Whenever a manufacturer makes a product, he needs to sell it. Since people won’t buy the product if they don’t know about it, advertising came into existence.
The method of advertising has changed over the years. Initially, there were pamphlets and advertisements in newspapers. When TV became more available to people, manufacturers switched to commercials to reach a greater number of people.
However, things weren’t so smooth. With a few fraudulent advertisements and some other issues, people started losing trust in commercials. Then the advertisers use celebrities to promote their product. This method still goes on today, but it also faces similar issues as before. As time went by, people lost faith in them as well. Also, hiring celebrities was costly, and sometimes, it was just not worth it.
Even if celebrities have over 100 million followers, they are not able to influence people. Their #ad posts do not generate much influence as consumers do not trust celebrities as they are often seen selling shady products, which were proven later to be fraud or harmful for a consumer.
Thus, advertisers had to think of something new. While trying to understand the thought patterns of consumers, they realized that if a person gets a product recommended by someone close to him, say a relative, neighbor, or friend, he or she might think, “Hmm, maybe I should give it a try.”
However, it is not possible for advertisers to make the general public recommend products to their close ones. Thus, they found the perfect solution to exploit this mentality of consumers, influencer marketing.
Before we continue, let us know about who influencers are and why they are being used for marketing these days.
Influencers are people on the internet who have a strong influence over people’s opinions. They have a large number of followers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
A lot of people find these influencers relatable or aspire to be like one of them. This gives influencers the power to sway people’s opinions based on what they say on the internet.
With a lot of people having the internet these days, social media influencers have a very big reach. Considering the value their opinions hold to their fans, it is justified to say that they are someone close to the general public.
Due to these reasons, advertisers are using social media influencers to promote and sell their products. Using them, they build up a link and trust between the consumer and the manufacturer. It has also become easier to directly reach a specific target audience instead of promoting to a more generalized public which has allowed them to make a greater impact on them.
This is a win-win situation for both manufacturers and influencers as the former gets to sell their product, and the latter gets some money for promoting.
There are some conditions advertisers look for in an influencer before using him or her.
1: Large Follower Base with Loyal Audience
The manufacturers need to promote their products to a large number of people. So, they will need to look for influencers with a large audience, else all of their money will go to waste.
However, a good audience is more than just numbers. Even if an influencer has more than a million followers, however, his or her posts get only a few thousand likes and clicks, then something is fishy.
There are lots of websites out there that sell bot followers to influencers, and that’s how they get millions of followers without anyone knowing them.
So, if you are an advertiser, you will need to see more than just the follower count to decide if the influencer has a great follower base and can convince their followers to buy your product.
If you are an influencer and want to earn money by marketing products of companies, you will need to get a large number of loyal followers so that you can convince companies that you can make an impact on the advertiser’s target audience.
2: Relevant to the target audience
Whenever an advertiser wants to hire an influencer to promote his product, he needs to make sure that the influencer’s content is relevant to what he is selling.
If you are an advertiser, you will need to know the type of content the influencer is making. You can sell your fitness product if the influencer’s main content is based on fitness, cosmetics if the influencer’s main content is based on fashion, etc.
This way, you can directly interact with the people looking for exactly the type of product you are selling. This way, you will have to spend less to reach only a specific audience instead of TV commercials to reach a general audience.
3: The audience think the influencer is authentic
The most important thing in influencer marketing is trust. People will buy the product if an influencer recommends it only if they trust the influencer.
If you are an advertiser and you want to determine whether people trust the influencer, there are two things you can consider.
Firstly, the positive engagement of the influencer. You can check it by looking at the posts made by them. If there are positive comments that seem genuine and not spam comments, then he or she is a trusted influencer. For extra assurance, you can also check out any negative comments about that influencer. By determining the relevancy of the negative comments, you can decide whether they will make an impact on your sales.
Secondly, you will need to check the number of views in the videos they post. People look at the content of an influencer because they like it. As time goes, trust in the influencer is built automatically. Thus, by looking at the relevance and views of the content of an influencer, you can determine whether you can use him or her to promote your products.
If you are an influencer, you will need to convince the advertisers that you have a fanbase built on trust. And it is possible if you can generate a large number of views on your videos, say Instagram reels and IGTV regularly.
4: The influencer is active and posts regularly
If an influencer is active and posts regularly, then his or her fanbase gets constant growth. As an advertiser, you will need to ensure that the influencer you want to use should post regularly. Letting the consumer know about the product and its good effects regularly can convince them to buy the product and give it a try. Also, regular activity by the influencer will mean growth in your target audience.
Influencer marketing has changed the marketing game drastically, and it has brought a positive effect on both the advertiser, influencer. As more consumers spend time on their social media than on TVs, they get to know about a large variety of products out there.
However, the same mistakes must not be repeated. If the products recommended by influencers are found out to be fraud, then once again, people will lose their trust, and advertisers will have to think of a new strategy. Influencers must also be responsible and must promote the right product only. Greed for money can backfire, and you will lose all your audience base.
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