Let's dive a bit deeper into influencer marketing. According to recent studies, influencer marketing content delivers an 11 times higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing. Brands can make $6.50 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. E-marketer reported that 54% of female consumers, for example, purchase the product after seeing it recommended by an influencer, and the 45% have followed a brand directly from an influencer's posts. There are many types of online influencers. They include bloggers, YouTubers, vloggers, domain experts, special talents, entrepreneurs, public figures, cultural icons, and celebrities, models, and famous athletes. Their social media accounts are followed by hundreds of thousands if not tens of millions of followers, and they hold a tremendous amount of power in shaping public perception and changing people's attitudes. Though there is not a common standard, any social media account that attracts between 1,000 to 10,000 followers is usually considered a micro influencer. Macro influencer on the other hand are those famous people there can routinely commend the attention of millions of followers. A company can engage and enlist the help of influencers in a variety of ways. In addition to earning voluntary and organic recommendations from the influencers, organizations can offer incentives or monetary rewards for an endorsement from key influencers. While such a practice will be considered a serious violation of journalists' integrity in the traditional media era, it is a common practice amongst social media influencers. There are so many apps and platforms to connect and match-make brands and influencers. For example: Collaborate is an online platform that allows brand owners and social media influencers to connect and instantly begin collaborating. It removes the middleman and give users control over the collaborations enabling the marketers and the influencers to focus on what matters most. On Collaborate, influencers can easily create a profile, request to work with new people, chat, send and receive payments securely, leave reviews, and more. Ethical and professional considerations aside. Sponsored influencer marketing is being watched closely by governments around the world. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission has imposed stricter guidelines for disclosing sponsorships and conflict of interests associated with online influencer marketing. Please be sure to complete the readings assigned for this lesson to learn more about these guidelines and regulations. There are several key factors to consider when developing an influencer marketing campaign. First, there's the reach. Reach is the quantity of people to whom an influencer is able to deliver a message. A common misconception about social media influencers is that they need to have millions of followers. This is not true. Reach alone is not a requirement of being an influencer. In fact, there are many micro influencers who have fewer followers, but who also have tapped into highly credible niche audience. Next, there's credibility. Credibility is the level of trust given by followers based on the perceived knowledge or expertise of an influencer. Credibility is considered more important than reach. Influencers must have the ability to explain things in a clear and convincing way to an audience so that the influencer is perceived as trustworthy. Next, there's authenticity. Good influencers genuinely believe in the brand that they are promoting and what it stands for. If influencers are not sincere, they risk alienating their audiences. Then there's activity. Influencers must be active on social media, publishing content daily or weekly to their platforms. The best social media influencers are publishing content often. So they stay fresh in their followers' minds, and finally, there is engagement. Social media is not a one-way street, influencers must engage with their followers. When followers mentioned influencer or ask questions, it is important to acknowledge followers by liking or commenting back. Besides reach, credibility, authenticity, activity, and engagement, you should also consider the following factors. First, you must make sure that your product or brand image matches that of the influencers and the message being sent. An irrelevant, or worse, a mismatched influencer can cause long-term damage to your brand. A good case illustrating the risk of having a mismatch brand influencer is the controversy that resulted from Snickers' "You are not you when you are hungry" campaign. The Snickers brand had used this slogan, "You are not you when you're hungry," in their advertising campaigns. The creative concept had a successful run until the brand tried to adopt it in a social media campaign. In 2012, Snickers collaborated with popular celebrities in the UK, such as Sir Ian Botham, Cher Lloyd, and Katie Price to promote the brand. Snickers took the slogan of their TV advertising campaign literally in their social media promotion. Popular British model Katie Price, for example, suddenly started tweeting on politics and macroeconomics. This was really unusual as Katie's previous posts were typically fashion related. The campaign attracted a lot of attention, but also caused confusion and backlash among Katie Prices' followers. Even the BBC's economic correspondent joined in on the conversation with Katie on social media. Katie Price eventually revealed what was actually going on by posting an image of herself with a Snicker bar captioned "You are not you when you're hungry." Now creatively, this is a very cool concept and it indeed attracted much attention from the followers of these celebrities. However, the campaign ultimately caused problems for the brand and triggered an investigation by the Advertising Standards Agency of the UK. When the public became concerned about celebrities leveraging their followers for advertising sponsorship. The damage was not only done to the influencer's image, but also to the brand's image. This case clearly illustrates the importance of aligning marketing needs to the influencer's niche and target audience.
