Influencers Marketing, the star strategy

Is an influencer the best prescriber for your brand? The data assure that it is. 70% of users admit that they are more influenced in their purchasing decisions by the opinions of these influencers than by traditional advertising campaigns. In addition, brands claim that they can attract more loyal, more authentic consumers, and manage to reach their target audience better.

To give you an idea, according to the latest Influencer Marketing Benchmarks Report, for every dollar invested in influence campaigns, brands have achieved a return of around 1,200%. To this we must add the increase in online notoriety of the brand, which manages to increase its mentions and searches by 15%.

What is the risk of influencer marketing?

Seeing all these data, we can say that it is a very positive phenomenon in the world of marketing and that it is very profitable, at the same time effective, its implementation in communication strategies.

However, the rapid increase in influencers and their use by brands in the promotion of products, has brought with it the desire of many to join this trend, raising many controversies in recent months, such as: the experiment led to carried out by the H2H agency that sought to demonstrate the dangers behind these practices and the lack of regulation and control in the sector. For this, they created a false account with thousands of followers, @almu_ripamonti, getting several brands interested in it, asking to promote their products, inviting her to exclusive parties and paying for trips and meals. They only needed to invest 500 euros to buy 100 thousand false followers and from there the rest came filmed. In just three weeks they managed to amortize the investment with the money received for the collaborations carried out with the brands.

After these events, many companies have realized the great problem that lies behind the management of influence campaigns. And is that many of these campaigns are being carried out without conducting a thorough prior study of the conversion data and engagement of the influencers. Nor do they take into account that the target audience of their brand is the same as the one that follows the influencers. To avoid running the risks of investing money and then not seeing a positive return on investment, it is necessary to analyze the profiles beyond the number of followers. It's about getting to a prescriber who has real power of influence. 

Brands worldwide are becoming more and more inclined to collaborations with micro- and nano-influencers. The micro-influencers reach a considerable number of followers without exceeding 25,000 and not only can fit better with the brand and attract more public according to your target, but also tend to have a higher engagement ratio and a lower cost than the rest of the more famous influencers. Their collaboration results in better performance in reaching local target audiences.

In the case of nano-influencers, the number of followers varies between 1,000 and 10,000. They are real people, fans of a brand that create small communities. They have a high ability to involve their followers and promote the products in a more natural and authentic way. For the same reasons, lower cost and better engagement, trends change and advertising campaigns are going to target more segmented and local audiences.

The use of influencers reaches new sectors​

That influencing marketing strategies are booming is no novelty and that is proven by data such as that during the past year, approximately three quarters of the brands in Spain decided to implement this type of action. In addition, given the good results obtained, they declare that they will continue using them during these next years. The novelty is that companies in sectors such as automotive, which previously did not use digital influencers in their campaigns, now do. As for example the case of Porsche, with which you can see collaborations with influencers likes @Ariviere, @anamariqueg or @kaarls_gr. Our agency Wild Wild Web seing the potential that could imply the implementation of this type of strategies for our client, Porsche, bet to carry out collaborations with these influencers. Last month we invited Karla González and Ana Manrique to an event at the Madrid West Center. The results obtained in social networks have been very satisfactory and have opened the doors to future collaborations with more influencers.

The industry of high-end cars has not yet risen to the car of the influencers but brands as recognized as the German car are marking a change of route in the digital marketing strategies of the sector.

Another clear example of the upward trend of these actions is that more than 57% of brands in the United States have a special budget for influencers, showing that the rules of the game are changing and that advertising is rotating towards other modes of advertising and promotion, leaving aside the use of celebrities. This data is better understood seeing that 28% of marketing executives believe that through this type of collaboration they achieve a much faster customer acquisition. Who will not want to get leads quickly? That's why all brands are getting on the bandwagon.

Influers really weigh in when buying a product?

During our purchasing process, a fundamental step before making a decision is the online search for information related to the product, knowing the opinion and experience of other consumers. As a result, it is observed that 78% of sales made are digitally influenced. But, within all types of online marketing actions, it is important to highlight that ROI, that is, the return on investment, is greater in the case of influence strategies, taking into account the same investment. This return has increased this past year by 15%. In addition, 72% of users who consume this type of content on social networks say that influencers play a decisive role when purchasing a product.

One of the reasons for these high numbers is that influence marketing strategies end up with a very big problem that brands were dealing with in recent years, adblockers or ad blockers. 60% of users currently have this type of blockers installed in their browsers because advertising is considered an intrusive element. Thus becoming the promotion of the brand with influencers in a new channel to reach that final consumer we want to address.

As you can see, there are many benefits of using this type of actions within your brand communication plan, but the complexity of these campaigns should not be overlooked. It is necessary to carry out a meticulous study of the influencers and establish the level of influence they exert on the consumer to make an appropriate choice. For this you can help with tools such as Heepsy, Brandtube or Socialpubli.

In addition, with the free tool Trolldor you can check if a Twitter account of an influencer is false or not, thus avoiding possible frauds like the one we had during the article.

Main photo: Mathew Schwartz