Let’s start with celebrity marketing, which, while it may work for some of the big brands, is not as well suited to the market in general. Many of the willing celebrities charge huge sums of money, which puts them out of reach for most companies.
An additional obstacle to using celebrities is that there is often no genuine connection to the product they are promoting. Why should you trust a celebrity’s word on a product if they clearly don’t use it? In fact, according to an eMarketer study, 61% percent of women said that content that was not perceived as genuine would stop them from engaging with sponsored content.
It is obvious that influencers are of great value in the field of social networks due to their large number of loyal followers, which together, build a community with similar interests and values, which makes it easier for a brand to reach the specific target audience that it needs. have in mind. It all boils down to finding the right influencer who reaches a large group of compatible people to convert them into leads.
Influencers do not require a budget as high as that of celebrities, however, for many companies, macro-influencers end up being inaccessible in economic terms. So micro-influencers come up as an option which, in some cases, are considered even more effective, especially when it comes to creating engagement.
Although micro-influencers are in smaller segments, these can work well as they are made up of people who are genuinely engaged and actively engaging with your posts. They also have more credibility because they have a closer link with their fan base.
This has caused many of the companies to lean towards working with micro-influencers. These people typically have between 2,000 and 100,000 followers, depending on their niche and their main social media channel, far fewer than celebrities or mega-influencers, but their followers are often more ardent in their support.
Although using influencers can have many positive effects, there are some risks you may face that you should be aware of when planning to include influencers in a social media campaign.
A brand that wants to see its message spread widely by relying on micro-influencers will require much more work and dedication. The micro-influencer may have a higher engagement rate with their followers, but in terms of actual volumes, the macro-influencer or celebrity outperforms them.
Obviously, the more people that are participating, the more effort it will require. The work involved in interacting with 10 micro-influencers is probably ten times more effort than doing it with just one macro-influencer.
It is vital that brands do not rely solely on the number of followers in their search for influencers. The really important stats are those that measure engagement, the total number of likes, shares, and comments on a post.
Of course, this is a necessary tradeoff for many brands. This is particularly so for a company with little or no budget, which has to take on all the work of finding influencers and building relationships with them.
Influencer marketing can be a very powerful tool for building a brand. Keep in mind, however, that success will require a strong data-driven underlying strategy and strong relationships with authentic influencers.
Using influencers in your approach to reaching large audiences can have many benefits and if you are aware of the risks and proactive in avoiding them, influencers can be the key to success for your next social media campaigns.