Influencer marketing is a useful marketing tactic that can deliver really good results for your business.
But is it worth your time and money?
To get a fair idea, you need to outweigh the pros and cons of influencer marketing and then come to the final conclusion.
So, let’s see how influencer marketing fares ups with respect to five common marketing goals.
1. Boosting Brand Image
Influencer marketing can both enhance or damage your brand image depending on how well you execute your influencer marketing campaign.
If you work with the right influencers who align well with your brand, they can boost your brand image. For this, they can make tutorials, write product reviews, and recommend your brand in their social media posts.
On the flip side, if you choose the wrong influencer, the campaign can come across as too promotional or inauthentic. In the long run, that could damage your brand image.
Solution: Be very thorough while vetting your influencers to ensure that they are relevant for your brand. If you need help, work with a professional agency to find influencers and make sure that they align with your brand.
2. Increasing Reach
Influencers can help you reach a broader and more relevant audience. Typically, your organic content is likely to reach only your followers on social media. When influencers mention your brand on social media, you can reach out to their followers as well.
However, if they inflate their follower count using bots, the reach that you get won’t impact your brand awareness or sales. Hence always use a trustworthy instagram growth service.
Solution: Again, vet your influencers carefully. Make sure their engagement rate is in sync with their follower count.
3. Creating Quality Content
Influencers know how to create engaging content and amazing visuals that can entertain their audience. Through influencer collaborations, you can create fresh content for your brand.
And the best part?
You can re-use this content to add variety to your social accounts. The content that they create can also boost your credibility and make your brand look more trustworthy.
But it doesn’t always work that way.
Sometimes influencers may fail to produce content that resonates with your audience.
What’s more, you may deal with newbie influencers who lack the ability or equipment needed to produce high-quality content. As a brand, you don’t want to get associated with poor quality content.
Solution: Check influencer content on multiple platforms and assess their content quality before you collaborate with them.
4. Boosting Sales
While shopping, people look up to influencers to get the right recommendations.
In a study, 65% of consumers discovered new products from an influencer at least once a week. They also found that 80% of the consumers purchased something recommended by an influencer by clicking on an image or link they shared.
In a nutshell, influencers can influence public perception and help you drive more sales.
However, if you collaborate with an influencer who does not resonate with your target audience, this won’t happen. You will also not boost sales if an influencer appears inauthentic in their content.
Solution: Collaborate with influencers who not only have the numbers but also influence. Look for people who have the ability to convince their followers to take action.
5. Getting a Good Return on Investment
If well implemented, influencer marketing can help you increase traffic to your site, get more engagement, increase follower count, and boost sales.
If you play your cards right, it’s definitely possible to have a great ROI.
On the flip side, it’s highly risky.
Why is this?
Increasing your influencer marketing budget will not always guarantee better results. There is no guarantee that you’ll get your money’s worth.
Solution: Invest some time in understanding how influencer marketing works and what kind of campaigns perform well. Based on that, formulate a strategy for your brand.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing has numerous benefits, but it can also pose some risks for your brand. However, all these risks can be easily mitigated if you plan in advance and take steps to avoid any mistakes.
The key is to work with the right influencers and give them a clear set of guidelines on what they should or should not do. Also, look at the past brand collaborations of influencers to see how successful they were and what kind of response they received.