Influencing people is not easy because you need to have knowledge as well as charisma to make people follow you and that is the reason why only a few people can become an influencer and that is the reason why companies thinking of doing creative marketing adopt influencer marketing strategy. An influencer marketing strategy refers to that marketing strategy in which company takes the help of those personalities which have a good number of followers on various social media platforms so as to promote their product and service to potential customers who in this case are the followers of the influencer. In order to get a better idea about this concept, one should look at the advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing –
Advantages of Influencer Marketing
Result Oriented Marketing
The first and foremost advantage of influencer marketing is that it is result oriented marketing in the sense that chances of this marketing strategy getting succeeded by converting a potential customer into an actual customer are more as compared to other modes of marketing. In simple words suppose in television marketing if every 1 out of 10 customers turns into an actual consumer of the company than in case of influencer marketing chances are every 3 or 4 followers of influencer will turn into an actual customer of the company.
Focused Marketing
This marketing is more focused because the company can select that influencer who is related to the company’s product and therefore this marketing can be more successful than other forms of marketing. Hence for example if the company is selling apparel products than it can approach fashion designer who is popular on social media or blogger who writes about fashion products because followers of them will be interested in apparel and hence chances are high they will buy the company’s products.
Economical
It is economical as compared to other forms of marketing because other forms of marketing like television marketing or newspaper marketing involves a substantial amount of expenditure but as far this marketing is concerned company has to pay only to the influencer who in turn can attract customers towards company’s product or service and thus it will be a win-win situation for both influencer as well as the company.
Disadvantages of Influencer Marketing
Lack of Professionalism
The biggest disadvantage of this marketing strategy is that influencer is not a professional marketer and therefore if the company is expecting professionalism from influencers than they will be disappointed as influencer neither have experience nor expertise to do marketing equivalent to marketing professionals.
Fake Followers
Another problem with this marketing is that in case of social media, not all accounts are authentic and if some twitter celebrity or blogger has plenty of fake following than this whole idea of using influencer to market company’s product or service will lose its relevance as the reason why company use influencer marketing is to take advantage of huge number of followers of social media personalities but if those numbers turn out to be fake than this technique of marketing is of no use.
Limited Reach
Social media has gained tremendous popularity but in case of developing nations there are many areas and people who have no access to social media and that is the reason why the reach of influencer marketing is limited and not widespread which is the case with other forms of marketing like television or radio marketing.
As one can see from the above that influencer marketing has advantages as well as disadvantages and that is the reason why any company thinking of adopting this marketing strategy for their products or services should carefully read above points and then take the decision.