Are Influencers Right For Your Brand?

Sahail Ashraf posted on 13 May 2021

Influencers are used by many brands. But they may not always be the best idea. We take a look at how you can tell if Influencers will benefit your brand.

In the frenetic rush to get products and services in front of eyeballs, brands continue to turn to Influencers. Influencers have, amazingly, gone from strength to strength as a medium for making more of a marketing impact. It’s amazing because the variety of Influencers out there is huge, and the ROI can vary massively. It can be a tricky area to venture into as a brand, but if it pays off, it pays off well. 

That said, it is important to be aware that not all brands will benefit from hiring an Influencer. For some brands, it just doesn’t make sense. So even though you have a great product or service, attaching an Influencer to your marketing efforts just might not be the right thing to do. There are many reasons for this.

Budgets

The good news is that taking on an Influencer is nowhere near as expensive as it used to be thanks to the fact that micro-Influencers have become more prominent and accessible. A small to medium-sized brand can now spend a few hundred dollars and have the services of a decent micro-Influencer. However, while this may seem like an open invitation to find and acquire Influencers at breakneck speed, some caveats are required.

Firstly, the budget is still a huge issue. micro-Influencers are smaller in audience size, and therefore if you focus all your efforts on one micro-Influencer, you are going to gain a smaller audience than might be feasible when it comes to your brand’s needs.

For example, a micro-Influencer that has around 10k audience size on a platform may have their fee in the hundreds of dollars (or less), but you will have to ask yourself if your brand will be best served by such a relatively small audience.

Some brands combat this issue by finding a number of micro-Influencers and running campaigns at the same time. This way, they get to tap into a number of different audiences and gain more for their money.

Engagement

Focus on engagement too. You could be looking at a perfectly healthy seeming Influencer with a huge number of followers but when you dig deeper, you may find that they don’t have a lot of engagement. Interactions and engagement from Followers is actually one of the key areas where Influencer decisions fall apart. A huge Follower base that isn’t loyal (with plenty of engagement) could mean that the Follower base has some fake elements in it. 

This happens, so it’s important to carry out your due diligence when it comes to choosing Influencers. 

Do you need trust?

If your brand needs to develop trust and a presence quickly in the market, Influencer marketing is a definite opportunity to do just that. Influencers have built relationships and trust with their Follower base. Your brand can tap into that almost immediately.

Once a solid marketing strategy is in place around that Influencer, you will gain some of that trust that they enjoy, and your branding efforts will be enhanced.

Do you have the right fit?

Some brands can’t quite manage this part of the equation. With some products and services, finding an Influencer that can fit into the specific niche that you are in is simply not realistic.

If you run an accountancy firm, you may struggle to find an Influencer that works via Instagram, where image is everything. Accountancy doesn’t have a ‘product’ necessarily, and Instagram is suited to product images and videos that entertain and engage audiences. 

It may be the case that you have a product that’s perfect for Influencer Marketing, but sometimes brands don’t. And sometimes they make the mistake of thinking they do.

Is your brand doing well anyway?

We’ve talked about trust and engagement and so on, and when it comes down to making the decision about whether or not to use Influencers, it really comes down to the question of whether or not you are doing well. Influencers are great for boosting a product launch or building trust over time, but if you’re already making great strides in these areas, you should really be questioning whether or not it is worth it.

Can you measure?

Our final bit of advice on this topic is about measurement. If you have a system in place whereby your analytics are accessible and useful, you can easily measure the impact of any Influencer activity associated with your brand. This is crucial, because unless you know the tangible, measurable impact, you are not in a position to benefit from Influencer work.

If your metrics and data are all under control, you’ll benefit, because you can find that sweet spot where you have Influencers that bring value. You can prove value (or not) and find the right fit. 

Are you in charge of social media marketing? Try Locowise, with some of the most useful metrics available (just in case you’re hiring Influencers).