Synopsis: In the age of digital interruption and modern marketing, brands have had to pivot their brand awareness avenues to keep abreast of current trends. As the world around us becomes more technologically advanced, influencer marketing has made its way to the forefront and companies are devoting more time and effort to the tactic than ever before.
Influencer Marketing has become an important branch of Public Relations that has taken the world by storm. It is still a relatively new concept with little regulation attributed to it in South Africa. It’s a fluid, agile and wildly popular brand awareness and endorsement tool.
“As a PR and Digital agency, we are always searching for avenues that we can utilise to offer our clients the upper hand in a vastly competitive market. Influencer Marketing is a service that we offer at the agency where potential and current clients are able to choose to add it to their PR retainers – offering a comprehensive and holistic approach to PR or they can opt for it as a standalone service,” explained Managing Director at Mantra Publicity Prelene Singh-Seitlhamo.
Influencer marketing plays an important role in your digital marketing plans and assists in getting your brand on the map. “More and more, we are seeing our clients shift focus to influencer marketing to propel their brand through social media,” added Prelene.
So, what is influencer marketing exactly?
Influencer marketing serves several elements of an effective marketing chain, that being: third-party endorsements and promotions, reviews, brand awareness, sales and content creation.
Influencers are people who have an online following – not to be confused with celebrities. They are normal, ordinary individuals that have built an engaged community around them with people who trust their opinions, follow their recommendations and look to them for guidance – in essence, people who have influence over a large group of people. In most cases, they typically possess knowledge or experience about what they are advertising.
Forbes explains: a popular fitness vlogger on YouTube with extensive knowledge in weight training and proper nutrition may be asked to do advertising for sportswear or a supplement company. On occasion, an influencer may not have experience relevant to the product they are advertising. In this situation, they rely on the trust and loyalty they have built within their community to influence their followers. Common influencer categories include adventurists, photographers, food enthusiasts, how-to experts, beauticians, artists, models and comedians to name a few.
“In most cases, influencers operate independently and are in control of the brand’s messaging, and how they would like to portray this to their followers. This offers the brand an opportunity to reach a niche audience, while also promoting real stories to real people in an organic un-advertising way,” added Prelene.
Why Is Influencer Marketing So Important?
Today, coupled with the world of the internet and the popularity of social media platforms like Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube, consumers have unlimited freedom of choice over the content they choose to digest. This makes it difficult for brands to be seen by their target audience as its spread so finely across all the multiple platforms.
“As a result, brands are forced to expand their reach and establish their presence on all these various platforms to ensure they are talking directly to their target markets. Influencer marketing can be seen as a fast-solution offering the brand an opportunity to promote their product/service directly to their desired audience through an influencer. While this is not an all-inclusive solution, it is an avenue that cannot be ignored,” explained Prelene.
Consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical of direct advertising and tend to shy away and ignore hard brand punts, forcing brands to be more creative and tactical when it comes to their marketing efforts. Brand awareness through influencer marketing offers an indirect form of marketing whereby a trusted individual tells your target market why they should care about your brand, and consider what you’re offering with first-hand accounts of them using the service/product. Instead of being skeptical of a commercial or social media ad, consumers are trusting that if their influencer of choice loves the product, they will too.
What to consider?
A general notion of influencer marketing is sending an influencer a package from your brand and asking them to post about it, or simply offering them a discount code and telling them to offer it to their followers. This is not influencer marketing and this approach often yields no results.
“Effective influencer marketing requires zeal, strategy, powerful implementation and trust. At Mantra Publicity we have a large influencer pool who specialise in a variety of niches who we trust, have a relationship with and also have worked with prior. We also have a high-level implementation method that safeguards our clients from reputational risks and uncanny and offensive content. We manage the process from beginning to end, ensuring that there is brand value, vetting the influencer platforms for fake followers and bots and ensuring they have posted quality content in line with the campaign and brand,” concluded Prelene.
Influencer marketing is a hugely effective element of marketing that businesses need to start implementing into their marketing strategies, and when doing so, consider onboarding professionals in the industry to help manage the implementation for you ensuring you achieve results for your efforts.
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