Interview with Cristina García, Campaign Manager of Native Talents

How has influencer marketing in Spain evolved in recent years?

In the past in Spain, the very popular celebrities were in every single campaign, all the time, and in my opinion, their credibility was not good because they were working with all the brands. Nowadays, that has changed a lot, because the brands are looking for something fresh, something new. They are looking for talent that is going to give them more than visibility. The idea now is to impact the correct target market. The industry is growing a lot in Spain. In the past, many brands were not investing money and now they are starting to consider influencer marketing as a very important source to grow and to connect with people, and they are using new channels like Twitch, TikTok, YouTube.

Do the brands understand the behind-the-scenes work that makes an influencer campaign successful?

Different customers are at different levels. Some have been investing in the industry for some time, and already know how it works and how to build growth or sales. But others are not educated, they don’t understand how it works. They think they will just invest €10,000 for a profile to show the product on a Reels and it’s done. They don’t understand the reporting part, or the reach you can get, or how influencers are connecting people to the sales inside the funnel. It can be very awkward when they want to invest in content that is clearly not a good idea. They don’t want to listen. They don’t look forward or try to be flexible. They are very hermetic and they look at the sector in a traditional way.

Which platforms are growing well in Spain?

We started hearing about TikTok in Spain about two years ago; that TikTok was going to become popular and Instagram would disappear. And it’s true that TikTok has become very popular in Spain, but Instagram is also popular. In the Spanish market they have two different communities: Millennials for Instagram and Gen Z for TikTok.

How have your campaigns on Instagram evolved over time?

When TikTok started to grow, Instagram started focusing on more dynamic content like Reels and Stories. What’s also changed is that now our customers ask for Reels because it’s more dynamic, and it’s connecting better with the community.

Reels are working well in Spain. The reach is good. The brands are demanding this kind of content because they realize it is more viral and they can reach more people.

Which metrics do you focus on for reporting?

It depends on the social media platform and on the kind of campaign. It also depends on the customer’s objectives. We did a recent campaign for a brand looking to target 60% males and at least 50% had to be in Spain, so the geographic KPIs were very important. To that we also added the reach, and if they want to use Reels in the content plan, we’ll also look for the views to give them an idea of the results they can get if they invest in a particular profile.

Looking for profiles is not very difficult because we already know most of the managers. We use Kolsquare which is very good because we use all the filters to easily find good profiles. The difficult part is when you start analyzing profile by profile and you begin to realize they don’t fit the KPIs you need for the campaign. You might identify 15 profiles before realizing you can only use 10. Then you check if they are able to create content for the budget and from 10 you get just four or five.

How are you managing the rise in fees for influencer content?

It’s quite difficult. We try to avoid the most popular profiles because we know that they are going to be very expensive. We look for more specific profiles that we know will have good statistics.

In Spain, on TikTok, people are getting very popular, they are reaching so many people and are getting paid in a crazy way. We worked on a campaign with Nivea two months ago, and some of them were asking €15,000 for one TikTok. It’s crazy. They are very young and have millions of views and are using this to defend their side and ask for more money. It’s not like this on Instagram, where you can do a lot of things for €5,000.

Do you think the quality of content has improved?

There is quality in the content all of the influencers are creating. I see a difference in the new profiles who are willing to create more or to give you something more because they are really interested in what they are doing and in connecting with the brand. The popular profiles are saturated, they have worked with the big brands and now they want to work less and get paid more for the collaboration. But in both cases, normally the quality of the content is good.

Do you ever buy the raw content to re-edit and use separately in other channels?

If a brand wants to do something like this, to use the content in an organic way, you have to tell the influencer and include it in the contract. Sometimes it’s quite difficult because they see it as their content and if you want these rights you have to pay for it. It’s a business, and everything you want, you have to pay for. It’s our job as an agency to find the balance between what the profile wants, the idea, and what our clients want to do.

What are your ‘best practice’ tips for influencer marketing in Spain?

Don’t pay someone just because they are whoever. Use the money wisely because you can do so many things with the right investment. It’s important to guide our customers because sometimes they don’t know the industry and cannot see the big picture, that other profiles work very well, have communities with good engagement and the ROI is going to be better.

You need to invest time looking for and studying profiles that match the KPIs and the customer needs. And it is important to have good relations with profiles because it makes the collaboration easier.