Are you falling behind in marketing your brand?

Let's say you have a 9 to 5 job, which never is the case though. You check Instagram while on the way to work and on the way back to work. You are on social media when you are at work, on the way to work, on the way back to work and after you get from work as well. Still, influencer marketing does not make sense to a lot of brands and marketers. For me, that's just sad news because you are falling behind your competitor to reach the end consumer. The power of social media has seen the world change in the past decade because people listen to people. Influencer marketing is all about giving your brand a voice through people who are already mini-celebrities and connect with their followers, giving your brand the personal touch it needs.

Each influencer is like a media channel

I think it's about being early adopters and saying yes I believe as a marketer this is the future. Most are skeptical about putting in their dollars in influencer marketing because the ROI is still not measurable. But it's justifiable for them to put thousands of dollars in TV and Radio advertising. At least, influencer marketing gives you the exact reach, number of times a person interacted with your brand and depending on the campaign also tells you what was the Click Through Rate. We as human beings are skeptical to change, we were scared to go to the sky and now we are diving from the sky. Things change, processes evolve and then we finally accept it, to our like or dislike.

Allows you to break the buying decision cycle of a customer

An event has a footfall of 2000 people and brands are willing to spend thousand dollars in sponsoring the event, which to me is not stupid but not worth the money or you can sentiments attached and then logic goes to the bin. Instagram alone has 1 Billion active monthly users worldwide and these users are divided between influencers from various segments from travel, lifestyle, fashion, business and food. Brands need to think of these influencers as channels and they are buying media space/ad space just like they would for TV. At the end of the day, a channel charges on the basis of its viewership and that's the case with influencers as well. If they can give you a better reach, more viewership they would charge you more than the others. Each influencer is a channel whose life is followed by others. That's where the personal touch comes in, when an influencer promotes a brand, he/she shows that it's a part of his/her lifestyle. For their fans, followers out there it's cool to use the same product as they are using or at least they would want to know why is that person using the product. This cuts down two processes in a buying decision. First, a buying decision which was never supposed to be made, was made (introduction of a new product), the product has already been differentiated since the influencer was using it (that product has already been placed in the consumer mind as something an A influencer uses), and people trust people.

A lot of people marketers ask me how will we measure the ROI of this campaign with you and to that my answer is, if you can define your goal before hand then it allows us to measure the success of the campaign. Traditional Media might not be getting as many eyeballs as we have moved on from Newspapers to News apps, Magazines to Pinterest, TV series to Web Series. So think of influencer marketing as digital marketing through a celebrity whose lifestyle influences the lifestyle of their followers. I suggest take multiple approaches instead of giving up on it after the initial campaigns fail. As done correctly, it can help your brand reach millions of customers with a nominal spend. It is very important to know what kind of influencers would be best to work with according to your brand.

I would love to know your thoughts on influencer marketing and why or why not do you believe it is here to stay?