Let’s talk the truth….

Influencer Marketing…it’s a huge topic of discussion within brands and agencies all over the world. People get it, but do they really understand it? Let’s talk about it!

Some stats….

“92% of consumers trust recommendations from influencers, over content from brands directly.”

“Businesses make $6.50 for every dollar invested in influencer marketing.”

What is Influencer Marketing?

All too often, brands make the mistake of engaging with influencer marketing activity, by choosing the person with the biggest following, who they’ve found with their first search on Google, or they heard their name somewhere. Others see it as agencies who own hosts of parody accounts, that can spam a message to social timelines by talking to one another.

Now, there’s a few issues with that…let me explain.

In essence, Influencer Marketing is quite simple….Find your target audience, find a channel or channels that reach them, use that channel(s) to distribute content that resonates with the audience and drives them to act! Influencer Marketing is great, it’s effective, but the key to it is engagement, real discussion and authentic content.

“A Influencer doesn’t need millions of fans, all they need to be doing is engaging their audience with quality content and a unique tone of voice.”

Sure, the influencer you’ve chosen for your campaign has millions of fans, but do they have the right audience for the campaign? Is the audience going to engage? Does the content fit with audience interests? Are they the right age? Even from the right country? Is it the right platform to deliver the influencer campaign? and so on…Brands need to be careful, fans or followers don’t guarantee success. It’s far better to work with a collective of influencers with smaller, engaged followings, who’s audiences trust them and care about what they are saying, as the content is relevant to them.

You’ll find brands shelling out serious spend on mindless Influencer Marketing Campaigns. They see millions of followers they like it, because they assume it guarantees success, but have no idea about the audience demographics. Let me set the scene.

“Let’s pay this Instagram model to wear our lingerie!” With a little bit of research, you soon realise most of her followers are male, who have little interest in the product, just the beautiful model posting the picture. That’s not Influencer Marketing.

Don’t get me started on parody accounts on Twitter that spam messages to one another.

The truth is, you see the same influencers one week endorsing the next beauty brand on Instagram, the week after they’ve suddenly turned to launching fitness products on YouTube. It’s exhausting, repetitive and dull. Are they experts? Or will they endorse anything to their followers? Sure the brand may see a fancy number of likes and comments, but are the comments relevant, do they mean anything? Has the audience acted in the way they were meant to act? Has the campaign been a success?

To really understand the audience and how to reach them, you need to be in touch with the culture. We pride ourselves on listening, not only to the brands we work with, but to the audiences they want to reach. We listen, we understand and we are in touch with how people consume media, what they enjoy, how they react to content and how to push those passion points! By listening you can create campaigns rich with insight, that mean something to the audience and that most importantly generate real results.

You need to be creative and deliver content that means something, that connects with the audience you want to reach.

Gone are the days of every agency under the sun stating they do Influencer Marketing, gone are the days of mindless Influencer campaigns and spamming timelines. It’s time to start creating real content, creating real connection and show real influence.

Our Influencer marketing agency and Social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.

If you want to receive our industry insights, visit our Influencer Marketing & Social Media blogs here.

@ Socially Powerful

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