Welcome to <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/make-it-big/podcast/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Make it Big Podcast</a>, a bi-weekly audio series about all things <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ecommerce</a> by BigCommerce.
<a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce/influencer-marketing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Influencer marketing</a> is a constantly evolving landscape, with quickly changing trends that can be difficult to track or implement in a timely way.  
<a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/request-a-demo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BigCommerce</a> Senior Brand Manager Leah Spector sat down with impact.com Chief Marketing Officer, Cristy Garcia, to talk about the current and future state of influencer marketing on the Make it Big Podcast.
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<h2>The Make it Big Podcast: Episode 39</h2>
Leah Spector: How would you convince someone who is utterly unconvinced about the whole influencer phenomenon? You know, does it transfer well to other retail? It took hold early on, even beyond apparel.
Cristy Garcia: “It&#8217;s a great question. I would say any product that is sold online has potential to be sold via the influencer channel — if you&#8217;ll call it that — or via influencer marketing. And it&#8217;s really fun because we actually have a lot of fintech clients and travel clients and people who you might not necessarily think would be working with creators, but they are in really interesting ways.
“And the reason is because nowadays consumers are doing research before they&#8217;re buying. And so how are you getting your message across if you&#8217;re not in those places where they&#8217;re researching? And so where are they researching? They&#8217;re looking at things like review sites. I mean, they&#8217;re looking in the comments under, you know, the social ads that you may be designing and sort of buying on these social sites.
“But really, we want to know, like, is it real? Is it true? Is it authentic? Like the messaging that&#8217;s coming from brands and the advertising just isn&#8217;t convincing consumers anymore. And so they want that real, authentic advice. 
“The reason that influencer marketing and creators in general, I think have sort of taken off is because they&#8217;ve been able to relate to consumers in a way that they understand their audience and they know at this point because they&#8217;ve had some fails and some de-influencing, I know we&#8217;ll probably talk about later, but they&#8217;ve learned that it&#8217;s very important to be authentic.
“And so if they&#8217;re giving a review about something, they know, if it&#8217;s not actually what they think, it&#8217;s not going to come off well and they&#8217;re going to lose the trust of their audience. And those things are huge to creators. I mean, that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re building. They&#8217;re building up that trust and that audience. So they&#8217;re not going to do something that&#8217;s going to intentionally push people away from believing them and wanting to come back for more.
“So, I think that there&#8217;s a lot of reasons why this space has kind of taken off, and I have a lot of data to share for anyone who thinks it&#8217;s not necessarily the best channel. It is. It&#8217;s just a matter of being able to track it and understand the impact to the funnel, because it may not be bottom funnel, but it may be top of funnel.
“They may be introducing new products for the first time to an audience that has never heard of your company or your brand before. And so there&#8217;s value there, too. So, I think it&#8217;s about what you want out of the relationship. But at this point in the partnership, the options are unlimited in ways to partner and things to track because the technology has finally caught up with the demand.”
This interview excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.
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