Influencer marketing and the D2C funnel: The role of creator programs in your marketing strategy

Influencer marketing is an increasingly important part of the marketing mix for D2C brands. But what does this actually mean in practice?

It’s no longer the new kid on the block, but influencer marketing (and by extension, influencer marketers) are still fighting for credibility within brands’ wider marketing efforts.

Why? Because to get the buy-in to double down on influencer marketing, you have to articulate how creator programs will contribute to wider marketing and business goals. When creator programs are put in a silo, it’s impossible to demonstrate their full value.

By approaching creator programs in a more holistic way, it’s far easier to demonstrate how creator programs touch every stage of marketing, from awareness through to conversion:

As we begin the Field Guide, let’s set the scene by diving into the role of that creator programs can play in your overall marketing strategy.

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Influencer marketing and the marketing funnel

To understand where influencers and creator programs fit into your marketing strategy, we need to bust out a framework you’ve probably seen hundreds of times—the marketing funnel.

While the marketing funnel shouldn’t be taken too literally (we all know the buyer’s journey in chaos these days!) it’s a very useful exercise for understanding how different types of creator programs map onto the different stages of the customer journey.

The marketing funnel segments the buyer’s journey into three key phases—awareness, consideration, and conversion. These are also referred to as top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Your messaging during each stage in the funnel needs to be closely tailored to consumer’s needs at that point in time.

At the awareness stage, marketing tactics focus on generating brand awareness and attracting new prospects. During consideration, brands need to educate potential customers and build trust, while conversion tactics are all about driving prospects to hit ‘purchase.’

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Creator programs and brand awareness

During that top of funnel stage, brands need to get in front of as many relevant eyes as possible. so they can introduce their product and begin nurturing them into considering a purchase.

Note that ‘relevant’ is the keyword here; creator programs have a massive edge over traditional advertising because brands can select creators that have audiences they want to get in front of. This could be particular demographics i.e. stay at home moms, or communities that revolve about certain interests, such as beauty or fitness.

“You should be using influencers similarly to 10, 15 years ago, we would have been looking at TV commercials or billboards or flyers. You're not really expecting people to get up off the couch and go purchase something immediately after seeing a post.”

‍Rebecca Beach, Influencer Marketing and Creator Relationship Manager at VERBfluence Agency.

In sum, influencers offer brands a way to reach new audiences and test their product’s appeal amongst communities or niches they might not have targeted before, or dip their toe in the water of a new domestic or overseas market.

Note that certain types of creator programs are more suited to raising brand awareness than others. Ambassador programs and paid partnerships with high-profile influencers offer the best opportunities to increase reach by leveraging values-driven content to connect with audiences.

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Driving activity down the funnel

In the early days of influencer marketing, most partnerships were brand awareness-oriented. Tactics and toolkits hadn’t evolved to manage campaigns at a more granular level and attribute conversions to specific actions taken by creators, like sharing a promotional offer and a link to a brand’s website.

Today, influencer playbooks look very different. The rise of affiliate programs (and software solutions to manage them effectively) have transformed how brands are approaching creator partnerships, making it possible to set very specific KPIs or website traffic or direct-response conversions.

“People look to creators just to build brand awareness with the understanding that it may not lead to revenue, it may not lead to velocity increases. But I think what brands are realizing is that creators can be a really valuable tool to meet those metrics, to hit those KPIs that you as a business really need to see meaningful growth.”

Molly Savage, Omnichannel Growth Marketing Leader at Bobabam.

The goal of affiliate programs is to drive purchases by partnering with creators who have highly engaged communities. Equipping them with unique discount codes and referral links enables much stronger attribution, so you can see which creators and which types of content are sending prospects to your website and encouraging purchases (we’ll be talking about links and codes later in this guide).

Affiliate programs still play a role in raising brand awareness. but as Sarah explains, the ultimate goal of working with affiliates is to get customers to the checkout:

“With the last touch attribution, we're never going to see the full picture of every influencer that touches a customer as they come to a website, but those affiliate partners are down in the conversion funnel, making sure we're getting orders coming in and new customer acquisition is happening.”

Sarah Crow, Head of Creator Success at Superfiliate.

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Putting it all together

There’s no single creator program that will impact each stage of the marketing funnel equally. So, when you’re building an influencer program, you need to really intentional in what your goals are.

As Rebecca explains, brand awareness is a logical starting point for many brands when they start working with influencers. But figuring out how creators can drive activity in the middle and bottom of the funnel is the key to generating really robust ROI for your program:

”From there, you can start building into an affiliate program if you're looking for more of a bottom of funnel touch in your marketing strategy. So, you have your overall influencers that are there for your brand awareness, then you funnel them down through your affiliate program with direct links and affiliate codes into the sales aspect.”

‍Rebecca Beach, Influencer Marketing and Creator Relationship Manager at VERBfluence Agency.

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Leveraging influencer content across multiple touchpoints

Let’s step outside of the marketing funnel for a second. Thinking in terms of awareness and conversion is useful, but the funnel framework doesn’t capture all the ways that influencer content can be repurposed and distributed across your marketing channels. As Sachin explains:

“At some smaller brands that I've worked for, you can leverage that content a little bit differently. Bringing some of that raw UGC video to your website and creating that experience is really interesting because customers want to understand how is this product going to affect me and somebody who might be affected by the same problem.”

‍Sachin Bhargava, Ecommerce and Digital Product Management at John Hardy.

UGC is immensely valuable in leveraging the relationship between the creator and their audience, helping to put potential customers in the position of using the product and how it’s going to make them feel. Other owned channels, such as email, blogs, and podcasts, are also fantastic places to share social proof and build credibility with different audiences.

And those are just the organic applications of influencer content—the use of UGC in paid media and ads is a whole other strategy altogether (which is why this forms its own section of the field guide!)

As Maurice explains, whitelisting influencer content or paying creators specifically to produce UGC for paid ads is much more effective than traditional approaches to advertising:

“We've actually found that running creator-shot ads can have a 22% lower CPA and a 30% higher ROAS on average, compared to running studio shot ads. Creator-shot ads are that low fidelity type of content, really native to the platform compared to a studio asset, and as a result it tends to resonate or feel more native to the platform.”

‍Maurice Rahmey, CEO at Disruptive Digital Agency.

It goes without saying: If you want to use influencer content outside of a particular platform, you MUST negotiate for these additional use cases and include it within your contracts (don’t worry: We have dedicated chapters on contracts and negotiations to come!)

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Remember: Creator programs are only one piece of the puzzle

Influencer programs are the among the most impactful marketing strategies you can invest in. However, creator programs cannot stand on their own. Throwing your entire budget at influencer marketing when you don’t have a broader marketing strategy and goals in place is not going to deliver the kind of results you can proudly present in the boardroom.

Whatever program you decide to invest in first, it needs to tie into a bigger strategy and brand positioning that’s consistent across channels. As Rebecca emphasizes:

"Overall, you still do need to have a larger marketing plan and strategy in play as well. You need to have social strategy, need to have a foot on the ground strategy, you need to have a solid product. There is a lot more that goes into it than just relying on influencers 100%.”

Rebecca Beach, Influencer Marketing and Creator Relationship Manager at VERBfluence Agency

Curious about some of the programs we’ve just mentioned? You’ll find a breakdown of the different types of creator programs your brand can leverage in the next chapter!