Influencer marketing made quite the entrance not so long ago. Watching people like Marquese Brownlee, Mr Whosetheboss and more create content on tech products helped brands see the opportunity ahead. They will be able to market their products through people with a loyal audience.
Table of contents
In this article we will be going over:
- What influencer marketing is.
- The top 3 benefits of influencer marketing.
- The top 3 challenges of influencer marketing.
- How technology plays a role in influencer marketing.
What is influencer marketing?
This is the collaboration between brands and individuals with a certain amount of influence. Hence the name influencer.
These brands approach people who have the potential to generate more leads to their product or service. The influencer could be a YouTuber, blogger, live streamer, or Instagram model, as long as they have an audience that is big enough and is similar to the one the brand would like to target.
There are couple of reasons why a brand would like to do this. This leads us to the benefits of influencer marketing.
The top 3 benefits of influencer marketing
Listed below are the top three reasons a brand or agency would adopt this strategy.
Increased brand awareness
The primary reason a brand or agency would use influencer marketing, is to have access to the influencer’s audience. Brands usually have a demographic that they would like to target.
If the influencer already has an audience that is big enough and matches a brand’s demographic, they wouldn’t have to build the audience themselves and their message will be received by the right people.
Trust and credibility
Trust and credibility is the name of the game in business. It is very difficult trying to sell something to someone who doesn’t trust you. However, an influencer has an audience that trusts them, making it more appealing to brands. If they could get access to an audience who they do not need to build trust with, they could possibly generate conversions earlier.
Improved SEO
A tough component of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is generating backlinks. With influencer marketing a brand can generate backlinks from a platform with high amounts of traffic. This can boost your website authority and help you rank higher on search engines.
The top 3 challenges of influencer marketing
There are many more benefits to influencer marketing, but there are challenges to influencer marketing.
Finding the right influencers
Influencers come in all shapes and sizes. Not everyone is going to be a great fit for a brand or their product. Finding the right influencer can be quite challenging, especially if you have a niche product or service.
For example, if you sell equipment used to milk cows and offer a maintenance service, it would be much more difficult for you to find an influencer to promote that product. However, if you sell clothes and offer a tailorship service, there is a plethora of Instagram models at your disposal.
Ensuring authenticity and trust
Getting access to an influencer’s audience to promote your product may have a negative impact on the trust that has been built with their audience. Having a person collaborate with the brand only for monetary gain could be an indication of being inauthentic. This increases the importance of getting a proud ambassador of your product to promote it for you.
Managing relationships
This may be the most difficult challenge of them all. Building a healthy relationship with the influencer is crucial to the success of the campaign. Ensuring good communication and dealing with conflict will be important for your brand. You could have an influencer that targets your audience and is of a good size but may make it difficult for the team to work in harmony.
How technology plays a role in influencer marketing
Technology has evolved the way we take recommendations. Before we used to take recommendations from people we knew face-to-face. Now we take them from a person we haven’t met in our lives. Below you will find other ways influencer marketing is impacted by technology.
1) Finding the right influencer
Technology has made it easier for us to find influencers who have built a sense of credibility. It has also given us a quantifiable way to measure that. Looking at the social media platforms and websites, we can get a list of people who match our criteria when selecting potential candidates.
2) Performance tracking
Using metrics like engagement time, number of followers, and returning users we could figure out who would best suit our brand. We will also be able to measure whether the partnership was worth the investment after analysing results over a time period.
3) Content creation
Influencer marketing wouldn’t have been possible without being able to create content. We have image and video editing software, and design tools to thank for that. Having the ability to create as much content as we do today, in the same amount of time to cook 2-minute noodles, and then automatically distribute it to large numbers of people is all thanks to technology.
4) Artificial intelligence (AI)
With the rise in artificial intelligence, tracking the performance of a campaign as well as automatically distributing content has made our lives a lot easier. Chatbots can now handle queries that are mundane and too time consuming for a human to deal with.
This could be beneficial to influencers who feel that they meet the criteria to promote the brand’s product. The chatbot can take them through a step-by-step process and gain necessary data from the applicant. All without the intervention of a human.
5) Relationship management
Technology makes it easy to communicate with the influencer, which is important as mentioned earlier. You don’t have to even be in the same country to communicate with one another anymore. Direct communication through a device could prevent bad cases of broken telephone, ensuring smooth operation.
Final thoughts
Influencer marketing has a lot of potential but may not be for everyone. Having a close look at both the benefits and challenges will hopefully help you make an informed decision. The evolution of technology will continue to bring marketing opportunities like this one. So, stay sharp on the updates in the tech world.
