The Debate: Influencer Marketing vs Paid Ads for Your Brand

Unravel the mystery of influencer marketing and paid ads with us, Tara and Audrey from TJ Creative Agency. We promise to take you through the intriguing world of different partnerships - affiliate, paid, gifted, and PR partnerships - and how they can propel your brand to new heights. Learn the art of incentivizing influencers through affiliate partnerships and gain a fresh perspective on the organic nature of gifted and PR partnerships. 

Now, let's ask ourselves, do paid ads or influencer marketing yield better results? This episode is all set to explore the various types of paid ads, including static images, videos, stories, and messaging ads, that can increase traffic, conversions, and sales. We also critically compare the effectiveness, trust factor, and return on investment of influencer marketing and paid ads. Discover why influencer marketing can provide evergreen content while paid ads are more of a one-and-done situation. So, whether you're a business owner, influencer, or content creator, it's time for a riveting discussion on shaping your brand's digital marketing strategy.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Influencer Marketing and Paid Ads
• 9:50 Paid Ads vs Influencer Marketing Comparison
• 16:38 Comparing Influencer Marketing and Paid Ads

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever wondered what goes into your favorite brand's digital marketing strategy?

Speaker 2: 0:04

I'm Tara, the founder of TJ Creative Agency and I'm Audrey, the creative marketing director of TJ Creative Agency. Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person, we'll teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online. Welcome back to social sessions, everybody. I told you guys last week that Tara was going to be on the pod more, and she's here. Hi, she is here. We are doing this on our first, first regularly scheduled recording. As in like, we set a date and a time every week to do this, so we're doing it and you guys are going to get the two of us more regularly, told you guys last weekend. We are delivering on that. Yes, so today we're going to be talking about the difference between influencer marketing and paid ads, and I don't necessarily mean like. Obviously, most of you guys probably know the difference between the two of them, as in like, what each of them are, but I mean in terms of their deliverables, in terms of what they can do for your marketing, what they can do for your brand, everything like that, because I actually had this conversation with a one-on-one client the other day that made me think that maybe this is a topic you guys would like to hear about. So that's what we're talking about. I do not have an update for you guys this week simply due to not seeing anything exciting, so I'm sure there's like things going on. I don't know. Nothing was really speaking to me that I wanted to talk about, so sorry. So we're just going to jump into the episode and we're going to kind of start with understanding influencer marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Again, I'm sure a lot of you guys know the basics of what influencer marketing is, but if you don't, we're going to kind of go over it. So, obviously, influencer marketing is when a brand partners with an influencer to promote their product or service, and there's all different types of product or not products. There are different types of products, but there's all different types of partnerships. So there's the affiliate slash, like brand ambassador type of partnership, and these ones are usually longer term partnerships and the influencer gets a cut of the sales made through their link. So essentially, they can post as little or as much as they want. And the idea of this from a brand perspective, a lot of times brands will say you know, you can do as much as you want, as little as you want, but it's almost like an incentive for them to post more, because in an ideal world, the more you post, the more people buy through your link, the more money you make, right? That's the idea from a brand perspective. Does it always work that way? No, but that's the idea of it.

Speaker 2: 2:57

So think I'm sure you guys know what this is, but the one example I always use is Jim Shark. They have been using this model for years, like probably one of the first. I won't say they're the first company to ever do this, but they were really really, really early on the influencer and really early on the affiliate link game. So they're the brand that I always use. For that, every one of their athletes has a code that you can chop through. They make money when you make a purchase through that right. And now we have things like the Amazon links and like I think Revolve has, like a favorites page that you can have and whatever there's and like to know it. All of those are affiliate links.

Speaker 2: 3:40

But that is the first type of partnership. The second type of partnership is paid partnerships. Now, that's very vague, I'm aware of that, but all that really means is that someone is getting paid to promote a product or service. How many times they need to post is kind of in a deal by deal basis, how much they need to post, how often they need to post, how much they're getting paid. How much they're getting paid is how long term the deal is. Is all negotiated? Yeah, it's all negotiated. Sometimes you know a brand will run a campaign and be like we want you to post three times within these next three months.

Speaker 2: 4:25

We want you to do. You know more stories. We want one TikTok, one, whatever like. The deliverables will change, but at the end of the day, it is a business deal, right? You are going, you or you as the influencer, or just the influencer is going to post something and in return for that post, you're going to get paid. It's that simple. That's the one I think most of us think about when we think about influencer marketing. Yeah, and the last one is gifted and PR type of partnerships. So this is exactly what it sounds like the brand is going to send their product to an influencer in hopes of them posting about it. This is probably the most organic of the options, because they're being gifted this product or they're getting a service for free with the hopes that they are going to post about it, or with the hopes that, you know, the influencer is going to fall in love with it enough that they're just going to organically post about it. You know.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:31

But the brand is sending this or giving away their product or service with no strings attached. Essentially they're not. They can't expect anything. So those are the different types of partnerships. Now into the different types of influencers.

Speaker 2: 5:47

We've kind of talked about this before. I think we probably have a more in-depth episode about influencer marketing. I've said this before but we've done so many episodes that I don't remember. But I'm 99% sure we have an episode dedicated to influencer marketing. But to kind of review the types of influencers, you've got nano influencers this is from I got this from a list. These kind of vary depending on where you. The numbers kind of vary depending on where you get your information. But for this episode's sake, nano is like a thousand to 10,000 followers. Micro is 10 to 100,000 followers. That one's kind of crazy to me, because that's such a broad like 10,000 to 100,000 is such a big jump. In mid tier they say is a hundred to 500,000. Macro is 500 to 1 million. Mega is a million plus.

Speaker 2: 6:42

So that's kind of the rundown of influencer marketing, the benefits of influencer marketing. It can help increase your brand awareness, credibility, trust and loyalty while at the same time generating traffic's leads in sales. Right, that's the idea of it. I think influencer marketing has changed a lot over the last few years. When I would think of influencer marketing before, I always thought of sugar bear hair type of vibes, or even like what the like fit teas, or even some of the shit the Kardashians do now. Whatever those Aminos or those lean Amino, whatever things those scream influencer marketing to me, or the like BAI, that like water brand, that screen certain and this isn't no, it is their fault Certain brands just like scream corny, I think for all of this one of the biggest.

Speaker 1: 7:41

I think their strategy behind influencer marketing was probably revolve. Yeah, because we were one of the first to that game and hit all the right people and they built this whole idea around it. I really think they created this idea of that world.

Speaker 2: 8:04

I think they I don't know if they were one of the first people to do influencer marketing, but I do think the influencer trips they're very known for.

Speaker 1: 8:11

I think they were one of the first. I feel like generationally, those girls, that first group of girls that came through there, like that is like the influencer.

Speaker 2: 8:22

That's what I've heard. Maybe it was. I've heard you say that I'm going to be so honest with you. I don't know any of them. I have no idea who that first person is.

Speaker 1: 8:29

It's funny because Audrey and I are difference in age and just like perception of reality is so different, because sometimes her and Megan will talk about influencers today that are like relevant and I'm like I have absolutely no idea who that is, and then I'll bring up somebody from revolve and they're like what, I don't know her. You know what I mean. So I do think in the fashion world and that I they were so big in like really I think the grid creation and like when that started to be the aesthetic vibe and like I felt like that group we did Well it's also just crazy how long influencer marketing has been around.

Speaker 2: 9:08

I just looked up because I know I just brought up Jim Shark. I just looked up when they started, 2012 was when they started influencer marketing which, like I, I was what I was in high school. I was like either a freshman or a sophomore. I don't even know if I had an iPhone yet, maybe didn't even have an Instagram, like I don't think I got an iPhone until I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. So around the time that I was just getting an Instagram, there was already influencer marketing, which is like insane.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Yeah, that is crazy when you think about it like that.

Speaker 2: 9:45

So, anyways, that's, that's kind of the rundown on influencer marketing. Now we'll jump to paid ads and for this podcast, we're going to specifically be talking about social paid ads. Obviously, there's all kinds of advertisements, okay, all kinds in which cost money. So, technically, everything is a paid ad. Every form of advertisement is a paid ad, but for the sake of this podcast, we are talking strictly about social media.

Speaker 2: 10:14

So a paid ad is a form of marketing that involves paying a platform or a publisher to display your ads to a specific audience. So they're the sponsored posts that are showing up on your feed, and we're kind of going to go into where these ads can pop up, but just know that they're the sponsored posts. So the types of paid ads. There's images, obviously. This, for this case, we're talking about just like static images, right, and that's typically like think of that as as, maybe, when you're scrolling through Instagram and you see one single photo.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Or you're scrolling through Facebook I feel like it happens a lot on Facebook too and there's one single photo that's supposed to grab your attention, right. Or there's videos that think of the TikTok, the sponsored TikToks. I just got some from Skims the other day and usually with TikTok I will say they kind of have to integrate into the TikTok format, if you will. I think they might do a little bit better over there when they look like a type of video that you would already be getting on TikTok Like have you ever seen you don't realize it's happening until you're yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Have you ever seen, in half the time they're using trending sounds, the one that is so good? Pleasing, Harry Styles nail polish company? Everybody thought it was run by Chris Olson. For a long time I think he was like you guys, I do not run this account, but they were giving like unhinged, like you know that one trend Now this is where I start to out myself on like what my free page is so unhinged. It's like so funny. My friends are like what is going on. But you know that trend where it was like the bucket would hit a guy's head and then it would immediately start the beat of teach me how to doggie. And this is why I'm like you might not know what I'm talking about, but pleasing literally made a whole video with it, like it was a trend, probably like a year ago. But they like utilized that as a sponsored ad, which is like crazy right, because it really was something that would just. It looks like it would have just shown up on my feed organically, yeah, anyways.

Speaker 2: 12:29

So there's videos. Obviously, tiktok isn't the only place you can do video ads. There's also like sponsored reels. I believe you can put them on, like videos can be on almost all platforms. Then you've got Carousel posts. These ones feel very specific to Instagram and Facebook. It just allows you to swipe through a catalog. I see Amazon Carousel posts all the time. Amazon luxury is constantly getting me Amazon home and Amazon luxury. I'm like, oh, that's cute. I see that it says Amazon luxury, I click on it and yet I am still stunned. Why is this dress $1,000? When they say Amazon luxury, I'm like it doesn't click, does it? It's not clicking that. It's like still luxury. I'm like, oh, amazon luxury, that just means it's $100 instead of 20.

Speaker 2: 13:18

And I'm like oh no, like it is-.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Which is still the same price.

Speaker 2: 13:22

It's luxury, I guess, so I get those all the time. And then stories stories are obvious. Stories on. I don't know if you can do I don't think you can do sponsored stories on TikTok. It might be meta specific, but I did see a little thing that I liked about stories. Oh, I also forgot to mention when we were talking about videos. Those are technically the most effective type of ad. Yeah, so asterisk there. Technically the most effective Stories, though, are obviously short. Right, the duration of them is very short, which makes them a type of social media ad, ideal for time sensitive promotions, and stories typically have higher visibility because they're at the top of user feeds. Those are the ones like to be honest on Instagram. Those are the ones that I'm probably gonna be suckered into more than anything else and get me to click links more than anything else.

Speaker 1: 14:20

These are the ones on stories.

Speaker 2: 14:21

I scroll right past anything in the feed and anything on, even like in the real speed, even in the TikTok feed, usually Story ads though I don't know if it's the way that these brands are setting up their ads, but I feel like the story ones I get over and over and over again until I finally am like fine, I just wanna see how much. It is, fine, I'll look. So then I end up clicking the ads. Last version is messaging ads, quite literally in your messenger. There's like a little ad, you click on it and it'll start a message with that Company. I don't like that at all. I don't either. I don't really ever use those. But they work, they're still there, they do something.

Speaker 1: 15:13

They'll just be looking for a certain type of client, for sure.

Speaker 2: 15:15

Yeah exactly so. Paid ads can help you reach a large and targeted audience, drive more traffic, conversions in sales and measure your results in ROI. That's a big difference Is which actually leads us to. I wanna go into the differences between the two Mm-hmm Because they do essentially have different purposes and different strengths and that, like you said, is one of them. With paid ads, I think they're easier measured Mm-hmm. So in terms of ROI, you can measure that a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 15:56

They're also a lot more specific, so I wrote down Audiences that are very specific rather than yeah that the influencer market, the seizure post is the one that fits your avatar.

Speaker 2: 16:12

So the differences between the two Influencer marketing is based on trust and authenticity, while paid ads are based on interruption and persuasion. So obviously what they mean by that is when you're working with an influencer and they are promoting your products, they obviously already have a community that they have a relationship with, so there is an aspect of trust. Now I do wanna kind of bring like a caveat into this, because this is a question that I was asking on one on one the other day and she had said with influencer marketing, does that come with the trust? Already, no, short answer no, is it more? Is there more trust there than with a paid ad? Of course, of course. But just because an influencer is promoting your service or your product doesn't mean that people automatically trust that that is the best service or product, right?

Speaker 2: 17:09

So the way that I kind of explained it to her is I was like, let's say, in real life I have a friend say this is the doctor that I go to for whatever right. Like, let's say, I'm in the market, I need a specific type of doctor. Like I feel like you do this in real life, like people do this in real life, my friends and I will be like oh, I need to go to this kind of a doctor. Do you have someone like that you like, right, okay. So then let's say my friend tells me about a doctor that she really likes. I can either, like, look at their website. So there's a version of trust there, right, it's like the word of mouth. My friend trusts this person. So maybe I should trust this person, but I still, as an individual, am going to go to their website or go to their social media or call them up or book my consultation or whatever that is, and make that judgment for myself. You know what I mean. I'm not just going to be like, yes, I love this because this person loves this, you know. So I can go to their website and I can look at, let's say, it's a cosmetic situation, let's say it's a plastic surgeon. My friend says, oh, like I got this done at this doctor and I think you would love them. And I go to this doctor's website and I scroll through and I look through their portfolio and I decide, actually I don't like his style, I don't like the portfolio, whatever. So the trust isn't there. It's not just like handed over with the word of mouth. You know what I mean. So it's the same thing with influencer marketing. Just because I see one influencer promote something doesn't mean that I'm like oh, okay, immediately, this is the best Immediately. I love this, you know. So, however, it does come with some trust.

Speaker 2: 18:56

It does come with like almost like a leg up over paid ads, and what I mean by paid ads being based on interruption and persuasion. It quite literally is meant to interrupt your viewing pleasure. It is quite literally meant to interrupt your feed or interrupt when you're scrolling through stories. It's breaking it apart and it's meant to capture your attention in a way of oh, this is not what I thought I was about to watch. Right, like you're scrolling through stories, you're seeing people you actually know. All of a sudden, there's like a video of I don't know.

Speaker 2: 19:30

I get dog collars all the time recently. I'm like, okay, sure, not what I was intending when I was scrolling through stories. So that's kind of what I mean by interruption. Also, influencer marketing is more long term, so you might not get the conversions you want immediately, but I do think the conversions you do get tend to be more lifelong conversions versus, like the conversions you get from, and they're not always. I'm not saying that as, like a catch-all, they're always lifelong conversions, but I do think in comparison to the conversions that you get from paid ads, those are typically more like impulse buys that you don't know if they're actually gonna purchase from you again. They might just try it.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Yeah, you know what I mean exactly. They touch people in different Parts of the buyer journey. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 20:29

To like yeah, for sure. And also and when I say you can't always track like the influencer marketing when I say paid ads are a little bit easier To track because, for example, I mean kind of similar with paid ads but usually with influencer marketing, like someone might hear about a product from an influencer today and and might not buy that product again for six months or not again buy that product for six months, and it's gonna be hard to trace unless you have like hello fresh, has that like drop down, right, it's like where'd you hear about us? And then the drop down is like miles long because they promote this shit everywhere. But they're like where'd you hear about us? Podcast, billboard, radio, ad, instagram, tick, tock, like there's a million different options but not everybody has that, which is fine. But just know that like you might be putting this money into influencer marketing and you might not see that return until six months down the line, and even then you may not know that where they originally heard about you was through an influencer. Yeah, another thing that is kind of cool about influencer marketing that's different from paid ads Significantly different is that influencer marketing can create evergreen content where paid ads are a One-and-done type of situation.

Speaker 2: 21:53

As soon as the allotted time is up, that's it. People are not going to see that ad again unless you run it again. Versus, like influencer marketing Someone can make YouTube is my favorite version of this or Pinterest I don't know how many people are utilizing Pinterest creators, but Both of those like they could make an ad for you. They could make their deliverable for you and post it today. In Literally two years down the line, you can still get people coming from that piece of content, yeah, and if you work your usage rights Correctly in the contract, you can use that content on your own page. Yeah, and so it's evergreen. In that sense, I Will say, kind of like what Tara said, paid ads do allow for more precision with the people that you're targeting. You have the choice, when you are running an ad, to say I want to. You can. You can be so specific. You can be like I want to target Women that are only 24 years old in Tacoma, washington, with these hobbies.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Mm-hmm and you are going to target those people. Now it might be a little bit harder because maybe there's not that many 24-year-old women in Tacoma hobby to like Tacoma Washington is like to come a hobby that have whatever hobbies. So it might be a little more difficult. But if you want to get that specific, you can. You can put in an age range, you can put in a location, you can put in what types of like hobbies they're interested in.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Yeah, watch what.

Speaker 2: 23:25

I mean, it is what their interests are. So you can get super specific over there, so you can know that your ideal audience is going to be the one that is watching right Now. Those are probably the biggest Differences between the two. There are some similarities, though, one being that both are going to require a budget. Okay, neither of these are going to be. Neither of these are cheap marketing At all. If you, if you want to do it right, sure can you send out your product to a bunch of influencers and hope for the best. Sure Can you spend two dollars a day on paid ads? Sure, is it going to get you the results that you want? Probably not. Yeah, maybe I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's unlikely.

Speaker 2: 24:15

So they're both going to require a budget and they're both going to require strategy, right? Neither of these are going to work. If you're just kind of shot in the dark Situation, if you are just throwing up an image like a random image or a random graphic, um For an ad on instagram and you aren't putting in the correct people, it's not going to work for you. Right and same with if you just find someone that has a million followers and make a like campaign with this influencer but you don't look into anything else about them. It's also not going to work for you. So they both are going to take some work and they're both going to take some money. And, the biggest thing, they're both going to require you to have a deep understanding of who your audience is. So you need to be able to. So, for influencers, for example, you need to be able to choose an influencer that has an audience that very closely aligns with your ideal customer. So here is an example Again, I'm reverting back to this one-on-one call a lot, but I had in this call she had said she's nonEXUS, genau as I've just honk.

Speaker 2: 25:28

This only fans creator had reached out to them right, and was like hey, do you guys want to do a partnership, blah, blah, blah. And this only fans creator had a very large Instagram following, but this client of ours, this one-on-one client of ours, recognized that her this only fans creator's audience is probably not going to be the types of people that are going to want their specific service. Is there a market for this girl to work with? Is there, like brands that are going to work with her? Yes, of course. Of course there are, because she's still able to market to her audience. It's just does that audience align with your business, right?

Speaker 2: 26:14

So they ended up saying no, they were like this isn't gonna work Because in this situation, this girl's audience was mostly males in like a slightly older demographic, right. But if you have a product that is, or a service, and your ideal audience is a male audience of a slightly older demographic, then she might be great for you. Maybe Manscaped is a great thing for her to promote. Manscaped is perfect for her. Exactly that's what I'm saying. You have to know Like you're a representative you should be you have to know who you're talking to, right? The same way that, like these girls are Kendall Jenner, even promoting like Aloe Yoga aligns impeccably right, like the girls that are following her are probably the same girls that are gonna wear Aloe, you know, so you just have to know who your audiences.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Your audiences.

Speaker 2: 27:12

And then same thing with the paid ads. Like we said, you can get incredibly specific and you should get fairly specific, but the only way you can get specific is if you know who you're trying to talk to. So both of these, in this regard, are going to take some market research on your part. Lastly, they're both gonna require goals and you're gonna have to set some KPIs. So, in order to measure any of this, you're gonna need to know what you're trying to achieve and then, once you know what you're trying to achieve, you need to know what exact KPIs you're going to measure in order to determine if you succeeded at that goal.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Right, that's the same with anything, though, any kind of marketing. You should probably have a goal in place. You should probably have KPIs in place. Yeah, so those are the similarities, those are the difference and, in conclusion, really, if you want to reach a large and targeted audience, drive more traffic, conversions and sales and measure your results and ROI's, pretty easily, paid ads probably a great option for you. If you want to increase brand awareness, increase trust and credibility, influencer marketing might be a better option for you, but again, it totally depends on what you and I think that some of the greatest brands do a combination of both right.

Speaker 2: 28:34

Yeah, I don't necessarily think it's a one or the other, I do think it is both. But I do think you know, if you only have a certain amount of money yes, in that case yes, pick one, but that's kind of the rundown. Tara, do you have anything you want to add on to that?

Speaker 1: 28:52

No, I think this is helpful. I do think we're experiencing some of this with our clients and seeing and have seen it work for in both lanes paid and influencer. I wish that people trusted the influencer market marketing a little bit more, just because, again, I know one of the main goals of businesses is conversion and that, unfortunately, is the hardest thing to track with influencer marketing. But brand awareness is equally as important and I think I wish more brands would trust that process.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Yeah, so I mean, I think you can track it to an extent. Like I said, I think it's a little bit harder, especially because it's not like one plus one equals two. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 29:42

It's not like I paid this influencer and I got this much A customer yeah, it's a little bit more deep, or maybe they heard it three times, or maybe they heard it from a friend, that heard it from an influencer, that heard it from a friend.

Speaker 2: 29:57

Yeah, or maybe, like it could be like an influencer posted your product today. That person followed you, didn't purchase from you for six or seven months down the line and then purchased from you, but in your data it might look like they came just from socials, right, it might look like they came from your organic social content, then from an influencer.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Yep, yep, but it's cool. Both work, both are great, both are things that we use here and they're both doing what needs to be done.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Yeah, I hope this cleared some stuff up for you because, like I said, once I got this question last week I was like oh, that's actually a good question. I don't think we've ever covered that. So they both do similar things in the sense of they're going to expedite your social growth faster than just like normal organic social stuff can but kind of have a different outcome. If you will Love it, all right. Well, that is all we've got for you. I realized I forgot to ask you at the beginning of the episode, so I'll ask you at the end of the episode if you can rate and review the podcast. That would be amazing, and we'll talk to you guys next week. Yes, let's talk next week. Bye.