On our very first episode of The Spin, we talked about how reach does NOT equal influence. Over a year later, this still proves to be true, yet brands continue to ask for "influencers with really large followings" and continue to measure campaigns with max potential impressions. So today we've decided to revisit this topic, and talk about the great lie of influencer marketing: Reach matters above all else.

On the surface it seems to make sense. Because influencer marketing typically is offering you the audience of the influencer, one would assume that the bigger the audience, the better, right? Except that's not true.

For starters, when you look at an an influencer’s audience, only about 10% of their followers are likely to see your content organically. This goes from as low as 1% for certain channels to about as high as 30% for other channels. So think, if an influencers has 100,000 total followers, you're likely only reaching 10,0000 of them. To help you determine the truth in your campaigns, check out our True Views calculator. You can plug in your campaign or even a given influencer, and look at the actual reach you can expect from that campaign.

Another important factor to consider in this argument is that the reach you are organically getting from the influencer is often not targeted reach unless you know the composition of the audience of the influencer, which most people we find, do not know. We're able to look at what the audience makeup is and make sure you’re reaching the right people organically from the beginning.

And finally, as an influencer's reach gets higher, their engagement rate gets lower. So what you see is that as you pick these bigger and bigger audiences, your actually less and less efficient and less and less effective at reaching the audience you're trying to reach. This is a huge challenge you need to overcome for success.

What we're essentially saying is that you should stop thinking about the reach of the influencer and start thinking about the reach of the best content. If you do that, you'll think about the audience of the influencer, you'll think about analyzing each piece of content to see what's performing, and then you'll think about your syndication strategy to get that best performing content in front of your exact right target audience. That's what we've done here at Carusele, and we see multiple campaigns drive real sales lift for our clients.

In the meantime, don't believe the myth that influencer reach is the most important thing you should be considering for your brand. Instead, contact us to see how we can develop a unique strategy that will help amplify your business objectives through influencer marketing.