How much are we influenced by influencers?
If you search ‘influencer marketing’ on Google, you’ll find reams of information explaining the significance it has on consumer behaviour.. But is influencer marketing sustainable? Or is it slowly running itself out of appeal for businesses.
The idealistic viewpoint of influencer marketing is that influencers are the best people to promote a product or brand because they have a unique element of trust with their audience, which can be leveraged by brands to elevate brand awareness. Whilst many will trust the opinion of an influencer over anyone else, the reality of influencer marketing is that, to win big, it is far more complex.
In a poll carried out by SA Communications, we asked the question: “how much do you feel influenced by influencers?”
The final poll found that:
45% of our followers weren’t influenced by influencers at all
50% said it depends on the product
5% would buy anything an influencer talks about
What does this mean? The impact of influencer marketing is changing. It may not be as simple as thinking that consumers rely on influencer opinions when making a purchase, as other factors are starting to come into play. These factors can be broken down into 3 points:
Cost
Being an “influencer” has become a career, one that many rely solely on for an income. So, it’s understandable that the collaboration rates can be very high. You would be right to assume this is true for the likes of A list celebrities, like Kim Kardashian or Dwayne Johnson, but this is also the case for any one who calls themselves an influencer, regardless of follower numbers. In 2023, you can expect rates of over £1,000 for one Instagram post by an influencer with less than 20K followers. The more appealing option for a brand on a tight budget is to work on gifted collaborations, but again in today's influencer culture, very few influencers will work for a brand without pay. Therefore the opportunities for brands to actually make the most of influencer marketing are very slim. It’s not impossible as there are micro-influencers who will work on a gifted basis, however it can take a lot of time and manpower to find the right micro-influencer for your business who can generate brand awareness. The significance of this is that consumers are very aware that the majority of influencers are paid to talk about brands or products, which raises the question of whether they would be talking about them if they weren’t being paid to do it.
Reputation
It’s extremely important to choose the right influencer as your brand’s reputation will automatically become linked to theirs. Obviously, you can’t predict the future or foresee an influencer damaging your brand, but make sure to get to know an influencer through their social media, values, and interests before deciding to work with them. This also boils down to a simple fact of whether their followers are the right target audience for your brand. There’s no point in a makeup brand targeting an influencer who prides themselves on natural beauty through no makeup as their followers may feel the same, or a marine collagen brand wanting to work with an influencer who’s vegan and may have a lot of vegan followers. Cherry pick the right influencer with followers who can be converted into customers - and ambassadors for your brand.
Authenticity
You may have seen in 2016 Scott Disick’s blunder with BooTea, which provided the platform to demonstrate the authenticity issues of influencer marketing. The BooTea team provided Scott with a caption to post, but rather than posting the caption itself, he posted the instructions too. Consumers may well buy something based on an influencer, but only if the influencer genuinely uses and likes the product. Many may even ignore a post altogether that’s labelled as #ad or #sponsored because this puts into question the authenticity of the post and whether an influencer genuinely believes it’s a good brand or product.
Consumers want authentic influence, so what does this mean moving forward? Well, it seems influencer marketing may have lost its way by forgetting the relationship aspect. Paying a well known, A list celebrity like Scott Disck is not influencer marketing, it avoids brands doing what they need to do to success - by building a strong and engaged customer base who love and trust the brand. In short, putting lots of money into influencer marketing doesn’t mean you’ll see the return on your investment through sales. Influencer marketing done correctly means no shortcuts.
