We run hundreds of client influencer marketing campaigns each year, and often clients are hung up on follower counts. Why? Because follower count equal higher impressions and in the tourism industry, impressions are king.
Overall impressions are easy to quantify in an industry where measuring true impact is difficult. But impressions don’t measure impact; most of the time, they’re just a number on a dashboard, not a measure of attention.
What Is An Impression?
An impression is counted every time your content is viewed on screen. On Instagram, they have changed impressions to views. So, a view is counted each time a carousel or image appears on screen, or a Reel begins to play. The same is true of Facebook. This does not mean anyone paid attention to the content. It merely means the person was given the opportunity to see the content.
An impression/view can be a blip on a screen, it can be 1 second of exposure, it can be 30 seconds, or 5 minutes. All those time frames are grouped into the same impression measurement.
Do Impressions Have Value?
Yes. But they only have value when they increase attention. Typically you can do some math and make an estimate of how much attention your impressions garnered for your brands. Hint: depending on the type of advertising it’s often very low.
Do High Follower Counts Equal More Impressions?
Maybe. In a perfect world an influencer would post, and their entire audience would be given the chance to see the post. But we all live in the real world of algorithms, and we know that that is not how social media works. Only a fraction of an influencer’s audience sees their posts. How large that fraction is usually depends on how much of their audience is engaged with their content.
Influencers with larger follower counts usually cost significantly more than those with smaller audiences. Because posts cost more brands can usually afford fewer posts per campaign which lowers the number of impressions you get.
Follower Counts Do Not Equate to Attention
The most valuable currency in advertising is attention. It’s why we use influencers. They have the attention and trust of the audience we want to reach. The larger the influencer the lower the percentage of their audience they have the attention of and the lower the percentage of their audience that is truly engaged with their content. This percentage still might work out to a number that is larger than using a small influencer but in a lot of cases you are paying more to reach the same size engaged audience with less content.
Attention Drives Consideration and Intent
While aggregate attention over multiple impressions is good for awareness. Sustained attention of 10 secs of more is what is shown to drive true consideration and intent. Destinations often come to us and say they want influencers that “actually work” meaning influencers who will drive travel to their destination. Your best strategy for driving travel with influencers is partnering with mid-tier influencers with highly engaged audiences.
With Steller Connect we’re able to see which influencers drive trip planning and booking for destinations and mid-tier influencers do it repeatedly. You can’t beat the audience attention they have. We also see their posts go viral more often because their audiences are so engaged.
With mid-tier influencers you get more posts, higher engagement, and higher levels of attention than you do with macro influencers. Not to say there isn’t a place for macro influencers but if you are trying to drive mid to lower funnel activity, such as trip planning and booking, they are probably not your best bet.
Should We Use Nano or Micro Influencers?
Nano and micro influencers have their place and we do include them on campaigns, but you can slice the pie too thin. There is a follower threshold that is important when you’re trying to drive travel. If an influencers’ audience is very small how much of that person’s audience is going to be ready to travel to your destination in the next 3-6 months. That number is probably quite small. However nano and micro influencers are great for local and drive market campaigns.
The Balance of Follower Count, Attention, and Frequency.
When you’re planning your next campaign, there is a sweet spot. Slice the pie too thin and you won’t get impressions or impact. Slice it too big and you’ll get impressions with low impact. The goldilocks zone is mid-tier with highly engaged audiences.
At Steller we guide our clients to shift strategies from the biggest follower account they can get with their budget and instead go for the most attention they can afford. From there we negotiate as much frequency as possible. For attention you’re looking for engagement rates, they need to be high, and you should be wary of anyone who has their engagement metrics hidden. Look for high engagement rates in the mid-tier range. Once you find someone with high engagement rates make sure that what you’re asking them to do is not going to be a complete departure from their normal content. If they content isn’t what their followers normally engage with you will be disappointed with the outcome.
When it comes to frequency negotiate as many posts as possible. Studies have shown that it takes 4-7 posts from an influencer before a person decides to buy, Steller Connect takes care of many of those touch points for you, but you should negotiate as many as you can upfront.
Curious if our approach to influencer marketing could work for your destination? We love to chat! Book a demo to learn more.
