Word-of-mouth rules the digital world, so influencer marketing and incorporating your relationships with key social stars into a branding strategy is increasingly important.
Firebrand Group asked marketers how much time and budget is spent on certain aspects of social media campaigns in our Future of Social report. Influencer marketing received the lowest average budget and next to lowest results for time spent.
This doesn’t mean that influencer marketing isn’t important. Rather, these results are more of a reflection of how difficult it is to run successful influencer marketing programs.
Nicole D’Alonzo, the founder of Victory Rituals, is not surprised to see influencer marketing with a low budget and lower hour numbers compared to other digital tasks.
“Agencies are the best equipped to manage influencer marketing projects,” says D’Alonzo. “[Influencer Marketing] not only requires strong networks and community but also constant knowledge sharing. Agencies, when compared to brands, have entire teams devoted to staying on top of changing platform rules and regulations” that are essential to influencer success.
Influencer marketing may be complex, but it is an increasingly important tool for breaking out of the challenging social network algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Influencers are also crucial to success on Snapchat, Pinterest, and in dark social, or the types of private social activities that cannot be as easily monitored.
“Influencer marketing is not an add-on, and it’s not just for campaigns,” says Nick Cicero, founder and CEO of Delmondo. “More and more we’re seeing companies work out longer-term content partnerships with influencers, in some cases creating daily content on behalf of a brand.”
To read the full Future of Social report in partnership with Social Fresh and Simply Measured, click here.