Making Influencer Marketing Authentic

In the increasingly crowded influencer marketing space, your brand must select authentic influencers to cut through online noise effectively. Now more than ever, brands prioritize influencers who are deeply rooted in culture and genuinely aligned with campaign objectives. It's not merely about the number of followers someone has; instead, it's about the authenticity they bring to a campaign. While engagement metrics remain essential from a KPI perspective, many brands prioritize selecting influencers who are a perfect fit for the campaign beyond just numbers.

Influencers who organically promote your brand are often the best fit for campaigns as they possess a genuine connection to your brand. However, when selecting and vetting new influencers, it's vital to consider individuals who have built strong trust with their online audience. Most consumers and social media users are influenced by their friends, family, and the influencers they follow. It all boils down to trust and authenticity. Nowadays, people can easily see through a sponsored post if the influencer isn't an authentic fit with the brand or product. Therefore, when they partner, it's a delicate balancing act for influencers and brands.

At El Pollo Loco, we've witnessed great success and record sales and garnered hundreds of millions of impressions by leveraging our community of authentic influencers and creators on TikTok. Although we're a Mexican food brand, we consistently aim to enlist authentic and diverse influencers from various categories (food, lifestyle, fitness, comedy, etc.) to cast a wider net and attract new consumers while remaining true to our core audience. TikTok is a central platform in our social strategy to build authentic excitement among enthusiasts and new fans, facilitated by the right influencers.

‘Influencers who organically promote your brand are often the best fit for campaigns as they possess a genuine connection to your brand.’

Another significant aspect of creating authentic influencer campaigns is trust. Choosing the right authentic influencer for a campaign is the first piece of the puzzle. It's also essential to trust them, as they understand what resonates best with their audience. Suppose you select an outstanding creator for a campaign but impose strict guidelines and guardrails. In that case, the outcome often needs to be revised as the content fails to resonate authentically with the influencer's audience. Finding a happy storytelling medium for the brand's campaign and the influencer's content is imperative.

The next time you build and source individuals for an influencer campaign and leadership questions something that doesn't feel right, I challenge you to consider the creator and whether it aligns with their audience and our brand. Will it be authentic?