Gordon Glenister, the author of “Influencer Marketing Strategy,” discusses the evolution of this dynamic field. He shares effective campaign development tactics, success stories, and legal considerations. Gordon examines employee advocacy as an emerging trend and offers insights on leveraging internal talent as influencers. Learn how brands can navigate the influencer landscape, maximize ROI, and prepare for future developments in this increasingly important area of marketing.
Episode Transcript
Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS
Gordon Glenister: You’re going to find different types of content creators and influencers that will meet different needs. A proper strategy is to make sure that you have thought about the goals that you are wanting to achieve, whether that be brand awareness, whether that be conversion, whether that be sales.
Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising, produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. While influencer marketing has become an essential component of many brands’ marketing strategies, the concept of influence extends beyond just social media celebrities. For businesses and professionals alike, understanding how to leverage influence can be a game changer in building brand awareness, driving engagement, and establishing thought leadership. Our guest today is an expert in helping brands and individuals harness the power of influence. Gordon Glenister is the Global Head of Influencer Marketing for the Branded Content Marketing Association and has over 25 years of experience in promotional marketing. Gordon is the author of Influencer Marketing Strategy: How Influencers Can Help Grow Your Business, now in its second edition. He hosts two podcasts, Influence, which spotlights influencer marketing, and Growing Your Influence Online. Gordon runs his own consultancy, GGA, and regularly speaks around the world on influencer marketing and membership strategies. He also conducts an influencer course, helping individuals become influencers themselves. To discuss how brand marketers can develop effective influencer marketing strategies, both for their brands and for themselves as business professionals, I’m delighted that Gordon is joining us today from Cambridge in the UK. Gordon, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS!
Gordon Glenister: Delighted to be on the show.
Adrian Tennant: Your journey into influencer marketing is interesting. Can you tell us how you went from being director general of a trade association to becoming an expert in this field?
Gordon Glenister: Well, it is quite an interesting story, actually. I was 11 years working as Director General of the British Promotional Merchandise Association. And then in 2018, I felt like I did my stint there and wanted to go and help other associations with their strategy. And the first person I met up with is a guy called Andrew Cantor from the Branded Content Marketing Association. We met in a London hotel. We were just talking about, perhaps, ways in which we could work together. And we pretty much almost finished our meeting with just some potential follow-ups. But then I said the killer question. I said to Andrew, “What about this whole influencer space? It’s mad, isn’t it? It’s growing phenomenally quickly. It’s a bit like a Wild West. But there’s no trade body that represents the sector.” So his mouth just sort of opened up as if to say, “Oh my goodness, there isn’t.” So we decided to launch Influence, which was a division of the Branded Content Marketing Association. We did it in a big London nightclub with hundreds of influencers and agencies attending. And I thought, “Wow, I’ve now set up an influencer marketing organization, but I still don’t know much about influencer marketing.” So I decided to do two things, actually. Write a book, because I thought that if I write a book but interview some of the industry thought leaders, that would actually help my own personal brand. And not long after, I also launched my own podcast called Influence: The Global Podcast, where I interview guests. And I think one of the things I would say about this process is that I’ve become a key person of influence now, probably because of the company I keep. And it’s one of the strategies I often say is, “If you want to be seen as an influential person, make sure that you are surrounding yourself with influential people.” I know we’re talking about the second edition here, but the first edition was a finalist in the Business Book of the Year Awards, and we’ve subsequently gone on to make a documentary film on the back of it in Brazil. So, how this all happened in the space of a very short period of time, Adrian, I don’t know.
Adrian Tennant: In your book, you mention that influencer marketing is one of the most powerful forms of advertising today. Gordon, why do you think it has become so effective?
Gordon Glenister: Well, I think it’s because we trust the opinions of people that we like, trust, and know a lot more. I mean, for example, when you go and book a hotel or a restaurant or consider a show or even just products, more and more of us are looking at the reviews. And I think what we’re saying here is that the whole sense of people advertising is becoming much, much more important, although it’s not new. I mean, word-of-mouth marketing has been around for years, of course, hasn’t it? But I think it’s this sense of trust and authenticity that people like. And of course, when we find somebody that resonates with us, that looks like us, talks like us, and perhaps is talking to us about a product or service that we feel we can relate to, And that’s very, very powerful. And so many of these communities have grown up through these niche influences, whether they be fashion, food, travel. And why they’ve become successful is because their content inspires, it educates, it informs in a way that an advert in a magazine or a radio ad or a television ad perhaps doesn’t do to the same degree. It feels a lot more personal as well.
Adrian Tennant: So how should brand marketers approach creating an influencer marketing strategy? What are the key elements they need to consider?
Gordon Glenister: First and foremost is make sure, as in all marketing, that you have set your goals. What is it that you’re trying to do? I mean sometimes people that fail with influencer marketing, they just think that because everybody else is doing it, “We’ll just go and find a bunch of influencers that will promote our products and service and the dollars will rain down from the heavens.” And that’s not the case. A proper strategy is to make sure that you have thought about the goals that you are wanting to achieve, whether that be brand awareness, whether that be conversion, whether that be sales, because you’re going to find different types of content creators and influencers that will meet different needs. I think it’s really important as well to think about the type of campaign that you want an influencer to work with. Is it going to be a short one-off or is it likely to be an ongoing campaign that you might want to work with them over a period of time? Are you looking for somebody that has high reach, for example? That’s often the case with brand awareness. In that case, you might be looking for a macro or a bigger influencer with a large-scale following. Or are you going to be looking for a nano and micro-influencer that has a much smaller following, but probably much more relatable? And you might well find that you will get higher conversions because their engagement rate might be higher. It’s also important to study and research the type of influencers first. And there are lots of influencer platforms and data that will allow you to do that. It’s not about just looking at an aesthetic on somebody’s Instagram and saying, “They’re a foodie, they look good, they’ve got 50,000 followers,” there is a whole lot more behind the data. And that’s the reason why there’s been a whole growth of influencer platforms and influencer agencies to help the brand marketeer determine the right fit for their campaign.
Adrian Tennant: Got it. There are lots of case studies in Influencer Marketing Strategy. Can you share a couple of success stories from your book about brands that effectively used influencer marketing to drive significant growth?
Gordon Glenister: Yeah, well, one of them I want to share with you about something that is really interesting. And that’s from an organization called the Internet Watch Foundation. And the Internet Watch Foundation is a body that has to monitor sensitive content online. So you’d think, how on earth do they raise awareness amongst influencers, or indeed raise awareness anyway? So they approached an agency and they came up with a really interesting brief, which was to use comedy. Because comedic content actually can deliver huge levels of engagement. So what they decided to do was to pick two influencers. One was a footballer. For those of you that are outside of the UK, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are well-known football clubs but are rival enemies. So they used an Arsenal footballer to promote Tottenham Hotspur socks and asked him to put a post out about that, knowing that he would get some interest. Without saying too much by the way, just putting it out there without anything yet, another one was a comedic influencer who was at the gym and what he was doing was showing how strong he was, but what we as the viewer could see that there were two people behind holding up the weights. So what was really interesting, so they put these two posts out pretty much the same time and then they did a post the second day and it was, “You probably saw our post yesterday, it didn’t look quite right,” yeah? And “I’ve noticed by all the comments that you sent to me that was the case. Well the reason we’re doing that is because we’re working very closely with the Internet Watch Foundation to spot things that just don’t look quite right online. And if you see content online, please do report it to this very, very important organization.” And the level of engagement they got during and post was something like four times a normal influencer campaign would get.
Adrian Tennant: I mean, that speaks to getting the right audience with the right influencers. So, Gordon, could you walk us through the process of identifying and selecting the right influences for a brand? What criteria should marketers use?
Gordon Glenister: Yeah, a number of things. First of all, look at the quality of content that you will see on a typical feed, whether it be on Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever it is. So go back and trawl through and make sure on the face of it that influencers’ brand values resonate with what you’re trying to do. The other thing that you want to look at is the engagement rate. A typical engagement rate on Instagram is perhaps one or two percent. So if you can ideally look for influencers that have got over three percent, then that is certainly worth considering. In fact, the smaller influencer following they have, the higher this is going to be. So you need to be mindful of that. I would also look at the average number of views, because actually you could have an influencer that has, I don’t know, 50,000 followers, but actually has only got 2,000 views. What you really want is to make sure that the content that they are putting out is actually seen by a high percentage of their audience. Otherwise, it’s just wasted spend. So that’s important. The other thing is the geolocation of the followers. If you have a UK-centric brand, for example, what you don’t want is 80% of their followers around the world, or perhaps in America, where the availability of them buying that product is therefore reduced. So you want to make sure that you’ve got a maximum media buy. Depending on the type of product, it might be more focused towards men or women. You can look at the gender split of that audience, and you can look at the age profile of that audience as well. So with your own brand, typical customer profile, you can pretty much match that with an audience’s follower base. So again, so important not to just look at the influencer, but it’s the influencer’s followers. And that’s the reason why there are great data available to help you do that.
Adrian Tennant: Perfect, thank you. Let’s talk about B2B influencer marketing. How does it differ from B2C, and what strategies work best in a B2B environment?
Gordon Glenister: Well, a lot of B2B influencers may not be referring to themselves as an influencer. They may be an entrepreneur. They may be a keynote speaker. They may be an author, but what they do have, they have an engaged community and that’s what makes them a highly influential B2B influencer. The sorts of stuff that you can do with a B2B influencer would be a lot of co-created content. It might be having them on your podcast. It might be creating a report with them together. It might be getting them to speak as a keynote speaker or as a panel at one of your conferences or a conference that you’re sponsoring and supporting. It could be creating really interesting content about the industry that’s going on, some of the key trends that are happening. So those are some of the things that you can typically work with a B2B influencer on.
Adrian Tennant: Great. In your book, Gordon, you also discuss the legal and ethical impacts of influencer marketing. What are some of the key considerations brands need to be aware of?
Gordon Glenister: Okay, so what you want to do is to make sure that the quality of the follower base is very, very high. You are going to always get some bots or some fake followers. It’s the nature of the beast. But again, a lot of the influencer platforms that are out there will give you a report score on the quality of their follower base. And you want that to be 80% plus. because what you don’t want at all is any sense that they have bought followers and they are effectively augmenting their own price value because of the size of their audience as opposed to the quality of that audience. Definitely, you want to be looking out for that. You also want to have a look at what we call spikes. abnormal follower growth. For example, again, reports will help you do that. You could have somebody that on average is growing their audience by, I don’t know, 100 new followers a month or a week or whatever, and then all of a sudden they’ve had 5,000 new followers. You know, that’s a bit of a red flag, unless they have been on a Netflix TV show or something like that, where that is totally logical and understandable. But the other thing I think to be aware of, you want to make sure that the level of organic content is higher than that of sponsored content. You don’t want to have somebody that’s pretty much a market trading influencer that’s just moving from one brand to another. Because at the end of the day, you want to see that the influencer having a positive impact on their audience and their followers are going to want to continue to work with them.
Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message.
 | Gordon Glenister: Hello, I am Gordon Glenister, the author of this month’s Bigeye’s Book Club selection: Influencer Marketing Strategy: How Influencers Can Help Grow Your Business. My book provides a comprehensive guide to implementing successful influencer marketing campaigns for both brands and individuals. I cover everything from working with celebrity endorsements to leveraging micro-influencers and explain how to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of social media platforms. The book is packed with real-world case studies, practical advice and strategies for measuring campaign effectiveness. As an in-clear focus listener, you can save 25% on Influencer Marketing Strategy when you order directly from my publisher at koganpage.com. Just enter the exclusive promo code BIGEYE25 at the checkout. Shipping is always complimentary for customers in the US and the UK. I do hope my book helps you harness the power of influencer marketing to grow your brand, whether you’re a marketing professional, a business owner, or an aspiring influencer yourself. Thank you! |
Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Gordon Glenister about effective influencer marketing strategies for both brands and professionals. How can marketers effectively measure the ROI of their influencer campaigns? What metrics should they be focusing on?
Gordon Glenister: Well, there’s lots, to be honest, and you can get sort of overwhelmed, really. Typically, engagement is one, so likes, comments, and shares. Conversions is another one, so it might well be getting people at different parts of the marketing funnel. So is that about registering or signing up to a newsletter? Is it about registering to come to an event? That is a conversion. But ultimately, a lot of brands want to generate revenue and sales. So that could be also a key metric in that whole process. But also things like video dwell time, how long people are actually watching videos for is a good indication. And, you know, whether they’re saving videos as opposed to just sharing them. The algorithm favors certain things. Videos that are saved and shared are much higher than those that are just merely liked. I mean, one of the things I always say is make sure you have a really strong brief to the influencer. Don’t just consider them as a media buy. You know, you wouldn’t go and hire somebody in your business without giving them the right tools about your product or service. What are the key benefits? What are the sorts of things that other consumers have liked? Because whilst I do believe in giving the influencer some element of freedom to do what they do best, I think it’s better that the brand is briefing them well. But without actually saying, “This is what you need to say,” because what they don’t want to do is not talk in their tone of voice to their followers. So I would say brief them well, but be mindful the influence is going to do their own thing as well.
Adrian Tennant: When we were chatting a couple of weeks ago about the topics we might discuss today, you mentioned the concept of employee advocacy. Gordon, can you explain what this is and how brands can leverage their employees as influencers?
Gordon Glenister: Well, it’s a really interesting area of growth, actually. And I’ll tell you what prompted this was a conversation I had with a guy called Ryan Bars, and he’s the head of advocacy at IBM. And it was a couple of years ago on my podcast, apparently a big brand like IBM. a very corporate brand. They put out the same type of content. How can they humanize their brand? How can they personalize it in such a way that it resonates with people? They realized that some of their technical experts within their team were getting a lot of traction on social media because these individuals were able to solve big problems. So they started to think, “You know, we’ve got something here. It’s clear that our experts know a lot about our subject and are having a difference.” They created this community, they created a name for it, and it was called the IBMers. It’s now, I believe, over 200 people strong across the business. I mean, first and foremost, not everybody wants or is obliged to sell or promote products and services on behalf of their company on their own social media. But there are a number of people that feel really proud to support their company and be happy to do that. I mean, for example, if we saw a junior member of staff saying “We’re hiring an account manager role,” they’re going to get way more traction from that account manager than they would if it was being said by the CEO or CMO or the head of human resources. I think there’s a lot to be done with developing employees. What matters, Adrian, more than anything else, is structure, is making sure that it’s not just about, if you want to put anything out, do so, guys. No, what you need to do is have a plan have a process and make sure that you are constantly engaging with these employees. And yes, reward them. But let’s be honest, what you’re creating is a whole bunch of thought leaders in the business. So those employees are going to be seen within the industry as experts. They’re going to be seen within their company as experts, which then makes them highly promotable. And of course, the brand let’s just say like IBM, has now got over 200 thought-leading individuals which can go on to speak on stage and go on to collaborate on industry documents and that sort of stuff. So it’s a win-win for all really.
Adrian Tennant: I love that. Gordon, you run a VIP executive influence program. Can you tell us more about that and how you help professionals become influencers?
Gordon Glenister: Yeah, thank you. And I’ll tell you why I launched this program is because I saw my own experience of how I pretty much rebranded myself, having thought that I would spend the rest of my life in promotional products, and then entered this influencer space. And so I’ve almost treaded the boards before creating the program. First of all, a brand is what somebody says about you when you’re not in the room. I know that’s not my own phrase, it’s coined by others, but I do believe principally that sometimes when it comes to marketing ourselves, we’re not always the best people to do that because we don’t always have a subjective view about it. So I think that’s how I started with it. So it’s now a three-month program, one-and-a-half hours on Zoom. And I pretty much look at an individual in the same way I would a brand. So I look at trying to niche their tone of voice and what their key subject of influence is going to be about. And we work quite a lot on understanding what that looks like. Then we go through a process of creating an influencer strategy, evaluating it, and it works really, really well. And it works well because we do it on a one-to-one basis. I’ll tell you about a guy called Jeff Beecham, actually. He was a recruiter. When I spoke to him, I said, “Are there any specialties? Because you’re an executive recruiter. There’s blooming millions of you people doing this same thing!” And he said, “Well, I’ve done a bit in manufacturing.” So I said, “Great. Let’s focus on manufacturing.” So whilst he was in the Zoom call, which you can do if you’re a host, I renamed him “The Manufacturers’ Recruiter.” And I said, “What do you think of this?” We not only found the URL, we created an entire new brand identity around The Manufacturers’ Recruiter. He now not only has his own podcast, he’s a leading authority in supporting British manufacturing. And he’s had some amazing work that’s come as a result of it. So rather than be the person that is trying to phone manufacturers, trying to get jobs and recruitment work, he’s now somebody that speaks with authority. He’s even gone to manufacturing sites and talked about people issues and hiring. So, do you see what I’m doing here? There is a really good example. Another one, briefly, was a coach. And again, I said to him, “Who’s your target client?” And he said, “Entrepreneurs.” I said, “Oh, you’re like millions of others, the same thing.” And then I found out that he’d done a bit of work in private equity. So I thought, “Hallelujah!” So I said to him, “How about this? Let’s rename you The Private Equity Coach.” We went from moving wide to going narrow. And I said, “Right, let’s get in touch with Real Deals magazine. That’s the magazine for our industry. Let’s take the editor out to lunch or to do it and see if you can’t get involved in organizing a roundtable event with them.” He did that. And I said, “Before we do this, I want to go through every step of the way.” So I said, “You’re going to get 12 of your ideal clients in the room here. We’ve got to map this out. I want you to get a picture of you with them. And when you get that picture, I want you to then get that framed. I want you to put that in a lovely box with tissue paper, no expense spared as far as this is concerned. Create a lovely little personalized card and send it to each individual and say, ‘Thank you so much for your contribution to the roundtable discussion. It was really thought-leading and inspiring. I’d love to have a chat with you to continue the conversation over a coffee. Meanwhile, here’s a token of the event that you were at recently. Hope you like it.’” And from that, I believe he got three meetings, two of which became clients. One of those clients said, “We don’t just want to work with you and me. I want you to work with my entire team.” And to this day, he only did two of the six sessions with me because he got so much business as a result of it.
Adrian Tennant: That is a fantastic endorsement, Gordon. Well done. You’re obviously onto something with your process there. Going back to brands for a second, how can smaller businesses or those with limited budgets effectively leverage influencer marketing?
Gordon Glenister: So it’s a good question, and this is where I would definitely suggest micro and nano influencers. First of all, try and find the ideal influencer. So really, as I said earlier, really try and profile what type of person that is and reach out to that person. If you haven’t got enough money to use an agency or an influencer, you just do it yourself. Reach out to that person. Well, actually, before you reach out, I want you to like, comment, like, comment. And what that says straight away is you’ve taken the time to understand that individual. You know, we like praise, all of us do. So does an influencer. Some of them get so many emails that say, I’d love to work with you. If you promote our products, I’ll give you a commission or dear influencer. It’s just junk. These people have created a really strong community And they need to be treated with respect. And those people that do treat them with respect and take care to engage with them and try and form a relationship are more likely to achieve better results as well. So you could hire them within your own business because they know how to build community and promote products. So you could, as I say, bring them in. you could set up a meeting with them and say, this is what I’m trying to do. I really would value your ideas about how best we could do it. Because sometimes a lot of influencers know other key influencers. So you could almost hire one as a lead influencer and they reach out to all of their friends and build them into your own little community. So that could be very effective And then once you’ve started to see what type of content works well, you can optimize it and then scale accordingly.
Adrian Tennant: That’s great advice. Looking to the future, what trends do you see emerging in influencer marketing? And how can brands and professionals prepare for these changes?
Gordon Glenister: Well, obviously, one of the big changes is going to be around AI in influencer marketing. Some of that at the moment is in regard to ideation and coming up with different types of campaign ideas. But of course, you can also use AI-generated influencers. We’ve already seen in the last few years CGI influencers. Little Mikayla is a good example. She’s got millions of followers and has done very well with brand deals. Some people express concern over that, but we’ve liked cartoon characters for ages. We’ve loved the Marvel comics. We’ve loved Mickey Mouse. We’ve loved these people because we’ve created an emotional attachment to them. So I think we’re just going to get used to that. I think influencers have been used now increasingly in selling products through live stream channels with Alibaba’s sites and Amazon now employing thousands and thousands of influencers. In fact, if you go to Asia, there are lots of examples of these influencers working in almost factory-like conditions. Sorry, when I say factory-like conditions, I don’t mean that in a negative way. I just mean in a way that they’re all lined up together and they’re online for hours and hours and hours selling products. as opposed to just one-off. So we’re going to see more livestream selling. We’re going to see a greater use of technology, which will allow brands to get an even greater measurement on the effective use of influencer marketing, not just as an add-on strategy, but core. And also, and it’s been a trend for a while, is working with ambassadors on long-term influencer campaigns. We often call it always on, but this is where we’re working with them on an ongoing basis. So they almost become integral to the brand, immersed in the brand. So those are just a few things.
Adrian Tennant: Well, this has been a great conversation. Gordon, how can listeners learn more about your work, your book, Influencer Marketing Strategy, now in its second edition, or your podcasts?
Gordon Glenister: Well, the easiest way to do that is to go to gordonglenister.com, which is my website, and you’ll find everything on there about my podcast, the book. Obviously, you can get it from Kogan Page and other leading bookstores as well. You can also follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. I’m on all of those channels, and I do regular videos just to help people with little tips and tricks on influencer marketing.
Adrian Tennant: Gordon, thank you very much for being our guest this week on IN CLEAR FOCUS.
Gordon Glenister: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Gordon Glenister, the author of Influencer Marketing Strategy. As always, you’ll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com. Just select ‘Insights’ from the menu. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Introduction to Influencer Marketing Strategy
04:49 – Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing
06:16 – Developing an Influencer Marketing Strategy
08:18 – Success Stories in Influencer Marketing
10:34 – Identifying and Selecting Influencers
12:52 – B2B Influencer Marketing Strategies
14:02 – Legal and Ethical Considerations in Influencer Marketing
16:17 – Influencer Marketing Strategy Promo
17:15 – Measuring ROI of Influencer Campaigns
19:15 – Employee Advocacy in Influencer Marketing
21:58 – VIP Executive Influence Program
26:13 – Leveraging Influencer Marketing on a Budget
28:11 – Emerging Trends in Influencer Marketing
30:20 – Learning More About Gordon Glenister’s Work
