Best Trends In Social medial marketing: Rise of Influencer marketing: The benefits and pitfalls

Influencer marketing is one of the most upcoming social media marketing strategies that have a great connection with the youth. One of the best ways in which influencer marketing helps businesses is concerned with the factor of trust. Influencers usually are individuals having a dedicated social following who are viewed as the experts in their niche area of expertise. Their followers trust their recommendations blindly and often choose products and services based on their recommendations. Due to the emergence of social media, different niches have been created for influencers across various interests such as beauty, travelling, food, technology, health and wellness and several others. For most direct-to-consumer businesses, influencers are the first choice when it comes to promoting a brand.

Influencer marketing 101

(Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/make-influencer-marketing-work/)

The emergence of influencer marketing has provided significant benefits to businesses in the last few years. The most important benefit of influencer marketing is enhanced brand awareness along with increased reach. This also helps in building credibility and trust among the customers. One of the most interesting contributions of influencer marketing is concerned with the content strategy of the business. Influencer marketing adds up to ensure the content strategy of direct-to-consumer brands. Hence, enrichment of content strategy is witnessed in this case. The impressive reach of the influencers to motivate and influence the customers' surprises companies significantly as this marketing also drives purchase decisions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, brick-and-mortar retail stores closed down and the physical events were also suspended. During this time, influencers helped businesses to reach the customers to communicate about their new products or service strategies.

Benefits of influencer marketing

(Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/02/influence-marketing-for-hotels.html)

Even if it seems that influencer marketing only has a positive impact on the brands and the customers, it is important to understand the pitfalls associated with influencer marketing. A critical issue in this concern is finding the right influencer. Having a partnership with the wrong influencers does more harm than good for the brand as the reputation of the brand can be at risk. Moreover, a lack of transparency often arises in the relationship between brands and influencers. Brands intentionally hiding relevant information regarding a product from potential buyers does not benefit anyone. It usually hurts the public image of the brand and the reputation of the influencers. Furthermore, negative sentiment can be achieved by a product which is not desired by any brands. When influencers promote the products or services of a brand, the audiences are free to mention the positives and negatives related to the experience. Hence, brands can be wary about opening up the opportunity for inviting both praise and criticism from the consumers.

The problems with influencer marketing

(Source: https://medium.com/@esocmediatips/top-4-problems-in-influencer-marketing-how-to-solve-them-78758494f35d)

To summarise, it can be understood that the unique benefits provided by influencer marketing make all the difference in the marketing strategy of a brand. Responsible influencer marketing is the need of the hour for every business. In contrast, the effort from the front of the brands needs to be earnest, honest and authentic towards partnering with an influencer to ensure that favourable results are achieved through marketing. This will also lead to attracting potential customers and also help the influence to grow their reach.

You can find out more about this in the video below.