How Much of an Asset or Liability Has Influencer Marketing Become Today?


When brands began hiring the Instafamous to put the 'must buy' label on their products, influencer marketing became the uber way of engaging customers, both potential and current, in authentic conversation.
A survey conducted in December 2016 involving a good number of brands indicated that 84 percent of them were planning on introducing at least one influencer marketing campaign within the next year.

With 47 percent online customers adding ad blockers to their browsers and the directly proportional relationship between Instagram followers and sale numbers for several companies and brands, Influencer marketing does appear as the superhero of marketing with a silky cape.
However, this particular method of promotion has many hurdles in its way. Matching an influencer with a fitting demographic and product, choosing the right platform, making the campaign scalable, and finding adequate metrics to measure the Return On Investment of campaigns are some of the most common challenges in the field of influencer marketing.
Then again, many examples of staged influencer advertisements have exhibited the consequences of tricking a customer with the promise of false realities.
These misrepresentations and continuous manipulations have led to the newly established FTC guidelines which strictly put forward all regulations related to disclosure agreements and transparency.
Many new agencies and platforms claim to help the brands in building the perfect marketing campaign fitted with an influencer with many devoted followers. Selecting the right one among them becomes the decision that could mean a poor, good, or an excellent program.
Also, for an influencer marketing program, tracking the outcome of the campaign gets complicated for the lack of accurate metrics. Brands desire accountability and want to track the results of every program. Choosing a platform that allows for such tracking and has advanced features to compare and evaluate marketing program effects can be game changing for influencer marketing.
Customers have gotten smarter. They seek genuine conversation. A product placement that fits the context is justified by the influencer using it, and doesn't mess up the content with its integration will always attract genuinely interested consumers.
While still an asset, Influencer Marketing needs to be implemented with much caution to keep it from becoming a liability any further.