There was a time during 2017 when many digital marketing experts declared that influencer marketing would be dead by the end of 2018. Instead of allowing this type of advertising to die, marketing experts have instead refined the idea of influencer marketing and now the concept has seen a resurgence. Nearly every company that uses influencers has seen value in them, and there are ways that you can improve your influencer marketing results as well.
When actor Charlie Sheen started doing his “tiger blood” interviews, his Twitter account exploded with new followers. It was not long before Sheen was making millions of dollars a year as an influencer on the Internet. The problem was that, after a while, Sheen’s antics wore thin and the companies that invested in his name were suddenly stuck being represented by a proud recreational drug user who lived an alternative lifestyle that many people did not approve of.
The aftermath of the Sheen fiasco forced digital marketing experts to base their influencer decisions on more than just the short-term drawing power of someone’s name. Today, there are parameters used to decide whether or not an influencer is a good match for a company that can help the campaign to get better results.
In the early days of influencer marketing, all it took to make a lot of money talking about products was a large follower list. But after a while, marketing experts started to realize that follower lists could be faked and that caused a shift in determining which numbers really count. These days, marketing companies look for Internet influencers who have high engagement rates and get people to actually talk about a product instead of sending off meaningless posts to dead accounts.
Before hiring an influencer, a digital marketing expert is going to want to take the time to look over that candidate’s entire profile and make sure there aren’t any problems brewing. This goes back to the idea of hiring an influencer based on more than just their name. It is important that the influencer you choose does not have a history that could cause controversy for your company.
A broad range of diverse influencers who can reach more types of target audiences is a smarter way to go than using the whole budget to hire one person. An influencer marketing plan should be broken down into specific groups with one influencer chosen to speak to each group.
Influencer marketing was teetering on the brink of extinction not too long ago, but it was mostly because marketing professionals were not using the concept properly. Now that there have been plenty of studies done on the best ways to use influencers, we are seeing a rise in this type of marketing with a wider variety of influencers being brought onboard to help sell a variety of products.
