“Influencer-marketing”. This term didn’t even exist a few years ago, and now there are entire agencies, businesses, brand strategies and even economies built around it.
But it’s important to remember…influencers are so much more than Influencer Marketing.
Influencer-marketing is a term thrown around by brands and businesses to describe how they use influencers to market and advertise their products. It’s a strategy…a tactic…a channel…a small piece of a much larger corporate campaign with a MUCH bigger budget than the influencer ever sees. So why are Influencers building their own business strategy around one small part of the creator economy that they have built? Let’s explore.
In a nutshell, Influencer Marketing is a form of Social Media Marketing that involves anything from endorsements, collaborations, product placement, commission and incentives with those who have a social media audience, like influencers or celebrities, to showcase a product or service on their respective platforms in order to ‘influence’ the consumer-markets purchasing habits by sharing their own opinions and knowledge around the given subject.
Influencer Marketing has continued to showcase why it’s important for brands to incorporate into their overall Marketing-Strategy, with over 70% of brands and businesses utilising Influencer Marketing as one of their key-components for an overall successful marketing strategy.
The influencer-era has truly helped the shift from traditional print and tv-advertising to a Social Media Influencer driven one. Another reason for this shift has been the rise of the Customisation-Era. More than ever, consumers want to stand out and be on-trend with the newest and latest. And not only do consumers want customisation, so do brands and businesses. They want to be able to see, clearly, the ROI when allocating large sums of budgets to brand exposure and awareness as well as quickly locating where improvements or adjustments can be done to efficiently hit their target-market; digital analytics will do this for them alongside influencer-marketing. Two of the strongest components, together, to leverage highly targeted consumer-conversions.
BUT, influencer marketing is really a channel for brands which can often neglect considering the needs of the influencer, both present and future. Many influencers can become consumed with constantly creating and chasing the next big deal which doesn’t allow much space to think ahead from an individual business point of view and how the future might look for themselves in terms of growing it into a sustainable and viable business. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok – any social media platform – can close down tomorrow and the creators income will be gone in a matter of seconds.
It has never been more important for an Influencer to turn themselves into the brand, rather than the vehicle for influencing through a brand. It’s time to influence through their own voice, knowledge and content directly to their audience and make money doing so without a third-party involved dictating the what, why and how.
It’s important to remember, the “influence” is what is really powerful here, and Influencers are the ones who have it. When those who have cultivated true influence through today’s social media platforms realise their power and stop relying on other businesses to pay them to access it, the current commercialisation models propping up the creator economy will collapse.
Brands and businesses relying on influencers as low cost mass marketing channels will end.
Influencers as advertising livestock will cease being the lucrative goldrush of the creator economy because the world is changing fast, and Influencers need to be ready.
What happens when your followers stop believing in advertising content delivered to them by influencers under pretense of authenticity?
What happens when changes and shifts in local regulations and law create instability in tried-and-tested models (think Russia!)?
Influencers need to start focusing on where their power really lies, and it’s with their audience. Platforms like Routinr enable you to build digital products with your content and sell them straight to your audience, enabling you to activate your power. If you want to get started on Routinr and you want to work with an amazing Routinr Business Coach for free, you can contact us on talent@routinr.org
