Would you believe it if we told you that 80% of Indians trust social media influencers? Yes. You heard it right. When influencer marketing has become a popular advertising strategy, is it completely safe to rely upon?
As the coin has both sides, let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing in this blog.
Influencer Marketing
With many types of marketing present, what is influencer marketing? It is a popular type of marketing that has gained significant traction in recent years with the rise of social media platforms.
Influencers have a dedicated following on social media platforms in specific niches and industries. They need not necessarily be celebrities; they can also be bloggers, vloggers, social media personalities, experts, etc. They are influential since they have built trust and a solid connection with their followers, making recommendations and endorsements with brands.
Influencer marketing necessitates meticulous planning, genuine collaboration, and a focus on providing useful content for the target audience. Buzzfame lists the pros and cons of influencer marketing below for a clear understanding.
Here are the Pros of Influencer Marketing
Let’s see the advantages of influencer marketing.
1. Increased Brand Visibility
- When you collaborate with the right influencers within your niche and industry, your brand visibility broadens, and you can reach your targeted audience effortlessly.
- Since influencers have built a community for themselves, they have loyal followers who trust and admire their work.
- When an influencer posts about your brand, such as product reviews, reels, or sponsored posts, their followers become aware of your brand’s existence and go through your website or products to purchase.
For example, if you are a beauty brand and your target demographic for a specific product is adolescents, choosing a beauty influencer with many young adult followers can provide tremendous exposure to the brand.
2. Help Build Trust and Credibility
- People often see influencers as trustable authorities in their particular niche. They are perceived as authentic individuals because they genuinely engage with their audience.
- Whenever an influencer collaborates with a brand, their followers see it as a personal recommendation and trust their suggestions since they view them as knowledgeable and trustworthy sources of information.
- When influencers disclose their partnerships or sponsored content with the audience, it makes them honest and credible persons.
For instance, if you are a protein shake brand, collaborating with a fitness influencer helps you reach the targeted audience. Making recipe videos or recommendations regarding the product impacts their followers, establishing a positive reputation for the brand.
3. Help reach the relevant audience
- Influencers will have a group of followers who follow them regularly because of the content they produce and because they have established themselves as trustworthy people in specific niches.
- Followers with similar interests follow them. Since they know what their audiences want and make videos accordingly, these influencers become the right person for brands to reach target audiences.
For instance, a travel or travel accessories brand can collaborate with a travel influencer or blogger to promote its products or services to reach an audience passionate about travelling. It encourages followers to purchase the products or services since they are interested in travelling like influencers.
4. It is comparatively less expensive
- Influencer marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing and does not necessitate significant investments. We’ve all heard how expensive TV commercials, billboards, and other forms of advertising can be.
- Influencer marketing can impact more than traditional marketing when partnered with the right influencers. Since there are different classifications of influencers, you can collaborate with the one with a high-engaging audience basis.
- You may expect a significant return on investment if you choose an influencer based on their reach, engagement, and connection with the brand’s values.
Our recommendation is to target micro-influencers. Despite having a small number of followers, they have the highest level of engagement with their followers, who are more inclined to purchase.
5. Authentic content creation
- Influencers produce genuine, relatable and engaging content relatable to the audience. They try to make their content unique and authentic, building sole followers for their individuality on social media platforms.
- When brands collaborate with influencers, they expect them to create unique promotional content that hooks the audiences and makes them purchase their products or services.
- Influencer marketing is opted for by brands because, unlike traditional marketing, influencers build engagement with potential buyers with their creative and appealing content, persuading them subtly to make a purchase.
For instance, if a DIY influencer makes new things that are functional and creative using a brand’s products, people are likely to buy them.
6. Long-term win-win partnerships
- Brands can have long-term partnerships with influencers with mutual benefits. This way, the influencers can understand the brand in and out since they develop deeper connections and make content accordingly that drives revenue.
- They become brand advocates and consistently promote the brand to their audience. When an influencer collaborates with a brand for a long time, it helps build visibility, trust and credibility over time among the audiences.
- As influencers’ followers’ basis expands over time, the brand can benefit from the new potential customers.
Long-term partnerships also serve as an exclusive opportunity for influencers to participate in product launches and other collaboration events. It also helps them negotiate better prices.
7. Drive purchase decisions
- Influencers have the driving power to make their followers purchase the products or services they recommend. It’s because they always connect with them on a personal basis.
- Influencers provide discount codes, or limited-time offers exclusively for their followers, encouraging people to make immediate purchases.
- When influencers share personal experiences and testimonials about a product or a service, it instils confidence in followers, which leads to conversions.
When influencers make a visual demonstration of how to use a product through tutorials, showcasing the benefits and features of a product, it makes it easy for the followers to understand how it works and its value, making them buy the particular product.
Here are the cons of Influencer Marketing
Let’s see the disadvantages of influencer marketing and the possible solutions.
1. Cost your brand
- It is both hits and misses in influencer marketing. When some influencers make promotional or sponsored posts without informing their followers that it is a paid gig, it might backfire on the brand and negatively impact its name.
- When the influencers do not abide by the guidelines of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and refrain from disclosing their relationship with brands during promotions through social media, it can cost your brand’s name.
Bouns Tip: How To Grow As An Influencer In 2024?
What can you do?
Partnering with the right influencers with ample industry experience can take your brand to the next level by positively reaching targeted audiences. For credible and reliable influencers to partner with for your next collaboration, check BuzzFame.
2. Time-consuming
- Finding the right influencer, initiating collaborations, negotiating contracts, and managing campaign logistics can be time-consuming and tiring.
- For brands with limited internal marketing teams, carrying out this resource-intensive process could be challenging.
Bouns Tip: 5 Questions To Ask Before Working With An Influencer
What can you do?
Approaching an influencer marketing agency like Buzzfame can reduce your burdens to zero. It helps you connect with influencers to understand your niche better and create content that aligns with your vision.
3. Partnering with the wrong influencers
- If the influencer’s values, behavior, or audience doesn’t align with your brand’s image or target audience, you shouldn’t collaborate with them.
- Some influencers lack authenticity and credibility or are even stuck in controversy. There are some inflating followings and engagements using bots.
Bouns Tip: 10 Myths About Influencer Marketing
What can you do?
You can filter the influencers based on their location, niche, reach, and more. You can also reach potential influencers with relevant hashtags and keywords.
Why should you choose Buzzfame?
Buzzfame is an influencer marketing agency that can increase your company’s engagement tenfold. It aids in the development of a brand, the customisation of marketing skills, the improvement of brand conversion rates, the creation of content that generates interaction, and the provision of high-quality work at an affordable cost.
Buzzfame offers extensive access to a network of influencers and is well-versed in industry best practices. It connects brands with the right influencers, allowing your brand to reach a larger audience.
Conclusion
Now that we have come to the end of the blog, you will have a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing. By finding the right partnerships, building connections, and monitoring campaigns, brands can maximise their reach while addressing influencer marketing challenges.
Also, you can get frequent updates on buzzfame instagram page
FAQs
1). What is the difference between influencer marketing and traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing involves the promotion of products or services through television, radio, print ads, billboards, etc. While influencer marketing allows for more targeted, personalized, and interactive communication with audiences via social media platforms.
2). What is the importance of influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is the best way to reach and engage with targeted audiences. It helps brands create resonating and authentic content relatable to their target audience to enhance brand awareness and foster genuine connections. It significantly impacts people’s purchasing decisions, leading to increased sales and business growth.
3). What are the different types of influencers?
There are four types of influencers: Nano (1000 to 10000 followers), micro (10000 to 1,00,000 followers), macro (1,00,000 to 1 million followers) and mega (1 million+ followers).
4). What are the 3 R’s in influencer marketing?
The three R’s of influencer marketing are reach, relevance and resonance. Reach refers to the potential reach of the influencer’s audience. Relevance refers to how an influencer’s niche, values and expertise match the brand’s industry or product. Resonance is how an influencer can impact their audience.
5). What are the three rules of marketing?
Understanding and meeting customer needs is the first rule of marketing. The second and third rules are building long-term solid relationships and adapting and embracing new technologies, trends, and customer insights.
