More and more businesses are allocating their marketing budget for the influencer marketing campaign. Influencer marketing is a concept where a specific influencer is emphasized instead of the overall market. The influencers (people with a reasonable no. of followers in the social media) are chosen by the businesses to promote their products and services in the influencer marketing campaign.
According to the study, an effective influencer marketing has an ROI of $6.5 for every dollar spent on the campaign. This is extremely high and attractive. Because it’s so effective, many businesses are leaning towards influencer marketing. According to the recent survey, around 84% of the marketers are planning to start an influencer marketing campaign within the upcoming 12 months. You must have understood by now that influencer marketing is going to be an even more popular concept in the upcoming times.
You must be thinking that the concept of influencer marketing has just emerged, and what new evolution might be there in this concept. There are many events taking place in the business world, and it has led to the next evolution in the influencer marketing.
Current issues of the influencer marketing
Many people are now aware of the concept of influencer marketing. Many brands have tried to create effective micro-influencer marketing campaigns. Some brands have got a tremendous amount of success while others have miserably failed, and they have lost their time, money, and authenticity.
Some big companies like Disney and the Addidas have faced a miserable condition because of their campaign. Disney hired the YouTube star Pewdiepie for the campaign, but soon after that, there was an anti-Semitic content seen on their YouTube channel. Disney quickly ended up distancing themselves from their channel. Another company who had a miserable influencer marketing campaign was the Addidas.
The Addidas hired Naomi Campbell, a supermodel, to promote their product. Naomi ended up copying and pasting the whole email to her page. This led to decreasing their authenticity. Many other common influencer marketing mistakes seen lately are:
- one –off campaigns
- only measuring social metrics
- Focusing only on celebrities, and so on…
What is the next evolution of the influencer marketing?
With many mistakes observed in the past, many changes are coming to further improve the effectiveness of the influencer marketing campaign. The businesses along with the social media influencers have learned their lessons. Here is how the influencer marketing will shape in the future.
- Expert’s Opinions
Instead of only asking third-party influencers to promote the product, the experts themselves can promote the product. They have in-depth information about the product, and they can explain it in a better way.
According to Andy Polansky, CEO at Weber Shandwick shared his insight saying that there is a strong correlation between corporate reputation and CEO engagement. Turning your experts into influencers can actually improve the campaign. The campaign can be even more effective when third-party influencers share the video.
- Influencers are brands
Many influencers were seen posting spam contents to promote various products. However, this has resulted in ruining their brand image. All the engaged audiences have lost their trust, and it leads to a failure. Now, the influencers work hard to maintain their image on the social media. The study shows that 74% of the people rely on social media on their purchase decision.
The influencers have understood the importance of posting true and valuable information to maintain their image while businesses who want to use them should understand this fact and should collaborate in an effective way to enhance the effectiveness of the campaign and to reach more audiences.
- B2B businesses may want to increase their investment
The Business to Customers (B2C) businesses is already investing in the influencer marketing campaign while the Business to Business (B2B) businesses are far behind them because it’s not as easy to market their product through influencers. However, they are experimenting, and there could be more B2B businesses who would want to try the influencer marketing in a different way.
- Social media marketing and content marketing
The majority of the people feel that the social media marketing and content marketing is the key to success for marketers, and it’s true. The companies who are not implementing influencer marketing campaigns are already lagging behind. You should search for influencers and experts within your organization or by going beyond your organization to create a sophisticated campaign. Use various strategies to integrate your influencer marketing campaign in both social media marketing and content marketing.
Conclusion
You must understand that everyone has the power to influence in some way or another. According to the study, more and more people are losing their trust in traditional advertisements. It’s a high time to allocate more budgets on the influencer marketing campaign. However, you should be smart and creative enough to get a high return on your investment.
