– By Akshaya Vijayalakshmi
Influencer marketing is on everyone’s lips and in their marketing plans. Gone are the days when celebrities ruled the roost. Now, even they are picking up a trick or two from the influencers. Influencers have made their mark across domains, from toys to technology and from fitness to finance. You may be familiar with macro-, micro-, or nano-influencers, but have you heard of the employee influencer?
If Elon Musk or Baba Ramdev came to your mind, then you are not off-course. These people are one type of employee influencers. People follow them for their achievements and views on specific topics. These influencers then channel their followers’ loyalty toward their firms. While the rise of CEO influencers is a worthwhile topic, the focus of this article is on the lesser-known foot soldiers of the firm who take up the mantle of being a social media influencer for the firm, albeit at a smaller scale.
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Let us consider the case of SUGAR Cosmetics. The beauty advisors (or sales assistants) turned into social media influencers during the COVID-19 lockdown in April-May 2020. Since the malls and other retail outlets were shut, the beauty advisors turned to TikTok and WhatsApp to sell their products. They created short videos using the video-editing tools available on TikTok. These creatively produced videos presented SUGAR’s product range and its power to transform a person’s look. The beauty advisors then shared these videos with their contacts on TikTok and WhatsApp and helped the company earn about a crore in revenue in a month when SUGAR was expecting close to nothing.
While SUGAR accidentally stumbled upon employee influencers, in some cases, firms have actively created a programme to train their employees to become influencers and grow their online follower base. These include Walmart, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Dell, Peloton, and Zappos, to name a few. Such a strategy makes sense because research shows that consumers are more accepting of influencers promoting a brand rather than seeing the same ad from the social media handle of a brand.
Interestingly, many of these firms also outsource their influencing work but then why are they also building an in-house influencer programme? There is increasing evidence that micro-influencers (influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers) rather than macro-influencers or celebrities are more effective in improving product knowledge, brand understanding, and purchase intentions amongst followers. Macro-influencers (those with lakhs of followers) effectively increase brand recognition and build brand image, while a micro-influencer better establishes brand engagement. This occurs because consumers are likely to connect more closely to the life and style of a micro-influencer. An employee influencer, in most cases, tends to be a micro-influencer. Thus, by virtue of being micro-influencers, they are seen as more authentic and relatable.
One of the ways by which an employee influencer can increase authenticity (while also helping the firm) is by sharing snippets from their work life which will provide consumers with an unfiltered view of the firm. Employee influencers offer a perspective that may not have been edited by a marketing and/or agency team. Such presentations will help reduce the distance between consumers and the firm.
The most successful influencer marketing campaigns are the ones where the firms extend freedom to the creators and allow them to present the brand message in the influencer’s style. SUGAR Cosmetics succeeded in earning revenue during the pandemic via their employee influencers precisely for that reason. Similarly, consumers understand that it’s the firm’s and not the influencer’s voice when the same standard line (in the name of control over the message) is repeated by multiple influencers. This is, in fact, a potential trap that may undo an employee influencer programme. If firms orchestrate employee influencer programmes and mandate employees to post about the firm, it may resemble marketing campaigns on any other media. Further, suppose there is an incentive structure for employee influencers to draw followers. In that case, it could result in push marketing while influencer marketing is thriving and effective because influencers can pull consumers to them, thus, the firm.
What should firms do in such a case? An employee influencer programme will succeed if the employee feels valued in the firm. When they feel respected, see a path for growth and believe in the product they are building/selling, they are likely to promote their firm on social media. Therefore, what an employee influencer programme needs to succeed has less to do with marketing and more to do with organizational behaviour. Next, rather than having a deliberately planned affair, firms should give creative control to their employees. It should not be necessary for all or any employee to be an influencer for the firm on social media. However, if there is one, firms could extend the same courtesies they would extend to a regular influencer.
It is becoming increasingly clear that for the success of a campaign, firms need a bouquet of influencers, each serving a specific purpose. A macro-influencer mitigates the social risk of buying a product by lending social status to the product. A micro- or an employee-influencer would help reduce product risk by explaining to the consumers how a product is made, how it works, and where it will fit in the consumers’ life. Consumers appreciate multiple views on a product and varied presentations of the same message. Firms must understand this and leverage the specific strengths of each type of influencer. But importantly, firms must be comfortable with the idea that the employees are responsible brand custodians and there is no singular correct way to talk about a brand.
(Akshaya Vijayalakshmi (Ph.D., Iowa State University) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. She teaches and researches digital advertising.)
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