Influencer

Why does influencer marketing work so well?

The popularity of influencers essentially boils down to these four reasons:

1. Tangibility: Influencers are living celebrities, who followers feel close to. They let their followers into their lives and give short daily insights into their supposed everyday routine – they stage their private lives. This makes them feel more like friends for many fans.
2. Identification: Followers can project their own lifetime dreams onto the influencer and can virtually travel to the Caribbean, work out in the gym or experience a pregnancy.
3. Frequency: A post can be published regularly on Facebook, a few tweets on Twitter. But the Insta Story format allows something completely different: every few minutes, easily digestible content is published spontaneously, which gives the community the feeling of being part of the influencer’s daily routine, nonstop.
4. Life hacks: Decorating tips for the bathroom, vegan nutrition, training motivation – many followers appreciate specific tips and tricks for all areas of life. Lots of influencers share their personal experiences and in doing so play the role of a friend giving advice.

How to make influencer marketing successful

Influencer marketing must appear legitimate and authentic to achieve the desired effect with customers. Companies looking for an influencer as a partner must therefore find a really suitable candidate for the industry and product in question.

For the marketing campaign to be a success, the influencer should be chosen carefully, because they can cost a lot of money. The primary aim is to get the highest possible number of followers and the resulting reach – because the size of the community is the “currency” of influencers. But it is not only quantity that counts, but also quality.

The influencer should be fully committed to the product they are promoting. Otherwise they lose credibility. There are therefore some rules in influencer marketing for a good collaboration, the basis of which is always trust in all parties involved. Companies should consider these criteria when selecting a suitable influencer:

• Is the influencer credible?
• How often are they active?
• How large is their community?
• Do the interests of their community match the product?
• How strong is the interaction between the community and the influencer?

Tools for influencer marketing: Keeping an eye on costs and KPIs

The influencer business represents an important branch of digital marketing today. Software solutions such as Influencer Discovery Services or Hype Auditor systematize the search for suitable partners and facilitate the handling of campaigns. With these tools, an eye is kept on KPIs and the content displayed is monitored and analyzed. Because, in the end, profits must of course exceed influencer marketing costs.

Deceptively real: Virtual influencers

More than 1.5 million followers, mentions in Vogue or Cosmopolitan and collaborations with Prada and Chanel: today, even computer-generated characters can do this – Instagram makes it possible. One example is the virtual model Shudu. Her creator, Cameron Wilson, recognized the potential of this new form of influencer at just the right time. The digital character now has around 200,000 Instagram subscribers.

But not everyone is enthusiastic about virtual advertising media. Many fear, for example, that unrealistic beauty ideals will become standardized, or argue that virtual influencers do not have the necessary authenticity. Whether the avatars will shake up the world of influencer marketing in the future or whether interest will wane after the initial hype remains to be seen.

Corporate influencers: Company ambassadors to support HR

One special kind of influencer is the corporate influencer. These give companies or individual divisions of a company an external face. Generally, these are employees who are very good in their field, identify with the company and regularly provide authentic insights into their daily work. In this way the corporate influencer supports HR in recruiting and makes a valuable contribution to employer branding.