Why Brands Should Choose Their Influencers Carefully
For many brands, working closely with influencers and brand ambassadors are great ways to spread awareness about their products and services. In print and digital advertising and across many forms of social media, connecting with a know name can do wonders for conversions and new clients. It’s important for brands to weigh out the costs and benefits or partnering with an influencer – how much they’re willing to invest against how much they’re set to gain from the campaign. The influencer(s) in question will likely be doing their own cost-benefit analysis, so it’s important you can present them with positives that can satisfy both parties. There are a number of things brands will need to consider before signing off on these kinds of pairings.
Focus On The Returns
What are your end goals? What are you hoping to get out of it? These are questions you’ll have to ask yourself beforehand in order to find the influencer that makes for the best fit. Think about exactly what type of return you’re looking for, since not every campaign is created equal. It’s almost important to examine your brands needs vs. brand wants. You may want increased sales but you’ll need to increase brand awareness first in order to do that. Consider what stage you’re at and set fixed targets and goals based on a variety of factors. This is why it’s important for brands to not only have creative staff but those who can examine data and analytics to provide tangible numbers and rates to work towards – shares, likes and “generating buzz” are often not enough.
Does It Make Sense?
Sometimes, brands will be attracted to influencers with a high number of followers without making considerations about just how engaged their followers are, or if the pairing makes sense. Going the celebrity route will be costly, and won’t always yield the types of results you hope for. Take Instagram for example, where paid posts are a regular occurrence for everything from fitness teas to clothing brands. According to a survey by marketing platform Markerly, the more followers a user has, the engagement actually starts to decrease. For users with over 1 million followers, they’re “like” rate is around 1.7% – whereas users with 1,000 to 10,000 followers see like rates of approximately 4%. Depending on how big your own brand is, you might benefit most from the “sweet spot”, which a spectrum of anywhere between 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Still a strong follower base, these users are likely to have more engaged followers as well as many that connect to them on a person level; like YouTube stars or independent musicians, making even their paid posts feel more authentic and trustworthy. It might be in your best interest to find a handful of these mid-range influencers to capitalize on that more direct connection. It will also be imperative you take the influencers proximity to your brand’s industry into consideration as well. A makeup guru may have millions of Instagram followers, but pairing them with a fitness brand may fall flat unless a healthy lifestyle is always a primary part of their public persona and personal brand.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term 
Think about how much time you want to spend with a particular influencer; will it be a one-off partnership for an event or singular post, an agreement for multiple engagements or will they be an official brand ambassador? You might have to work together a few times to determine if it’s something that can stretch into long-term, so pay attention for campaigns and partnerships that really seem to work before immediately moving on to the next thing.