What gives an influencer their influence? Not authenticity, according to meta-analysis out of EBS Business School in Germany.
The paper, published in the Journal of Business Research, reviewed and analysed 108 studies to figure out which characteristics predict whether an influencer will boost customer engagement or purchase intent for a brand.
While there has been no shortage of research into influencer marketing up until this point, a lot of the findings have been contradictory, according to the authors of the study. For example, more followers either guarantees better outcomes from an influencer or it becomes a drag on engagement after passing a certain threshold, depending on which study you believe.
Katja Sporl-Wang, Franziska Krause and Sven Henkel, the authors of the meta-analysis, used qualitative and quantitative methods to separate the signal from the noise.
They found that an influencer’s follower count was negatively correlated with customer engagement, suggesting that once an influencer has a large enough fan base, acquiring more followers tends to dampen engagement.
‘Practitioners largely agree with this result, since the measured engagement rate for [social media influencers] in terms of likes, comments, and reposts on Instagram and Twitter supports this fact,’ wrote the researchers, adding that academics also support it, explaining that large followings tend to be less homogenous and, therefore, harder to maintain an intense relationship with.
Attractiveness and credibility both made influencers more likely to improve customer engagement and increase purchase intent for a brand.
The similarity between an influencer and their audience (congruence) was an even better predictor of effectiveness for customer engagement but, for some reason, has no real effect on purchase intent. That said, the congruence between an influencer and the brand they’re promoting does help to increase purchase intent.
And despite what many people in the industry believe, authenticity is ‘not significantly correlated with marketing effectiveness in terms of customer engagement and attitude’, said the researchers.
‘For purchase intention, the strongest predictors were attractiveness, informative and functional content, and content quality,’ state the researchers.
So, some good general advice for marketers working with influencers, claim the researchers, is to look for several social media personalities that have a million or so followers combined, rather than one mega influencer.
Meanwhile, ‘if the aim of marketers is more sales-oriented,’ wrote the researchers, ‘attractiveness and informative and high-quality content should become central evaluation criteria.’
Main image by Conner Ching on Unsplash
