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Is influencer marketing for every brand?

First of all, what is influencer marketing?

For the last few years, social media has become an integral part of people’s everyday lives. As more users were joining portals like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube or Snapchat, looking for lifestyle inspirations, many of them became content creators themselves, sharing their own impressions, ideas, and experiences by uploading photos, videos and stories for others to follow. This is the point where influencer marketing was born and quickly drew the attention of marketers who saw an opportunity to reach their potential costumers via particular influencers whose image fit the character of the brand or specific product much better than traditional channels. In result the average monthly search for “influencer marketing” in Google rises constantly:

Graphic 1. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F026bgmq

However one question still remains: does influencer marketing really work for brands? The general answer is simple: yes, it most certainly does. Statistics speak for themselves.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub studies 84% of marketers evaluate their cooperation with influencers as „effective“. Nielsen’s report finds out that marketing campaigns which engage influencers generate $6.5 of return for every $1 invested.

[source: https://www.whitepress.pl/baza-wiedzy/590/czy-influencer-marketing-sie-oplaca]. In accordance with Mediakix 65% of brands’ influencer marketing budgets increased in 2019, while only 2% decreased. 17% of companies spend over half of their whole marketing budget on influencers. 89% of marketers say that ROI (return from investment) from influencer marketing is the same or better than traditional channels. The whole influencer marketing global spend is estimated to reach 5 – 10 billion $ market in 2020. [source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics/#10-most-important-influencer-marketing-statistics-for-2019]

Graphic 2. https://mediakix.com/blog/influencer-marketing-industry-ad-spend-chart/

Does it mean that influencer marketing is a silver bullet strategy? Unfortunately life is never that easy and the fact that your brand simply invests in influencer marketing campaign doesn’t necessarily imply that your product will start to sells itself.

Therefore – is influencer marketing for your brand? To find the answer for this question you definitely should ask yourself few others first.

Know what you want, know what to expect

Influencer marketing is only a tool. If you want to succeed, you have to know how to use it right. Performance of your action depends on many factors such as magnitude of your brand, specific objective of the campaign, characteristics of the product, to whom you want to sell it, how to match your product with particular influencer and their image. Dealing with these topics will help you create an adequate strategy, estimate the budget needed and eventually verify results of the campaign to answer the key question: “is influencer marketing for my brand?”

How big is your brand? Depending on actual magnitude of your company, it’s presence, recognition and impact range on social media channels will vary, probably the same as your budget. However it doesn’t mean it’s a game only for the big ones. Large brands often compete against each other, trying to outspend the rivals – that consumes a lot of resources. Being small may be advantageous as long as you introduce something new, therefore fresh, interesting and exciting for SM users. What is important here, is the fact that you should create right concept and impression around your brand, and find right influencers matching your niche. As you probably can’t afford extensive campaign, try to cooperate with micro influencers, who will often be satisfied with barter exchange for their work.  

What is the main objective of your campaign? Before embarking on a campaign, it’s crucial to be clear of your goals. In general, KPIs (target key performance indicators) for brands include two categories:

Brand awareness: metrics associated with increasing audience awareness of your product, such as content responses - likes, comments, mentions. The most common objective for influencer marketing campaigns is establishing awareness around the brand and to reach new audiences. As mentioned before, it should be the right tactic for small, new brands.

Direct response: metrics associated with particular actions, such as clicks, conversions and finally sales of your product. However you should avoid using too many CTAs (calls-to-action) buttons in a single post — this may cause confusion among users and can negatively affect performance.

What actually is your product? This may sound obvious, but you really need to have a good product to sell. A product that consumers will genuinely need, want or love is a basis of your campaign. It’s no use having whatever number of influencers giving ‘rave reviews’ if the real customers are disappointed. If you don’t have a product that people would be satisfied with, influencer (or any other) marketing is probably not for your brand.Even if your product is great, you have to distinguish it among the others. It won’t be possible if you are not the only one who sells it. There are many businesses that just resell other brand’s products. If this is your case, you need to give consumers very good reason to buy product from you instead of elsewhere.You have to remember that social media, especially Instagram that is the major platform for influencers, impose hyper-realistic aesthetic forms where visual aspect of advertised products play the key role. Attractive design of your product is an important quality. According to Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan from the Harvard Business Review: “social media makes it more urgent than ever that companies get the basics right, developing and reliably delivering on a compelling brand promise.” [source: https://www.apptamin.com/blog/influencer-marketing-considerations/]

Who is a target group of your campaign? Does your product have wide appeal? Who do you sell your product to? Is it an individual consumer or another company, institution or even a state? This might seem odd, but if your brand produces very niche, technical products like spaceship components for example (bought by NASA), successful execution of influencer marketing campaign for your brand will most probably be very difficult. Even if your potential client is individual before you get into influencer marketing, you should first determine whether your product will interest enough people. Products that are addressed to wide spectrum of consumers tend to perform best with influencer marketing. Shampoo > technical ski equipment.

Are there influencers whose audience matches your target market?Influencer marketing is about engagement. Yes, you definitely should engage only the influencers who have a close match to your perfect target audience. Semi-close matches usually don’t work good unless influencer has a lot of well-engaged followers. There should be a flawless overlap between your target audience and that of your influencer’s. For example, if you sell an innovative backpack aimed specifically at women, a generic travel gear blogger will be nowhere near as effective as a travel gear AND women orientated niche. Likewise, a girl blogger writing for girls who is not interested in travel gear will have only a small impact.

You’ll never try, you’ll never know

To sum up: Is influencer marketing for every brand? Theoretically, YES. However, as it was elaborated before: the success of your campaign depends on many factors managing which can be difficult, expensive and not always effective. Often it may turn out that the best solution would be hiring someone who is willing to do that for you.

There are few companies, which can help you create right campaign for your brand or your products considering characteristic of brand’s conditions and provide influencers corresponding with your niche. One of them is Indahash – one of the major, and most widely recognized platform that organize cooperation between brands and influencers. It also provides support at every stage, from budgeting and assistance in choosing creators to analysis of the final reports. Indahash is:

„END-TO-END INFLUENCER MARKETING SOLUTION

We have a very rigorous process in place before and after creators are approved on the indaHash platform, so you can be sure you are reaching real people. With over 900 000 creators from 83 markets registered in the indaHash app, we can run any multi-country, scalable campaign you may need.

TRUSTED BY GLOBAL BRANDS

Our technology platform is used by the world's largest brands and has been put to the test to guaranteee the highest quality and value is delivered. You too can benefit from our platform just as these global brands do on a daily basis.”

The best way to know if influencer marketing is for you is to try!

Sources:

1.     https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F026bgmq

2.     https://www.whitepress.pl/baza-wiedzy/590/czy-influencer-marketing-sie-oplaca

3.     https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics/#10-most-important-influencer-marketing-statistics-for-2019

4.     https://mediakix.com/blog/influencer-marketing-industry-ad-spend-chart/

5.     https://www.apptamin.com/blog/influencer-marketing-considerations/

6.     https://www.whitepress.pl/baza-wiedzy/442/jak-kreowac-marke-w-blogosferze

7.     https://www.whitepress.pl/baza-wiedzy/550/influencer-marketing-dla-malych-firm-–-podstawowa-wiedza-w-pigulce

8.     https://www.jcsocialmedia.com/how-to-not-waste-money-on-influencer-marketing/