Influencer marketing, in very simple terms, is a new-age marketing strategy. This strategy consists of the promotions and endorsement of products with the help of influential social media individuals and personalities. These individuals can be social media users with a large following or professional bloggers and content creators. Their followers are usually a large group of engaged audiences that in turn becomes helpful in promoting products and driving an adequate amount of sales.
Influencer marketing is also an essential tool to build credibility and awareness for your brand. Your brand’s audience can be grown along with your social media presence, increasing the traffic for your websites.
Influencer marketing has also proven to be convenient for startups and small businesses as it can be cost-effective to an extent. It is an evolving strategy that is rapidly taking over the marketing industry.
Things to Keep In Mind While Investing In Influencer Marketing
With such advantages in mind, it is no surprise that influencer marketing has become one of the most opted for marketing strategies for most brands over the last few years. However, this rapidly evolving industry is also often characterized by fraud or dishonesty. There are certain things that brands should keep in mind before investing their time and resources in influencer marketing to combat such misadventures.
1. Partnering with the Right Influencers
Selecting the right influencer to represent your brand is very important. It holds extreme significance in more ways than one. Partnering with an influencer who is a misfit to your brand can make the promotion look inorganic and inauthentic. This type of content usually is not well received by the audience. The audience can generally see through the pretense. The chosen influencer should be a proper fit for the brand’s ideals and ethos. They should fit perfectly with the brand itself. The values that the brand represents should be similar to the values that the influencer represents.
Brands should also be wary of the target audience and demographic for their products. They should select influencers whose audience is in alignment with the demographic of the brands. For example, a brand selling cars will not find many potential buyers if they partner up with an influencer whose audience majorly consists of teenagers or children. A selected influencer should be ideally similar to a brand but logically in the same path.
2. Reliability on Technology for Transparency
Millions of people have an online presence in today’s day and age. There are numerous influencers present on various social media platforms. It is a lucrative enough space that many people do as a full-time job. Hence, there is no doubt that this industry has its fair share of fraudulence and dishonesty. A lot of the fraudulence can be avoided with the help of modern technology and some critical thinking.
Many brands unobjectively desire influencers with a large number of followers to get access to their enormous audience. It seems like an easy step for brand visibility to a large audience. The problem with this step is that the number of followers can sometimes be misleading.
Many times, influencers can have fake followers acquired through purchases or software. Brands should be careful of such cases. One way to determine the credibility of an influencer’s follower list is their growth. If the growth is gradual, there is a big chance that it is organic.
Another way is using comparing content with the number of followers. If an influencer has a large following with very little content, then it can lead to suspicion. Many modern software and apps can also be tools to get the data on influencers. Their following, content, and engagement. A brand should, however, aim for more extensive engagement than just following.
Investigate and Survey the Marketing Campaign
Getting the most significant ROI is every brand’s main concern from a campaign, but a brand also uses a campaign for many other impactful results. Brands should carefully execute their marketing campaign plans, so they should be studied and carefully executed. It should be done to avoid scandals and controversies. Backlash for an ad campaign is a brand’s biggest nightmare. A successful campaign will drive sales or increase brand awareness and have extensive engagement in terms of comments, sharing, or spike in the website traffic.
An ad campaign should also be designed with the influencer in mind. They are making it as authentic and credible as possible. Influencers with a positive image and without scandals are also a good option.
Conclusion
The suggestions mentioned above will eventually be helpful for brand collaboration with influencers. Partnering up with micro-influencers will be a rising trend in the future as they generally meet the above criteria. This is because brands and audiences prefer credibility and authenticity over just plain popularity.
Author Bio:
Allina Ghosh is an aspiring journalist who is currently working as a content writer at https://confluencr.com/. She has been writing for influencer marketing and has imperatively grown & learned about all the essential marketing advantages. When not working, she can be found in her favourite coffee shop, reading books, cooking, and travelling the world.
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