The influencer trend has really shaken up the marketing industry over the last few years, offering brands access to impressive audience followings and enviable engagement levels, with consumers being influenced by other people perceived to be just like them.
Increasing numbers of companies are choosing to invest in influencer marketing to increase brand awareness, reach new audiences and improve brand advocacy. By 2020, the influencer marketing industry is expected to be worth between $5 billion and $10 billion.
The rise of micro-influencers has also attracted lots of brands recently. The ever-increasing demand for authenticity is leading greater numbers of consumers to “turn off” from large-scale influencers. Although the micro-influencer group has fewer followers, the close relationships they have with their very loyal community is appealing to brands, creating cut-through in a saturated market.
But how influential are influencers really?
We know that the majority of influencers are being paid to promote goods. However, it has also been found that there are cases where influencers artificially inflate their follower count or have “bots” post fake comments. So those accounts with huge followings might not actually speak to, or influence, your target market, and are therefore not worth a business’s time or budget. It’s about knowing your audience and carefully evaluating who you actually want to target and who genuinely is already seen as an influencer amongst that group. Once you know this, you can work with the most effective influencers for your campaign.
Social media platforms also have their role to play. Instagram recently tested removing likes from photos and videos in Canada, in an effort for, “Followers to focus on the photos and videos shared, not how many likes they get.” Twitter also released a prototype earlier this year making the number of likes and retweets less visible in any given thread, to make the platform more conversational. Not only does this activity better support our demand for more compelling content, not to mention helping us to look after our mental wellbeing online, it also means that we, as PR professionals, have to look at beyond vanity metrics when choosing influencers to work with.
So what does the future look like?
Influencers undoubtedly have a key role to play in marketing campaigns today. But consumers are savvy and generally know when someone is being paid to say something positive. Greater awareness of the ASA and CMA guidelines have helped make campaigns more transparent too.
With this in mind, we need to be increasingly creative when planning our clients’ campaigns. Whilst influencers still have their place, we need to scrutinise more closely the influencers we’re choosing to work with and be sure posts are clearly labelled as #spon or #ad, if that’s what they are. We need to look beyond vanity metrics such as follower count and number of weekly Instagram posts, and review factors like engagement, follower quality and the influencer’s post history.
Over the last 50 years in the industry, and even just in my eight years of experience, campaign tactics have changed massively. We’ve noticed a huge leap in the use of influencers and social campaigns, especially against more traditional routes and channels, such as print media. However, I do think there will be a point when the popularity of influencers will fall and brands will spend less with influencers, primarily due to brand risk around authenticity and also measurement and evaluation issues. That being said, I don’t think it’s going to be a quick switch. I think our reporting and evaluation of influencer activity will get more sophisticated first, which may well be the catalyst for change.