Brands Adopt Influencer Marketing – But Challenges Remain

 

Influencer marketing has emerged as a mainstream marketing strategy for many B2C and B2B brands.  

Companies have increased their influencer marketing budgets, and digital marketing agencies say clients have embraced the strategy, according to the eMarketer, report  Influencer Marketing for US Brands.

Influencers have expertise and a large numbers of followers on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and other social media networks who trust their knowledge and views. Having both expertise and credibility, influencers possess the highly desirable power to sway opinions and impact purchase decisions. Marketing and PR professionals can supercharge their campaigns if they convince influencers to endorse or even mention their brands.  

The eMarketer survey of marketing and communications professionals showed that 67% engage with influencers for content promotion, and 59% engage with them for product launches and content creation.

Influencers in Fashion and Beauty

Influencer marketing is assuming greater importance in the beauty and fashion industry, shows new research by Fashion and Beauty Monitor completed with Econsultancy. The survey of 348 marketing specialists in the U.S. and U.K. reports that:

• 57% of survey respondents say they have an influencer marketing strategy and another 21% are planning to develop one over the next 12 months.
• 84% of influencer research is by manually searching social media platforms and forums,
• 73% state that identifying the right influencer is the greatest challenge.
• 59% say engaging with influencers is a challenge.
• 59% say they plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2016.

“The emergence and rapid uptake of social platforms has undoubtedly created an increased appetite for word-of-mouth marketing led by digital influencers. Yet, the report confirms there remains a disparity in the way influencer marketing is currently practiced and the massive potential there is still to leverage,” said Sarah Penny, Fashion and Beauty Monitor editor. “Marketers must evolve their approach towards influencers they choose to work with. In this practice – context is king.”

Services Meet the Demand to Help Marketers

Here’s one rub: Locating, reaching and overseeing influencers has been a challenge for brands, but talent agencies, networks and matching servicers are now available to help marketers. The services are accelerating the trend.

Social media monitoring and measurement tools can help identify influencers with active and engaged followers. Some influencers have with large numbers of followers but low levels of engagement. Monitoring services save substantial time by assessing post frequency and engagement across multiple social networks. Some social media measurement services can assess sentiment of the engagement in addition to conducting a quantitative assessment.

Here’s another rub:  How can brands measure the effectiveness of influencer marketing programs?

A unique landing page URL for each specific influencer’s posts or mentions is essential to track page views and start the process of lead tracking. A social media measurement service is also essential for brands to determine how their influencer marketing programs are performing.

“As with every other aspect of your business, you need to know that your relationship with your influencers is working. The only way to do this is to have a set of metrics in place and continually measure them over the lifetime of the campaign,” urges Steven Tulman, a Marketing, Sales and Leadership Enthusiast, in a Business 2 Community article. “If things aren’t going great, you may need to return to your research step and look again at your influencers. If things are going great, then look to see how you can make them even better.”

Influencer Compensation Challenges

Here’s another rub: Influencers have, well, recognized the value of their influence and want to be fairly compensated. More influencers are unsatisfied with receiving only products like in the early days of influencer marketing and want to be paid with cash. Tracking and measuring influencer marketing results can help establish the value of each influencer. “When it started out, it was all unpaid, because people viewed it as more PR-focused than media-focused,” Rustin Banks, co-founder and chief product officer at TapInfluence, told eMarketer. Now, he said, influencers must be compensated.

And there’s a rub there too: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Endorsement Guidelines, require that influencers reveal their marketing relationships with products or brands that they tout if the connection might affect how consumers evaluate the endorsement or product mention.

Bottom Line: Marketers increasingly accept influencer marketing as a mainstream strategy. Services are now available to help marketers identifying the best influencers to work, one of the major challenges in developing a successful influencer marketing program.