Pros and Cons of Influencer Marketing for Acquisition

Influencer marketing, a very hot topic in social media these days, right? Everyone around us talks about it. In Fact every 5th picture in your Instagram feed, or on any social platform is a post where an influencer is trying to convince you for one or the other product. 

Covid-19 pandemic gave a phenomenal boom to the digital world and Influencer Marketing got a raise from there. When everything went online, marketers became aware about the idea of influencer marketing and that’s when it got an immense hike.

Brands are wildly spending on influencer marketing. According to a report, US marketers spend between $1000-$10,000 for influencer marketing. As the brand continues to grow, it makes sense for businesses to include renowned personalities to convince your audience for the products/services. Instagram, TikTok have been the biggest influence for the Influencer Market. But is it good or is it bad, we don’t try to do the research and instead we blindly trust this. 

Influencer Marketing also has two sides just like a coin. It has its pros and cons. Let’s dive in and have a look at positives and negatives of the Influencer Marketing as an Acquisition Channel. 

#Pro 1: Reach to your Audience: The most significant advantage of Influencer Marketing is that your reach increases gradually more than any other marketing campaign. You can target the people whom you think might be interested in your products or services.

Moreover, influencers have their own niche fan following and once they start influencing people for any brand or product, the fans create an interest without any desire for it. But how did it happen?

Let us tell you how, eventually Marketeers targeted a shared interest and that shared interest brought you all together to convince for a product or service. Fascinating, isn’t it?

#Pro 2: Amplifies your sale: As mentioned before, Influencers come with a fan base, and that fan base helps a lot in terms of selling, by creating the trust and credibility for the brand. And increases brand awareness, driving traffic on your website.

Although you have to make sure that you’re choosing the right influencer. As the best influencers are also concerned about what they recommend. Hence choosing the right influencer for your marketing campaign is the crucial part.

#Pro 3: Broadens Brand’s reach: As spoke earlier, with famous influencers you can reach millions of people, which wouldn’t have been possible without influencer marketing. Regardless of the platform you choose, influencers help you to get the followers and new customers to add to your basket.

#Pro 4: Cost Effective: It’s questionable how Influencer Marketing can be cost effective. But now think of the money and efforts one spends being a marketer, in all those hit and trail campaigns where if you even get a better response from your users, isn’t enough. So when you compare the influencer marketing with the regular marketing campaigns, it weighs less in financials as per the awesome results you receive.

#Pro 5: Telling a Story: Often people connect with the influencers not only because they are their favorite influencers. But also because they are sharing a story which connects with you, or has a very personalized and close touch to you.

#Pro 6: Builds Instant Trust and Credibility: Human tendency is to trust confidence. If an influencer is promoting a product, we tend to like the confidence they have for the product. And that creates instant trust and the campaign becomes successful.

Acquisition channels often take advantage of these strategies rather than just hitting around the bushes.

Since the past two years the influencer marketing strategies have out performed and Instagram was a big player in that, they started the Reels feature just at the right time, when the market needed it. Be it skin products, luxury brands, clothing styles or even travel blogging. Last two years almost each of us encountered something extraordinary that just happened on social media.

#Pro 7: Work with Industry Celebrities: The one and most fascinating pro of Influencer Marketing is that you get to work with celebrities. And that gives an immense reach and fame to your world all around the world. For example: BTS for Louis Vuitton

But there are the dark side of Influencer Marketing as well:

#Con1: Misguiding Influencers: Often Influencers might want you to buy the products/service they influenced for, but the question that arises sometimes, is this just branding or they actually are supporting the product. Hard to get right!

The other perspective is, sometimes Marketers also can fall in trap of fake influencers. They might have fake accounts and fake followers as well. So make sure the credibility before you handover your brand in someone’s hand.

#Con 2: Some Mistakes Influencers Make: Influencer marketing is a new concept and there is no perfect benchmark decided for it, hence they are bound to make mistakes. But it might affect your brand and make a very negative impact for the long run. Here are some common mistakes while doing influencer marketing:

#Con 3: High Risk: An influencer might also be unable to resonate with your target customers. In that case, you lose all your big efforts and money invested behind. Which leaves you with the trails of risk, and an unpleasant experience for the brand value.

#Con 4: Setup Time: It’s not easy to get everything as expected from your Influencer Marketing. And that’s the disappointing part, as it takes a lot of time to set up schedules, to create catchy and personalized content, and select the perfect Influencer for your campaign.  

#Con 5: Irrelevant Content: Often a very common spoiler to Influencer Marketing is that when a niche campaign is disliked by a group of different people having offense on some cultural or personal level. Hence it affects the acquisition channel on brand level. 

Moreover it is also challenging to track and monitor the KPIs because everything that is part of Influencer marketing barely can give insights on your KPIs, such as Conversion Rate, Click Rate etc.

Now the question that arises in every marketer's mind, if Influencer Marketing is worth it or not?

There is no perfect answer to this question. Many marketers use influencers for their strategies, for some it works and for some it doesn’t. It depends on your thought through decision if the campaign is gonna be successful. Hence before you invest, follow these steps:

Summarizing, it takes effort and time to decide on any marketing campaign, and so is the case with Influencer marketing. All you have to do is, trust your instincts and go for it, but of course before that, make sure of your audience choice, personalized content and something which is the solution to your customers' pains. And do not forget to go for a QA analysis before launching the content.

Brand can be a very easy target when it comes to critics, hence you have to be very mindful of your branding, as it affects the acquisition on every platform, regardless of being positive or negative. 

We hope you liked the insights on Influencer Marketing effects on Acquisition Channel.