Is Influencer Marketing Dead?

Any big trend will have its critics, and anyone trying to sell you on the next best thing will try to convince you that influencer marketing is dead. Well, according to Forbes, Social Media Examiner, SproutSocial, and other top media sources, that’s far from true. In fact, Forbes recently stated that 48% of brands intended to use influencer marketing in 2020 and beyond.

What Is Influencer Marketing And How Can It Help Your Business?

Influencer marketing is when brands collaborate with social media personalities that cultivated a large following and leverage their audience to market products. This works well because influencers have already worked hard to grow an audience around a specific niche. They usually have a high level of trust with their followers who look to them for product reviews.

The murky side of influencer marketing is that because it is a relatively new phenomenon there have been few rules or laws to regulate it and the middle east I would say this is totally unregulated. Today those rules are starting to appear in North America & Europe so make sure to stay on top of them to make sure you are compliant. The main goal to protect consumers is to always be transparent about posts being sponsored.

With the right influencer, you can raise awareness, gain brand loyalty, get new followers, and make more sales. Because people are highly influenced by things they can see, photo and video-heavy platforms are much more effective.

What Social Platforms Should Use Influencer Marketing?

In my opinion Instagram started it all and remains the most popular platform for influencer marketing. In a recent survey reported by Forbes, brands that stated they were investing in influencer marketing all said they were using Instagram while only some of them said they were investing in other platforms.

Here is how it broke down:

Instagram 100%

Facebook 85%

YouTube 67%

Snapchat 44%

Twitter 33%

A new player in town is TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app for viral video clip sharing. Reports and studies on TikTok marketing are just now underway. The demographic is extremely young, mainly teens and younger adults.

How To Find Influencers For Your Brand

Working with the right influencers will be your key to success. Be careful of certain pitfalls such as “fake influencers” and influencers that look like they have a huge following but have very little engagement or trust with their followers. Here are some important steps to finding the right influencer:

1. Set your campaign goals (brand awareness, sales, app downloads, newsletter subscribers, etc.).
2. Identify your ideal customer then find influencers that have lookalike followers to your brand’s typical buyer.
3. After you’ve identified a few influencers, check their engagement rate. See how many likes and comments they get per post. Do they respond to comments?
4. Make sure your brand and the content the influencer normally puts out are a good fit.
5. Check for quality content, do the graphics, photos, and videos look nice? How often do they post?
6. Look for red flags. If the account is very new and already has tens of thousands of followers, these were probably purchased or ghost followers and not organic. Check for spammy or repetitive comments as these might also be purchased to help a person fake their way into influencer status.

To help identify and reach out to influencers you do something as simple as search relevant hashtags and find them yourself, or you can join an influencer marketing networking platform although I personally prefer the basic search on each platform.

How To Measure The Success Of Influencer Marketing?

How you measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign depends on what your campaign goals were to start with. Here are some of the top KPIs brands use to gauge how well things are going with their influencer marketing strategies:

Conversions

ROI

Cost Per Click

Referral Traffic

List Growth

Channel Authority

Engagement

Reach

If your campaign goal was direct sales of a product you might be most interested in financial ROI. If you were striving to grow your own Instagram account, then things like engagement and reach on your own account might be more important.

What Does The Future Hold?

Social media influencing is one of the most lucrative paying jobs in the world right now. In 2020 the world experienced a global pandemic that forced many people to stay home for weeks or months at a time. As you can imagine, the use of social media skyrocketed. Many businesses shifted even more of their marketing efforts to influencers to cash in on this anomaly and keep their businesses afloat.

Here are some trends to look forward to as you build your next influencer campaign:

The rise of the organic influencer: The social media world is oversaturated with influencers right now, many of whom rushed their way to the top with black-hat tactics that only make them look “influential” on the surface. Marketers are also noticing that mega-influencer accounts will millions of followers have abysmal engagement ratios. That makes way for smaller and medium-sized truly organic influencers to take the stage. (Also called “Micro-influencers”)

Employee Advocacy: An influencer can review or recommend your product but they often lack the unique knowledge or passion for the product that an owner or employee would have. Try putting the spotlight on team members and employees to help consumers get a peek behind the curtain.

Get Ready for CGI Influencers: Artificial Intelligence and CGI animation are going to change the way brands view collaboration in the future. Programmers and designers can literally create the perfect influencer from 1s and 0s and make social media accounts for them using creative fiction. This gives brands complete control over their influencers. CGI modeling has already been done for brands like Fenty Beauty and has even been featured in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Rules, Rules, and More Rules: In the past influencer marketing got a bad reputation for its lack of transparency when models and celebrities would take photos of themselves with a product and fail to mention they were being paid by the company. The FTC has already started to crack down and the rules will continue to strengthen in the next few years.

Omar Azar is Senior telco professional with extensive experience in Digital, eCommerce, MarComs & Marketing. With a deep passion for marketing, he started his career as a Marketing Consultant for several firms/agencies. As Brand Manager, Omar also worked with several clients across the MENA region such as Zain, Oman Air, Nissan, Four Seasons and Royal Jordanian, focusing on developing their brand strategies, and collecting intelligence for research and industry analysis. 

In the last ten years, Omar’s most notable achievements were launching two telco youth brands. The first, 'Shababiah' youth brand for Nawras telecom along with driving communication efforts for the company. He also played an instrumental role in leading in the rebranding exercise, transforming it from Nawras to Ooredoo in Oman. Second was Jawwy from STC the first digital operator in KSA where Omar part of the launch team. 

Currently, Omar is the Senior Advisor for the CCO at Omantel, leading the Marketing Communication Department to fulfil the promise of being the favorite and most sought brand in the digital space.