Organic Influencer Marketing: Turning Influencers into Advocates

in Influencer Marketing

Based on the traditional playbook, influencer marketing inherently seems like a paid program for most brands. You invest in research and pay influencers per post or campaign.

However, many brands include organic influencer marketing in their social media mix. Learn how Death Wish Coffee did just that in our latest case study.

What is organic influencer marketing?

Organic influencer marketing occurs when influencers of any size mention or promote a brand without a paid campaign contract.

Oftentimes, these influencers are already fans of a certain brand or try a new brand and share that experience with their followers without having been in contact with the brand first.

Organic influencer marketing seems a lot more trustworthy to followers because they are more like a word-of-mouth review from a trusted expert.

Turning Influencers into Advocates

By now, many consumers are used to the influencer marketing playbook. They understand that influencers are paid by brands to test and recommend the brand.

While the disclosure is a good thing and can help build trust, knowing an influencer is paid to promote a brand can make consumers hesitate as they feel the review or promotion isn’t 100% authentic. (This is also why it’s crucial to find the right influencer.)

The rise of tricky ways to boost brand followers can degrade trust even more.

Organic influencer marketing, if it works for your brand, is both cost-effective for growing brands and can boost influencer and brand authenticity:

It’s Cost-Effective

Organic influencer marketing often only costs brands the small investment of giving an influencer exposure to a product or service. If you send a free gift box or sample to an influencer, and they mention you in their Instagram stories or on a blog, all that costs the brand is the product and the shipping.

It’s Authentic

Another great part of organic influencer marketing is that the creative freedom gives influencers more opportunity to post about your brand how they want–which increases the authenticity and follower engagement.

How Death Wish Coffee Did It

Looking to engage micro-influencers organically and increase brand awareness, Death Wish Coffee leveraged Sideqik’s all-in-one influencer marketing platform for a summer 2019 campaign.

With a new iced coffee product available, they wanted to find influencers that fit with their overall brand vibe and whose social audiences would also enjoy their new drink.

Death Wish Coffee used Sideqik Discovery to search for micro-influencers whose interests and post topics aligned with their brand–“World’s Strongest Coffee.” They decided to work with influencers in fitness and gaming.

From there, Death Wish Coffee sent care packages with their new iced coffee to 44 influencers with no directions or stipulations.

This lean, smart strategy netted the coffee company a 600%+ ROI (based on their cost to ship the gift packages). Learn more about how Death Wish Coffee utilized Sideqik’s end-to-end influencer marketing platform to plan, execute, and measure their organic campaign in our latest case study.

If you’re ready to get started on your organic influencer marketing campaign, contact our experts to learn how it could work for your brand.

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Nancy Rothman

Nancy is a passionate, results-driven marketing executive with more than a decade of experience in building robust integrated marketing programs for brands of all sizes, with specific expertise in the martech space. Prior to Sideqik, Nancy held roles at four successful martech startups, each of which received multiple series of fundraising and included two acquisitions. At CallRail, specifically, Nancy served as the director of marketing where she built the company’s brand and established it as a leader in its space. She also held roles at MeetEdgar, where she oversaw the entire sales and marketing practice, increasing the company's user base and annual recurring revenue, as well as PureCars, which was acquired by Raycom Media in 2015. As vice president of marketing for Sideqik, Nancy is responsible for developing and executing on the company's marketing strategy to drive overall business growth.