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It’s no stretch to say that Heather Riccobono helped pioneer influencer marketing to the dominant industry it’s become today. From Mommy Blogger to Influencer Director at an international, full-service integrated agency and part of the 10th largest global agency network, she created her own success in the field before the term even existed — and helped launch it to a modern-day gold mine.
Now, she’s enlightening all of us on the evolution of this dynamic space with a look into what’s next, plus tips to help brands and agencies find just the right partner and approach for their influencer campaign.
Tell us about your background and your path into the digital and Influencer marketing space?
I went to undergrad thinking I was going to law school. But while working as an intern, facilitating tours of death row to the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children and shortly thereafter, there was a standoff in Arizona where female guards were held hostage at a prison, and it really made me rethink where I wanted to be with this career. Being a young college graduate and newlywed, I knew restorative justice wasn’t the right place for me at the time, so I transitioned into insurance, considering injury accident claims as justification for my decision.
While I loved the negotiation piece, I didn’t quite have the passion for cars that would keep me doing car damage estimates in the AZ summer heat, so I took that aspect of it to become an injury accident adjuster. I got to enjoy the discovery and investigation pieces, while working directly with people, which was very fun for me. Eventually, I transitioned into their recruitment department for their West Coast college territory.
But traveling as a recruiter isn’t ideal with a newborn, so when my daughter was born, I left that world to become a Mommy Blogger. It’s funny, now that term is so stigmatizing, but it’s what it was. I started writing about my parenthood experience and local events, and then I started getting invited to events. It was the very first on-set of brands having everyday people talking about their products. I had grills and very expensive products showing up at my doorstep — no contracts, no requirements. It was so odd because this wasn’t part of the media at this time.
So I started going to conferences and talking to brands and realized that people really didn’t know what they were doing. We were just moms who had Myspaces in college. I became a liaison between agency brands and bloggers, contracting myself out to brands directly and seeing what we could do with this new concept. I was basically a unicorn in a space that I was helping create as both an influencer myself and a representative to these brands.
I started transitioning myself through different spaces where I worked within various groups and agencies to operationalize influencer marketing and build processes to partner with influencers. I was serving influencer management departments, leading influencer teams through acquisitions, and directing organic social. I’ve been on the sales side, I’ve been client facing, I’ve been influencer facing, and of course, I was an influencer myself.
So now, I have this extremely holistic experience of the influencer marketing space since I’ve been there from the beginning. And I’ve stayed very close with the robust influencer community I came from because now those people are doing amazing things because we really pioneered the entire thing.
So what’s next for you in your career?
I’m really in this very unique position where I can take my career just about anywhere I want to. I could work in consulting, agency, brand direct — I could even be a talent manager because I’ve been on the other side of that money conversation. If I can negotiate against you, imagine if I’m negotiating for you. My experience has allowed me to take any seat at the table, so it’s really just a matter of what do I want to do?
I get so excited about influencer work so if it's a great project with capabilities to go far, then I want to be part of it. But I also know how to say no. Influencer marketing is still very much the new, flashy thing and brands don’t always know what they’re looking for or what their objectives are, so it can be messy. And if you hop on my social pages, you’d never guess I was an influencer. It’s all posts of my children. I share just about everything — and that’s ok! Just a very different experience than in the past. So we’ll see where this all takes me. Stay tuned.
We’d love to learn more about the influencer marketing world. Tell us how it works, what makes it so effective, and how to execute it successfully.
I’ll start by saying there are very different types of influencers out there, and knowing these differences is super important…
Brand Awareness Influencer. This person is going to be talking to their audience, and this audience should be naturally aligned to whatever product or service they’re talking about when it’s a partnership.
Brand Content Influencer. This person’s content will be repurposed to or posted directly on the brand’s social channels. So their audience isn’t necessarily the most important part. A brand is working with them because we think they can create great content, and we think they fit the persona for what our brand profile is.
Content Creator. This person is not posting on their pages. They’re creating very specific branded content that is for the purpose of the brand using it. There’s no attribution that comes to them.
So why is influencer marketing so effective? Because the audience really trusts them. Whether they can relate to them personally, they think they're funny, or they’re endearing, they are going to take action on the things they’re promoting. So if there’s a good balance of organic and sponsored content, it’s not awkward or disruptive. It feels natural and real, and you know it’s something that’s important to them. That’s why picking the right partner is so important.
What are some of the trends, opportunities, and misconceptions in this space today?
Right now, culture and authenticity are big ticket words, but that means something very different to everyone you ask. If a brand asks for culture, does that mean ethnic diversity, specific geotargets, different colors in their feed? We don’t know unless we have those conversations, so we’re starting to see just how important this discovery at the forefront is to the entire process.
Influencer itself has such a wide-ranging definition. It’s not about your reach, your engagement rate, or your follower count. It’s about a multitude of things. So even an influencer with 8,000 followers versus one with 200,000 could be incredibly valuable because their engaged audience cares about what you want them to talk about. So knowing what this definition is to you before you jump in is becoming much more talked about. You cannot launch an influencer campaign before you have the right components in place, and this is something all sides have to start acting on.
I’m also finding that a lot of Gen Z content creators are actually burnt out with sponsored content. As much as everyone wants to work with young people because it’s trendy and they know their stuff, many of them are posting less and less. My own daughter is actually a great example. At the age of four, she was commissioned by SeaWorld to be THE kid blogger to write about their animals and her experiences at the parks. They would bring her into the office, give her a topic to talk about, and record what she said to produce videos and content for their blogs.
She did that until COVID hit when she was 11 years old. She was also the child ambassador for an organization in AZ called Dolphinaris. It was such an exciting opportunity at the time, and she was featured on the cover of a local magazine. But the day the publication went to press, the dolphin died. And that was it. She told me she wasn’t doing it anymore. It was horrible for her. For all of these years, SeaWorld was such a great experience, being such a positive little voice who talked about feel good things. And this other experience just wasn’t that. Even as a competitive rock climber today, she doesn’t post much about her accomplishments or her activities. She could be sharing so much more of her experiences with an engaged audience on social, and she’s not, and I attribute that to this burnout.
This group has gone through a lot. They grew up in this highly connected world, they went through remote learning and isolation during COVID at a very young age, and they just don’t want to talk about themselves as much anymore. They’re a little tired of being online right now. So even though my daughter could be sharing these amazing things she’s doing, it’s only amazing if you want to talk about it and people are listening.
So today, we’re still having to write these briefs that are very specific to the type of creator that we are talking to, and that’s very different depending on which niche you’re working with or which age demographic; it’s never a one-size-fits-all situation in influencer.
What tips or tricks do you have for marketers who are exploring a collaboration with an online influencer and/or working on their first campaign with one?
Identify the type of creator you’re looking for. If you decide you want an awareness influencer because they have great reach and engaged audience, but you’re also going to ask for all of their content assets to share without attribution, that’s a massively different price point. It’s so important to define this early on.
This tip applies to both sides. You can’t decide one day you’re going to be an influencer and start taking monetized projects, and then be upset when a brand is telling you what you can and can’t say about their products. If you want that free will, you’re entitled to that, but not every brand will be aligned with that — no matter how positive you think it may be. The finesse between what the influencer and the brand are each looking for has to happen before anything else.
Talk to influencers with a budget in mind. I have rarely ever seen the ‘reach out to a manager and see what it costs’ method work out well because it’s such a subjective nature, and they’re entitled to set their own rates. So going to an influencer or talent manager with a rate in mind helps craft that conversation and guide it in the right direction.
Do your homework. When there are several conflicting objectives and no one can align on the priorities, it’s chaos. You can’t select the right partner without understanding what the brand wants. And when you do, you need to brief your influencer properly, so they do too. And that all comes down to having the right conversations at the onset before you jump right in.
Don’t give the influencer a script. I’ve had brands tell influencers they can say whatever they want, BUT if they stick to this specific wording, they can avoid a reshoot. That doesn’t feel very comfortable to me. You’ll be far more successful if they can use their voice authentically.
Don’t underestimate the role of an influencer management team. These people are securing and contracting the influencer, negotiating rates, briefing the influencer, getting the content live, then QAing the launched content — all while making sure they’re happy enough to come back and work with you again. That’s a huge amount of work! The idea that everyone can handle this type of role isn’t true. There’s a space for everyone in this field, but these influencer management skills are only going to become more highly desired in our world.
Never try to force it. Some people share very niche content, while others share just about everything. There are millions of people online, and there’s an influencer for just about everything. So don’t ever back yourself into a partnership that doesn’t feel right. That goes for all sides. If something about it doesn’t feel good, there are 20 million other options out there for you to find the perfect opportunity together.
What do you think the future of influencer marketing looks like?
I think we’ll just continue evolving, and we stop lumping influencer into PR or production or social media. Influencer deserves its own place. Right now you see positions online listed as Social Media & Influencer Manager —these are two completely different paths in marketing. We’ve come a long way, but I still think we’re just not in a place to have all these isolated positions and departments with the overhead that comes with that. But placing influencer under these different arms isn’t going to be as effective as it could be.
This space has evolved so much over the last 15 years. Just like our college wardrobes, things are coming back. We’re recreating the wheel and doing things we tried 15 years ago that maybe didn’t work at the time without the data and capabilities we have today. These “vintage” ideas are coming back and making sense because it feels good and exciting to try it again and make it stronger this time. We have more brands and influencers than ever before, and creating content is so much more commonplace and less expensive, so there’s so much opportunity still here to tap into.