DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: Influencer marketing or influencer endorsement?

Your brand wants to run a campaign and it’s looking for a key influential person or people to work with. Who would be the first to call? Why would you? How are you going to include him/her in your strategy?

Over many years marketers and brands have employed influencers to be part of their campaigns as a deliberate technique to convince and convert customers.

They have become a powerful and the fastest customer acquisition source outgrowing other online or traditional advertising mediums such as paid search, TV, display, email, affiliate marketing, and others.

This is obvious because influencers create trust, transparent, market targeting is easy, cost-effective, and quick to spread word of mouth about your brand, product or service.

However, how would you differentiate between influencer marketing and influencer endorsement? Never thought of it, I guess! Don’t worry, I never did too at first.

To understand influencer marketing phenomenon, we need to ask ourselves the right question: how did it all begin?

The Davis Milling Company is reportedly to be the first company to use influencer marketing in the late 1800s with their popular character, Aunt Jemima in minstrel shows.

She was dark skinned and dewy, with a pearly white smile, a scarf over her head and a polka dot dress with a white collar. The character symbolised her pancake secret recipe, family life, and plantation life as a happy slave in southern plantations of America, so-called antebellum. Many companies, artists and brands after came to adopt Aunt Jemima ideals. Hitherto, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and maple-flavoured syrup is a staple product in the United States.

What do we learn here? The most basic principle to build a successful brand or product with influencers, your target audience needs to resonate with an influencer, they need to be a symbol that influences their behaviour, and mentality of using your product/service. Back in my early childhood, Rambo was one of the prolific movies and life icon. Consequently, they even made nylon bags with him standing with a rocket launcher.

We called them ‘Rambo’ bags or in the native language, ‘Mifuko ya Rambo’ to this date. I mean, who wouldn’t want to come from a shop without the bag? Other live examples are the Marlboro man, Coca Cola Santa Claus, and so many others.

In this golden age of social media, influencers have become more powerful that people are more looking up to influencers forgetting to pay attention to brand’s message within. Another great problem is that these influencers work for multiple brands in a year sometimes in a few months or days.

There is very little room for them to fully understand what the brand or its product/service embodies.

Moreover, having influencers publish your ad in their social media, blogs or websites isn’t enough.

As we have seen from case studies above, using an influencer MUST resonate to your brand and most importantly his/her audience must be your target market.

The best way to having your message cut across the noise out there is to build your own influencer if you are building a new brand, or marry an existing one into your brand. Another important thing to understand is how you are going to establish a good and win-win relationship with your influencer, it is crucial if you want to work with them for the long term.

Stop paying influencers randomly because they have delivered your ad or have millions of followers, do intensive research before you begin implementing your influencer strategy, ask them if they understand the company’s vision, have they used your product/service? How do they rate your brand? What should be included or excluded in your marketing strategy? Etc.

It’s always important to involve them in every stage so that they ultimately align with your business goals.