Infibeam IPO : Did Influencer Marketing Work?
Influencer marketing is supposed to be the next big thing in marketing. Of course when it is used well.
While there is no clarity on how Influencer Marketing may flout guidelines of the SEBI Red Herring prospectus on being misleading for Investors , the Infibeam IPO used influencer marketing. Effectively or not is another question.
So when Infibeam's IPO was announced, which is a bit of a watershed moment in India's e-commerce market, the public at large watched the proceedings with great interest.
While a number of influencers tweeted about the IPO under the hashtags of #InfibeamShining and a few others, the credibility of the tweets was largely in question. Whether these people were knowledgeable people who understand Finance and IPOs or people just picked up the street to help create a trend was not very clear. After all who were all these people who seemed so well informed on Infibeam and what they were doing? Much more than the average consumer?
While influencer marketing was a great idea to use for an IPO, the bubble unfortunately burst when First Daily reported that the influencers were paid to tweet about the Infibeam IPO.
That destroyed the credibility of the influencer marketing program amongst the real influencers in the financial community who mould public opinion on IPOs.
The Visionary Marketer
For the visionary marketer, the rise of the social media influencer creates a world of possibilities. It opens up a new channel for brands to connect with consumers more directly, more organically, and at scale. By creating branded content with social media influencers, brands can amplify their message while seducing their target audience.
Google Trends shows that the word Influencer Marketing is growing in importance over the years. In fact they use the word 'breakout' for words that are showing over a 5000% increase in interest and Influencer Markting is one of those words.
Activate your Employees to tell your Brand Story
Employee Advocacy helps create a credible environment for spreading the right kind of information. So if instead of picking up a random sample of influencers, if Infibeam had picked 100 employee to tweet about their IPO it would have been much incredible. After all most employees know much more about their own company than a relative stranger would. So if an employee had spoken about the IPO it would have rung true. It would have meant that employees themselves have confidence in the IPO.
Cumulatively, your employees have far more social connections than your brand does. Imagine how many more people could see your content if it was being shared by just a few employees.
Image : Edelman Trust Barometer
In 2015, the Edelman Trust barometer showed that consumers place more trust in company employees than they do in individuals who are the public face of the brand, like the CEO. Increased consumer trust is essential for repeat purchase which is often an objective in the marketing of many brands. If consumers trust your brand they are more likely to convert into customers, and subsequently turn into brand advocates themselves.
There is no doubt that one of the best way to tell your brand story are your own employees.
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Digital Marketing Specialist at OMG National
8 年Great post! Consider Mavrck (www.mavrck.co), a platform that enables brands to discover and activate their existing customers with influence to share branded content on social at scale, converting their friends at a higher rate than other influencer categories and paid social ads.
Fractieassistent VVD Lelystad
8 年wòooòw dom
Senior & Writing Editor | New & Print Media | Long Narratives | Desk Journalist | Industry Reports | B2B Content. Opinions are my own.
8 年I feel the author has raised an extremely dangerous point here. Employee advocacy is the easiest to misuse and I have come across A listers who virtually force their employees to go through these drills and take over their social media existence. This cannot be tolerated and most companies will lose their credibility since word of mouth and bad press will out. Second, a couple of months before the IPO, an Infibeam source told me they are watching a fluid market. I naturally took it that like its storied peers, the company may never brace the public market litmus test. And during the first two days, doomsday predictors were crowing. Now that it has gone through (maybe not with as much aplomb as Justdial), one Indian company has managed to prove one vital point. Indian markets are mature enough and businesses could survive without mindboggling funding and equally frothy valuations. Let us hope our emerging businesses will now take care of their bottom line, try to grow more sustainable and need not always run to Nasdaq for listing purposes. If Old economy cos could survive here, why not the new economy?
Prabs why are we still using terms like "influencer marketing", "digital marketing" "experiential marketing", etc as if we are seeking a Linnaean classification of species of marketing?! Haven't we all agreed that there is marketing. Period. And tools. In any case, your question could only have been answered if it was the only thing Infibeam did. Which was not the case. :)