Influencing Influence

Suspected by Brand Managers for long, a recent discovery of fake online followers of big social media influencers, has set alarm bells ringing for a host of brands. Lifestyle brands are scurrying around for influencers, with lesser number of followers but genuine followers and dropping the influencers with made-up numbers like a hot potato, having wasted close to 40% of their spends on fake followers.

With Influencer Marketing being an integral part of most marketer's marketing mix, what can one do to ensure that their marketing dollars are spent on influencers with credible followers. Expounding on the news embedded with this article, some of the watch-out signs for profiles with more than a 1000 followers are:

• Mass followership could be indicative of bot-followed influencers
• Inordinate number of inactive followers
• Location dissonance on public profiles based out of India

I engaged with Blogapalooza, a premier influencer marketing agency in Philippines, on my experience of working with Influencers in 2020. While much has changed in the years thence, with TikTok videos being banned in India and Twitter yet to morph into X (I moved on from the brand being discussed in the interview), but the fundamentals of influencer engagement haven't changed much.

Enclosing the YouTube link of my interview with Ace Gapuz, the dynamic CEO of Blogapalooza Inc, where we spoke on a myriad of topics related to marketing including influencer marketing. (The segment on influencer marketing can be heard/seen from 37:58 to 43:20 in the enclosed video)

Capturing the key learnings here:

• Choose your Influencers carefully: It's applicable on every segment but more so in categories such as healthcare. Assess the influencers' reach but also analyze the wrong reach. Irresponsible public behaviour by an influencer (viz. smoking in reels) endorsement of questionable categories (surrogate advertising for pan masala, alcohol etc.) is counter-productive to a healthcare brand even if the influencer has followers galore.
• Reach Vs Impact: In an ideal world, brands would love to go with influencers who tick both the boxes of Reach and Engagement. Realistically speaking, often times brands have to choose between either of the two. In a toss-up between the two, for high involvement categories and serious categories opt for the latter. The influencer might have a niche audience but to the niche her/his word wields influence and acts as a closer nudge to action.
• Episodic Vs Sustainable: Cultivate a longer engagement span with a set of chosen influencers. Look at meaningful engagement interventions beyond 'ribbon-cutting' reels and photo-ops.