For years, college athletes have racked up Twitter and Instagram followers due to their on-the-field fame, but despite these large followings, a quarterback known for slinging touchdowns was prohibited from slinging endorsements thanks to a system that prohibited athletes from profiting off of their image or performance. But this summer that changed, and with college athletes now able to profit off their name, image, and likeness, it’s left companies such as Captiv8, an influencer marketing platform, ready to hit the ground running with a new pool of talent.

“Scale for creators or athletes within specific verticals is pretty tough. It’s hard to snap your fingers and get a hundred college athletes activated in minutes. Platforms like Captiv8 have made it easier to do that in the digital creator space. With creators that have been around for a while, you can go through specific verticals. With college athletes, it’s a green field right now.”

Krishna Subramanian, is the Co-founder of Captiv8, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Krishna goes deep into the weeds of influencer marketing and how these new opportunities with college athletes can help brands. Plus Krishna provides some dos and don’t for brands that are looking to partner with influences. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways

• Influencers are an Extension of the Brand: Over the last year, brands have leaned more and more on influencer marketing. But despite how loyal an influencer’s audience might be, that audience might not be a match with your brand. Make sure the values of your brand align with that of the creator and with the people who make up their pool of followers.
• Fighting for Control: How much creative control the brand and the creator requires is one of the main things to consider when partnering with an influencer. If a brand wants more control, don’t partner with top influencers. Instead, partner with lower-level creators that are looking to grow their audience.
• Going Further Down the Funnel: Right now, influencer marketing is specifically focused on branding and building awareness, but there are far more areas for marketers to derive value from it, including measuring a product viability and the ability to scale content across multiple channels.

Key Quotes:

“It’s been exciting to see brands lean into influencers and creators. They leaned into them to tell those authentic stories of their brands. When consumers were looking to people that they trust, whether they’re their friends or creators that they have emotional connection to, those creators became really important storytellers for the brand.”

“Influencer marketing today is predominantly focused on branding and awareness. There’s a lot of opportunity to go further down the funnel as the market gets more mature.”

“Creators care about two things: they care about growing their audience and making money. When you look at the making money part, there’s lots of different ways for them to make money. Some platforms make it really easy to turn on ads and other platforms make it a lot harder to get sponsored content and you have to go out and find your own deals.”

“From an influencer marketing standpoint brands are always looking for that long-term relationship and marriage with a creator. Neither side wants a one-night stand. I think when you think about it that way it’s how do you find influencers and creators that are going to resonate with your brand?”

“The things that we see performing really well are more of those always-on types of campaigns, where the creators are embedding that brand into their day-to-day life on an ongoing basis.”

“Part of what you need to do is make sure the content is actually going to resonate with the audience that you’re looking to hit. Just because 70% of someone’s audience is male and in New York doesn’t mean that’s going to be the most engaged audience. You need to make sure the content is also hitting.”

“How much creative control does a brand really want? If a brand wants a significant amount of creative control, don’t go partner with the top creators or the top digital creators. Partner with a tier two or tier three creator who will be more open to allowing you to manage that end-to-end process and drive the creative strategy.”

“You’re partnering with creators for the exact reason that you’re worried about partnering with them as well. You want their creativity and excitement, and you want the potential to go viral. But because of all of those things, you also know there’s a lot of unpredictability. How is their audience going to react?”

“Brand affinity is really important and I think it comes into it. Does the brand share common values with the creator? Over the last 18 months, that’s become one of the most important things when a creator is saying, ‘Well, what are the brand’s values?’ So it’s not just a brand picking a creator, it’s also a creator picking a brand.”

“Scale for creators or athletes within specific verticals is pretty tough. It’s hard to snap your fingers and get a hundred college athletes activated in minutes. Platforms like Captiv8 have made it easier to do that in the digital creator space. With creators that have been around for a while, you can go through specific verticals. With college athletes, it’s a green field right now.”

Bio

Krishna Subramanian is a serial tech entrepreneur, angel investor and commentator on mobile advertising. He is best known for a being a founding employee of BlueLithium, one of the largest online ad networks acquired by Yahoo in 2007 for $300 million, and Mobclix, a mobile ad exchange network acquired by Velti in 2010. Subramanian has also written for Forbes, The Huffington Post, Advertising Age and Mashable.

In Jan. 2015, Subramanian co-founded Captiv8 with Vishal Gurbuxani, Taz Patel, and Sunil Verma. It is another platform for online marketing.

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