From Follower Count to Meaningful Impact: Rethinking Influencer Marketing

For years, one number dominated influencer marketing: follower count.

A creator with a large audience appeared to offer greater reach and, by extension, greater value to a brand. Influencers were grouped into familiar categories such as nano, micro, macro, and mega, largely according to the size of the audience they had built.

That way of thinking is changing.

In this episode of Next Monday, host Ibarra Villaseran speaks with Shannon Uy-Orosa, COO of Spark It, and Adi Timbol Hernandez, Vice President and Head of Institutional Brand and Corporate Relations at BPI. Their conversation looks at how influencer marketing has developed over the past decade and why brands need to think beyond audience size.

The discussion covers creator archetypes, campaign objectives, measurement, brand safety, social search, Reddit, AI, and the connection between influencer activity and the wider customer experience.

At the centre of it all is a straightforward question: What does the creator actually need to do for the brand?

Follower Count Is Now Only a Starting Point

Uy-Orosa has spent nine years with Spark It, giving her a close view of how influencer marketing has changed in the Philippines.

In its earlier years, brands often began with follower count. A creator with a large following could immediately look attractive because the assumption was that a larger audience would produce stronger campaign performance.

Today, follower count starts the conversation, but it should not end it.

Relevance has become more important. Brands need to consider whether a creator fits the context of the campaign, reflects the brand’s values, and has the right relationship with the audience the business wants to reach.

The change is also being driven by greater accountability. Influencers were once treated primarily as an awareness channel. Brands now increasingly expect them to contribute further down the marketing funnel, from engagement and consideration to trial and sales.

That changes how creators should be selected and how their work should be measured.

Creator Roles Matter More Than Creator Size

One of the main ideas discussed in the episode is the move from classifying creators purely by audience size to understanding them according to the role they play.

Uy-Orosa describes three creator archetypes: Key Opinion Leaders, Key Opinion Consumers, and Key Opinion Sellers.

Each serves a different purpose.

Key Opinion Leaders Build Visibility

Key Opinion Leaders, or KOLs, are what many marketers would recognise as traditional influencers.

They can shape culture, lifestyle, and trends, making them useful when a campaign needs visibility and broad awareness. Their reach still matters, but it is considered alongside relevance and fit.

The important distinction is that a KOL does not necessarily need to perform every job within a campaign.

If the objective is broad awareness, a KOL may be appropriate. If the objective changes, another type of creator may be better suited to the task.

Key Opinion Consumers Build Trust and Consideration

Key Opinion Consumers, or KOCs, work differently.

These are consumers who share opinions based on their own experience with products and services. Their influence often comes from the fact that the recommendation feels closer to advice from a friend than a traditional advertisement.

They are particularly effective within communities, where first-hand experience and practical recommendations can carry considerable weight.

In the customer journey, KOCs can help move people from awareness toward consideration, trial, and eventually purchase. A product demonstration, review, or recommendation can answer the questions a potential customer has before deciding whether to buy.

The influence may not always result in an immediate sale, but it can make the customer more confident about taking the next step.

Key Opinion Sellers Move Closer to Conversion

Key Opinion Sellers, or KOSs, bring the creator relationship even closer to the transaction.

Live sellers are a familiar example. They demonstrate products, communicate promotions, create urgency, and encourage audiences to purchase during the session.

Their role makes sales a much more direct measure of performance.

Uy-Orosa compares the format with television shopping channels, updated for digital platforms and ecommerce. The approach has already become significant in other Southeast Asian markets and is growing in the Philippines.

For brands, this means the traditional influencer may not always be the right answer. A campaign designed around a major sale, for example, may benefit more from creators who are already effective at selling.

Start With the Objective, Not the Influencer

Once creators are understood according to their roles, campaign planning becomes more focused.

Instead of beginning with a list of popular personalities and deciding who fits the budget, brands can begin by defining what the campaign needs to accomplish.

Is the objective awareness?

Does the campaign need to create conversations and consideration?

Is the priority trial?

Or does the business need to generate sales?

Once that objective is clear, the creator mix can be built around it.

A broad campaign may use all three archetypes at different points. KOLs can establish awareness, KOCs can provide first-hand recommendations that support consideration, and KOSs can help turn interest into transactions.

Hernandez notes that this framework helps brands become more precise. Marketers may already understand their overall campaign objectives, but they have not always connected those objectives to the specific role an influencer should play.

The framework gives them a way to do that.

Better Roles Lead to Better Measurement

Clearer roles also make influencer marketing easier to evaluate.

If a KOL is being used for awareness, reach and brand lift may be relevant measures. If a KOC is intended to support consideration, engagement, trial, or add-to-cart behaviour may provide better signals. If a KOS is expected to sell, the connection to transactions becomes much more direct.

This matters when marketers need to explain the value of influencer activity inside the business.

Marketing budgets eventually need to answer a practical question: What did the business get in return?

Hernandez points to measures such as reach, brand lift, consideration, and product movement as ways to demonstrate that influencer marketing can contribute beyond visibility.

The creator’s role and the campaign metric therefore need to make sense together.

Influence Is Part of the Customer Experience

The conversation also makes an important distinction between creating influence and completing the customer journey.

An influencer may successfully make someone interested in a restaurant, product, bank, or other business. But the brand still has to receive that interest properly.

If someone discovers a restaurant through a creator and then searches for it, can they find the correct location?

Is the website current?

Is the business present on the platforms customers use?

Can the product actually be purchased?

Does the offline experience match what was communicated online?

Hernandez describes this as the brand needing to be there to “catch” the customer after the influencer has created interest.

That makes influencer marketing only one part of the experience.

Getting someone interested is useful. Making the next step easy is what allows that interest to become business.

Brand Safety Requires Due Diligence

The growing influencer market also creates a practical problem for brands: there are many creators to choose from.

Audience size, geography, interests, personality, content style, and platform presence all need to be considered. For larger organisations, this is further complicated by internal policies, industry standards, and responsibilities around consumer protection.

Authenticity remains important, but so does due diligence.

Brands and agencies need to understand what creators regularly say, the subjects they discuss, their past behaviour, and whether there are issues that could eventually create problems for the business.

A creator may look appropriate based on campaign metrics while still being a poor fit when viewed in a wider context.

Uy-Orosa therefore argues for a proper vetting strategy rather than simply selecting creators according to numbers.

The responsibility is shared. Agencies need to screen creators carefully, while marketers still need to understand the social environment in which their brands operate.

Marketers Still Need to Spend Time Where Their Customers Are

Working with an influencer agency does not remove the marketer’s responsibility to understand social media.

Hernandez makes this point particularly clearly.

Marketers need to know who customers follow, what those creators talk about, how they speak, and how their communities respond.

This is not simply trend watching.

Language provides context. Understanding how a creator naturally communicates makes it easier for a brand to participate without sounding forced or obviously inserted into the conversation.

The same applies to the audience. Listening to how followers respond helps marketers understand the community they are trying to enter.

The principle resembles traditional brand immersion. The difference is that much of the environment marketers need to study is now readily available on their phones.

Social Media Is Becoming a Search Behaviour

One of the more significant changes discussed in the episode is social discoverability.

Uy-Orosa points out that people increasingly use social platforms to look for information. Someone looking for a coffee shop, for example, may search a social platform to see the place, hear recommendations, and decide what to order.

In that sense, social platforms are beginning to perform some of the functions traditionally associated with search engines.

This also changes how brands should think about influencer content.

A campaign may officially run for only a few months, but the creator’s content can remain discoverable long after the campaign ends. Algorithms can resurface older posts when they remain relevant to what someone is searching for.

Keywords in captions, videos, audio, and other elements can therefore affect whether that content is found again.

Influencer content can become more than a short-lived campaign asset. Under the right circumstances, it can continue helping people discover the brand well after the original engagement has ended.

Influencer Content Can Have a Longer Shelf Life

This creates an opportunity for brands to rethink the creator brief.

If influencer content can continue appearing in search and recommendation environments, the brief should not focus exclusively on the immediate campaign.

It should also consider what potential customers may search for later.

Uy-Orosa recommends identifying the keywords audiences are likely to use when looking for the product or service and incorporating that thinking into creator content.

The principle is familiar from SEO: content has greater long-term value when it continues answering something people actively look for.

Applied to influencer marketing, this means a piece of content created today may continue contributing to discovery months or even years later.

That gives brands another way to think about return on their influencer investment.

Discovery Needs Somewhere to Lead

Being discovered on social media is only useful if the rest of the digital presence supports what happens next.

Hernandez stresses the need to look at the experience as a whole.

A food brand may need to be present on delivery platforms. A business needs an updated website. Search results should point people toward accurate information. Content across channels should confirm what the customer has already heard from the influencer.

This is where influencer marketing connects with SEO, website management, ecommerce, and customer experience.

A creator can introduce the business.

The rest of the digital ecosystem needs to help the customer continue the journey.

Reddit Offers a Different Kind of Customer Insight

The discussion then turns to Reddit, a platform that some brands may still associate primarily with gossip or informal online conversation.

Uy-Orosa sees another possibility.

Reddit contains detailed, often candid discussions about products, services, experiences, and purchasing decisions. These conversations can give marketers access to opinions that are less polished than what they might encounter in more public-facing social channels.

That makes Reddit particularly useful for listening.

Brands can monitor conversations around their category, understand recurring customer concerns, and identify how people naturally discuss their products or competitors.

The platform can therefore become a source of customer insight and, in some situations, customer recovery.

Reddit Also Matters to AI Search

The discussion becomes particularly relevant to search when Hernandez notes that detailed Reddit conversations can appear as sources in AI-generated answers.

Reddit is built around longer discussions, allowing users to explain experiences and recommendations in greater depth than on many other platforms. That creates a large body of conversational information that search and AI systems can draw from.

For brands, the implication is broader than Reddit itself.

Websites, social content, community discussions, and other public information increasingly contribute to what people may encounter when using AI-assisted search.

Brands therefore need to think about their digital presence as a connected whole rather than treating each platform independently.

What customers say about a business can become part of how that business is discovered elsewhere.

Brands Need to Be Careful About Entering Community Conversations

The fact that Reddit contains useful conversations does not mean brands should immediately start selling there.

Both Uy-Orosa and Hernandez raise questions about authenticity.

Some businesses may choose to participate through identifiable representatives who answer questions and provide useful information. That can work when the role is clear and the interaction fits the culture of the community.

The risk comes when brand participation starts making genuine conversations feel manufactured.

Reddit’s value comes partly from the perception that people are sharing honest experiences. If commercial activity overwhelms that environment, the reason people use the platform can begin to disappear.

For now, the strongest opportunities may be listening, customer understanding, and carefully considered participation rather than traditional promotional activity.

AI Can Help the Process Without Replacing the Person

Artificial intelligence is the final major development discussed in the episode.

AI-generated content is already becoming common, and fully AI-generated influencers also exist. But both guests are cautious about replacing human creators with artificial ones.

The reason returns to the central value of influencer marketing: authenticity.

People follow creators partly because they want to see another person’s experience with a product or service. If that experience is artificial, the basis of the influence changes.

That does not mean AI has no place in influencer marketing.

Hernandez points to areas such as research, sharpening customer understanding, improving production, and making parts of the creative process faster and cleaner.

AI can support the work.

Whether audiences will accept AI itself as the influencer is a different question.

What Marketers Can Do Next Monday

Toward the end of the episode, both guests offer practical recommendations marketers can apply immediately.

Uy-Orosa returns to discoverability. Creator briefs should clearly define campaign objectives, but they should also consider the search terms customers may use in the future. This gives influencer content a better chance of remaining useful beyond the campaign period.

Hernandez recommends reviewing the brief itself.

Marketers should sharpen the objective, decide what role each creator needs to play, and make sure the wider customer experience is ready to receive the interest the campaign generates.

She also recommends spending more time inside the platforms customers actually use.

Follow who they follow. Listen to how creators speak. Read how audiences respond. Understand why people participate in particular communities.

That behaviour gives marketers context that dashboards alone cannot provide.

The Takeaway

Influencer marketing has become more useful as marketers have become more precise about what they expect creators to accomplish. Follower count still provides context, but it cannot explain whether a creator is relevant to the brand, trusted by the right audience, capable of supporting consideration, or effective at driving sales. Thinking in terms of creator roles gives marketers a more practical way to match people, objectives, and measures.

The discussion also shows why influencer marketing can no longer be treated as an isolated social media activity. Creator content can influence search behaviour, remain discoverable long after a campaign ends, contribute to AI-generated answers, and send customers toward websites, ecommerce platforms, stores, and other brand touchpoints. For that influence to produce a useful business outcome, the rest of the customer experience needs to be ready for what happens next.

As platforms and tools continue to change, the fundamentals remain fairly practical. Start with a clear objective, choose creators according to the role they need to play, measure them against that role, conduct proper due diligence, and understand the communities where customers spend their time. Technology can provide more ways to find and influence people, but meaningful impact still depends on relevance, trust, and sound marketing judgment.