Communicate with the help of influencers
In the era of Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and Snapchat, influencer marketing is now essential.
It accounted for 9% of the companies’ marketing budget in 2014 and is expected to increase to 21% in 2019.
Consumers are indeed suspicious of brand discourse and blame traditional advertising for being too intrusive. They turn to those who share their values or tastes. The prescriptive power of influencers is also undeniable.
The millenials are the main target, but the other age groups are not to be outdone! This function, once reserved for journalists and celebrities, is now available to anyone. The University of California at Los Angeles even offers a course entitled “Personal branding and becoming an influencer” and in France, training to become an influencer is developing.
These trend setters are present in many sectors but the most frequent are: fashion, lifestyle, food and high-tech equipment. Their profile ranges from ‘microinfluencers’ (less than 100,000 subscribers on a social network) to ‘celebrity influencers’.
The choice of an influencer is strategic and depends on two main factors:
– What is the marketing objective? Improve your brand awareness or image? Increase sales? Re-launch a brand or product? Launch a new product / service?
– What is the budget for the digital campaign? The price of a campaign depends on the number of subscribers and the engagement rate of the influencer, the nature of the device and the influencer’s affinity for the brand.
How communicate with the help of influencers?
This criterion of influencer’s affinity for the brand is essential too, because beyond the fact that the influencer will ask for a more important wage if he does not have an affinity for the brand, it is the credibility and impact of the campaign that will suffer.
Behind an influencer, consumers are looking for authenticity, emotion or electronic word-of-mouth. An influencer is not just the information relay of a brand, he must reclaim the message to be credible. The brand values must be in line with those of the influencer, failing to lose the trust of his community or even create a bad buzz.
Trust is the key and maintaining it is essential for the influencer. However, to comply with the law, any commercial post must be mentioned.
Indications such as “Product offered by BRAND NAME” or “Content sponsored by BRAND NAME” must be indicated from the first lines of the post.
However, to gain in authenticity, some influencers tend to hide the advertising nature of the content.
Although not legally sufficient, hashtags #sp and #ad are often used because they are not known by all consumers.
The problem is that many subscribers change their minds about a product when they realize that the post has been sponsored and the engagement rate can drop by up to 50%.
The challenge for brands and influencers is finally to find the right balance between paid content and transparency.
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Sources:
https://www.e-marketing.fr/Thematique/media-1093/Breves/Sur-Instagram-influenceurs-sont-nouvel-eldorado-marques-335888.htm
https://www.e-marketing.fr/Thematique/social-media-1096/Infographies/Marketing-influence-pensent-vraiment-marketeurs-335120.htm
https://www.e-marketing.fr/Thematique/social-media-1096/Breves/Comment-bien-choisir-son-influenceur-327107.htm
https://millesoixantequatre.com/le-lab-millesoixantequatre/influence/influenceurs-pourquoi-marques-pratiques/
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