, you will know this as much as anybody, you know, in business, and that doesn't matter what age you are, if you can harness trust, but you know, what, it can be broken as well. And that trust can be broken is when you sell out to your audience. So an influencer that does not resonate well or actually takes a brand that isn't looked at, I don't know, authentic with their audience. It won't go down well, and they will get a rebuff from their audience. You know, What happened in Dubai, for example, there was a bit of a backlash in Dubai, because some of the posts were insensitive, they weren't inauthentic, they were just insensitive. And that's another thing that I think people should be aware of the great influences are those that are responsive and reactive to their audience. So they comment they like, they thank them for taking the time, because a comment or like, is like somebody clapping at you on the stage. And it's so nice to be able to react to that.
Robert Craven 30:31
So just going back to this, because I'm just trying to get my head around how you become an influencer, you have some interest, obsession, passion, which can be from hair curling to clove to make up to fly fishing, to grind digital agencies to watch is to whatever, literally, you know, if there's a product fix code, you can be an influence. And they start off as people who are keen to get across their position or their idea or their viewpoint, often of product, but it doesn't have to be of product. It could also be how you do stuff, Attenborough is how you do stuff. And that's why Attenborough was involved in seeing photos of him being vaccinated and stuff. And then that niche of theirs has a community that is also passionate about the niche, and then the communication staff. So it's, presumably it's very difficult for an influencer in shoes to flip across the Ansoff curve, so to speak. Yeah. into something like holidays or something. But some people do more than others, presumably.
Gordon Glenister 32:05
Yeah, exactly that, because there's nothing to stop them from doing that. But if they want to be serious about working with brands, you know, Mrs. Hinch, for example, has been famous for creating a YouTube channel all about cleaning products. So what she does, and she's famous for it, she still appears on the TV. Now, because she's become a personality in her own right, you could say that she could be on holiday, and she could share that, but she needs to have a cleaning angle there. And the keep that so she could still do other things, but never lose sight of her alignment. And that's really, really important. The people that fail at this are those that really are all things to all people. But that's the same of all marketing, isn't it? If you lose focus, you and don't forget, it doesn't have to be the individual. Which talks about another guy who I absolutely think is great, there's an individual called the yacht guy. So you should check him out on YouTube. Actually, he's got the best job ever. So what he does is he just take video footage of super yachts. So effectively opens the world to what goes on inside the super yachts. And because he's become so famous now all the exhibitions and shows people welcome him in. And people like sunseekers and all the big yacht brands suddenly realised this is a great opportunity for us to get our message through. So we'll invite him to the yacht party is really invited to these things. So really, he needs to be but he just calls himself the yacht guy. Now there's nothing to stop him having another Instagram account with his real name on that. And he could put other, you know, stories around that but you know, if he's your guy, he couldn't be talking about stuff like that that wasn't relevant, because it wouldn't work.
Robert Craven 34:07
Totally getting my brains going Tick, tick tick about what my obsessions are. And how yes so in acoustic guitar, there's a guy called Martin Simpson who I adore, who plays a particular type of guitar use a particular type of Capo which holds the strings on and he's an influencer I watch what he does and he art there's a guy could are a customer who has his own paint, signature paints, particular brushes, use a particular paper and you kind of get it Yeah, because you either because you hear I worship them or you want to copy them or you like what they do, and you lean into those people. So this is just about what you're talking about. Influencer marketing strategy is just really taking that to the next level in the same way that you know. I bought it for the Stratocaster when I was 15, cuz Jimi Hendrix played one, and so on and so forth. So it's just an extension of that. Are there other examples of where it's been done? The classic examples you can call when it's been done badly, and the whole thing has sort of blown up in the face of people that have gone.
Gordon Glenister 35:22
Unfortunately, there are many, but those are the ones where they have not gone through due process. I mean, there's a famous one used with Lord and Taylor, who are big fashion brands. And they used 50 micro influencers, and asked them to create little style outfits, in different guises in each post that was pre approved. As you would have expected, it had 11.4 million views in just two days. Many of these posts had over 1000 likes. And the dresses were sold out on the weekend. So you think to yourself, Wow, that's pretty impressive. But what happened was, there were no advertising disclosures on any of the posts. So he broke all of the FTC guidelines. And the publicity that he created was phenomenal, right across the mainstream media. And also, it was at a time when the NSA and the FTC are clamping down on brands and advertisers and big, big influences that have not disclosed what they should have done. So you know, all of a sudden, that good World War was almost destroyed by either the bad publicity that he created. So what I say to people always is, you know, if it's a paid promotion, you've got to follow the proper guidelines of early influences, you've got to be using the hashtag ads, the you know, and actually consumers and are very, very open to seeing that now. I don't think there's an issue. It should be proper and clear. We're about being transparent. And then the other one, of course, was the famous fire Festival, which of course, was a programme raised about that. But ironically, we're talking about campaigns that didn't work well, the influence and marketing element of that was phenomenally successful. But the execution of the event was phenomenal. So one of those influences, you know, we're somewhat damaged in terms of reputation by that. I mean, I guess what I'm really saying here, Robert, is it's all about doing your due diligence, either if you're going to do it yourself, that was amazing influencer marketing talent agencies out there, influencer marketing platforms now where you can actually run the whole campaign for you from start to finish, including contracting and paying, searching for influences.
Robert Craven 38:21
We interviewed earlier on Well, it was when Black Lives Matter. Hit the press, Timothy is moved from the fan. Who runs an influencer? Agency Yelper young people, Gen Z. And when I last spoke to him, he said, it's just like, you know, that his clients are the people you would expect them to be. It's kind of like, you know, political parties and the NHS and the police, because they've run out of ways of reaching an entire section of the community. And they're using influencers. So my question to you is, so you're running an agency, and you're running a marketing agency. How do you find influencers? What is our method?
Gordon Glenister 39:15
Lots of ways to do it. I mean, obviously, you can go and first of all, it's about thinking about the type of platform where you think your audiences is always remember audience first row are very likely to be a neighbour of course, beyond different platforms. You know, a duty to bring a b2b audience may well reside on Twitter and LinkedIn, for example. Whereas beauty, fashion, travel and lifestyle may well be largely on Instagram and YouTube. So yes, you can Google search, you can search by hashtags, because some of these influences will come up in the Explore pages. But it depends on. If you want to try something yourself, then you can do but lots of examples of people that the way doesn't work is when, you know, people try and do it themselves, and I've got no idea what they're doing. So a good example is to use an influencer marketing consultant, an influencer marketing agency. And actually, it's not as expensive as you will think. And there's lots of them, most of which are in my book. And what that means is that, you know, these people have been doing it, they know, they've got access to influencer marketing platforms with, you know, 1000s and 1000s, In some cases, millions of influences. And we can determine the age mix, the gender type, so if you wanted to target specifically a female follower base, we can search for that we can search, particularly by different types of genre or subject. It's like anything, isn't it if you want to save time, work with an agency on influencer platform, but if you want to try it yourself, you can reach out some brands actually do a bit of both. We find out the types of people that they have got a relationship with, but they'll also use an influencer platform together. So yeah, it's a gradual process sometimes, you know, once you start to do an influencer campaign, you might well find that you are attracting is a great example of Radisson hotels actually, because they traditionally have used travel influences for their brand. But when I think it was in the Chicago Hotel, they noticed that because it's quite an iconic brand, that there was an architect, type architect photographer, she was not a traditional influencer. But she took amazing photographs of this particular building. And the brand reached out to her and said, We love some of the photographs that you're taking. And I think she didn't have a huge audience. So they use that in paid search to promote that particular brand. And so that's another area of influencer marketing is people that aren't necessarily using influencers as amplifiers. They're using them as content creators that they can use on their other collateral. Right, their websites or their marketing communication, particularly photographers and videographers, you know. So it's more than just seeing them as amplifies. They're also great people to us as content creators as well.
Robert Craven 42:51
Brilliant, brilliant, so fine, I mean, really educational piece for me, it's been great to talk to you and get a sense of what the books about. So finally, words of wisdom, pearls of wisdom, one liners thing, you think people should come away from this interview? The things that should be resonating in their mind, they will quote what are your kind of final thoughts?
Gordon Glenister 43:22
I want people to think about influencer marketing as, you know, start think when you think about your marketing budget. And if you've not done this before, why don't you try. Let's set aside some budgets to work with and I'm happy to help anybody, you know, that's what I do for a living. So I'm happy to help anybody with some suggestions. I also run a masterclass, put some budget aside and think about who are the types of influences that we might be able to work with within our organisation. One thing that we haven't touched on here, either Robert, is don't underestimate employees, as a massive growth as employees as influences, and even consumers as advocates. So there are now lots of consumer advocacy programmes developing. So your reach of individuals, I guess my final policies, use people to promote your brand. And they could be influences. They could be employees, or they could be consumers, but look at them as a great way to enforce your brand message.
Robert Craven 44:37
That's fantastic. And that just ties in with everything I'm working on at the moment about getting faces onto websites and videos onto absolutely people talking about stuff rather than kind of all connects up. So Gordon's links are at the end. Obviously, people got to go and buy the book. That's a no brainer and check out the website. Gordon, thank you very much for what's been really educational. I kind of knew it. Like I think most of us knew about influences, but hadn't maybe not sort of gone down that path, you certainly could have given us a view of what it's really about and how to actually approach it. Gordon Gleniser, thank you very much for being a really great guest. Thank you very much indeed.
Gordon Glenister 45:29
It's a pleasure, lovely to see you too.