With the expanding and evolving of social media, advertising needs to adapt in order to still reach customers (Woods, 2016). Nowadays there is a massive amount of the use of influencers on social media in order to promote brands. Yet, when launching an influencer marketing campaign for your brand, the choice of the influencer is crucial!

 

Woods (2016) define influencer marketing as essentially a virtual Word of Mouth.
But what exactly is influencer marketing?
When using this strategy, an influencer will endorse your brand by publishing pictures and tagging your company on its social media accounts, will promote the product or service by talking about it to its followers and usually can propose a discount to make people buy your product for the first time. And these consumers could later become loyal customers.
But, we know that people are more likely to trust a person they know for real than an influencer on the Internet. That is why the choice of the influencer is important for brands.

Found here an article with 10 influencers’ campaigns to inspire your next one!
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/examples-of-influencer-marketing-campaigns

 

This social strategy has numerous advantages for your company. If you choose well the influencer, it will build trust, reach the right target audience, and improve your brand awareness.

To learn more about the advantages of this strategy, take a look at this article: https://shanebarker.com/blog/biggest-benefits-social-influencer-marketing/

Despite all the advantages of influencer marketing, it can be a waste of investment for your company if you are not working with the right influencers.

We can say that there is an ethical implication from influencers depending on if they trust or not what they are saying about the product. An influencer can promote a product not because he likes it but only for the money, he will earn the endorsement. Hence, it is complicated for consumers to trust the influencers.
Storytelling that was meant to convey the benefits of using a product by creating emotional links to a customer has disappeared. Nowadays, brands are more likely to just send a product and tell the influencer what to say about it. By doing that, brands are losing the message they wanted to convey to the audience. But this short-term thinking can go wrong. See here 2 examples were the influencers had just copy and paste the message of the company, which shows that they don’t even write the message by themselves, and so it is difficult to trust what they say after.

First, Scott Disick with the brand Bootea

And Naomi Campbell with Adidas

See other influencer marketing fails: https://influencer.co/blog/9-unsuccessful-influencer-case-studies-no-brand-should-miss

So, what factors do you need to consider when choosing an influencer?

First of all, you need to choose between a macro influencer and a micro influencer. This will depend on the size of your company and your budget and objective.
Then, about the geographic location, depending on if you want to promote your brand locally or globally, you will choose a global or a local influencer.
And finally, you need to look carefully at the influencer’s recognition and audience. For that, it is essential to analyze the actual audience of the influencer to see if it fits your target audience.

Your choice will also depend on the type of partnership you want to create. If you want exclusivity, it will be better to choose a newer influencer so you can achieve brand exclusivity. It is the same if you want a long-term relationship with the influencer, it would be easier with a novice influencer.
However, you can choose a senior and global influencer to promote your brand and reach more audience. The disadvantage of this strategy is that you are not sure the audience is the right one.

And do not forget to choose an influencer that fits your company image and the vision and message you want to convey.

Look at this article to know how to nail your next influencer marketing campaign: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2017/12/22/how-to-nail-your-2018-influencer-marketing-strategy/#60bee81f24bf

– Brighton University Student

 

References

Bhatti, S. (2018) “4 key factors to consider when choosing an influencer for your brand“, Audiense [Online]

Available at:

https://audiense.com/4-key-factors-consider-choosing-influencer-brand-marketing/

 

Hamann, H. “5 Tips for Finding the Right Social Influencers for Your Brand“, Convince and Convert [Online]

Available at:

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/5-tips-for-finding-the-right-social-influencers-for-your-brand/

 

Huff, T. (2017) “6 Big Benefits of Using Influencer Marketing in Your Social Strategy“, Social Media Today [Online]

Available at:

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/6-big-benefits-using-influencer-marketing-your-social-strategy

Influencer.Co (2017)“9 Unsuccessful Influencer Case Studies No Brand Should Miss“, Influencer.Co [Online]

Available at:

https://influencer.co/blog/9-unsuccessful-influencer-case-studies-no-brand-should-miss

 

Medal, A. (2017) “Why Brands Big and Small Continue to Fail at Influencer Marketing“, Entrepreneur [Online]

Available at:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/297451

 

Woods, J. (2016) “#Sponsored: The Emergence of Influencer Marketing” [Online]

Available at:

http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3010&context=utk_chanhonoproj