Why Every Business Needs To Become An Influencer

Written by Nishayne Lowe
(3MIN READ)

You wouldn’t think an auto-insurance company could garner a social following of over 4M people.

Well, Hagerty Insurance did and they do over $700M/year. Living proof that every business needs to become an “influencer” to stand out in today’s market.

The days of borrowing trust for your business by paying tens of thousands to mega influencers all the time are over.

Simply having a good organic content strategy helps build real trust and a brand consumers will love.

Alex Lieberman (Co-Founder of Morning Brew) had an excellent point the other day. Coincidently, the exact problem I set out to solve when I started this company a few years ago.

I’ll summarize his post for you.

Operating influencer and creator programs at scale were a big pain point for brands.

Consumers were spending more carefully and ad platforms were less efficient. The solution?

1. Have the business create organic content, essentially becoming an Influencer themselves.
2. Work with niche creators to build trust with their ideal customer.

Also stating that he talked to dozens of B2C and B2B businesses that would pay top dollar to have this whole process taken off their plate.

I always recommend businesses have a year round organic content strategy in place, on top of any influencer campaigns.

Using influencers/creators is renting attention which doesn’t add to brand equity (in most cases). The business/brand should be the one consumers fall in love with and trust, not just the influencer associated with said brand. If the influencer walks then the attention the business has walks away as well.

Which is why businesses need to build and train an in-house creative team or hire a team already at the top of their game — exactly what our clients come to us for.

Take a look at what Alex Hormozi is doing.

HE is the influencer that funnels traffic to his main two companies, Skool and Acquisition. Consumers have fallen in love with Alex and therefore fallen in love with his associations.

Whether you’re a small business or a multi-billion dollar brand, organic content marketing is a must. I also don’t mean throwing up the occasional product video or UGC. You need a full fledged content plan that provides consumers entertainment, education or a mix of both.

Doug DeMuro is more evidence for the effectiveness of powerful organic content. He started reviewing cars on YouTube and drove enough traffic to his auctioning site, Cars & Bids, which is now valued at over $75 million.

So how do you start?

It starts with training your social media manager or whoever creates your social content.

You don’t need to hire tons of positions to succeed — just find that one killer creative. If you’re bootstrapped, YOU will need to become the killer creative.

• They need to understand your business, offer and brand to a tee to create content your ideal consumer wants to watch.
• They need to understand the inner workings of social platforms.
• They need to be an excellent copywriter.
• They need to be a great video editor. (Can be a different position)
• They need a deep understanding of viewer psychology.
• They need to be incredibly efficient as well.
• They need to be expanding their knowledge daily, because what worked last week won’t work this week.

This position can be tough to fill, but once it is, your business will never be the same.

On the other side of things, this is an opportunity for creatives to become a “killer creative” for businesses.

With AI trending to takeover most social media positions, it’s imperative that creatives arm themselves mentally to be able to handle that shift and not fear AI, but see it as a another tool.

I’m glad people are finally coming around to the idea that businesses need to essentially become media companies, something Gary Vaynerchuck has been screaming from the rooftops for years.

“Be Your Own Megaphone!”