Author: Joe Griffin / Source: MarketingProfs Today's consumers will block, skip, and ignore disruptive advertising. The number of Ameri
Today’s consumers will block, skip, and ignore disruptive advertising. The number of Americans who use an ad blocker will grow to 86.6 million people in 2017, a 24% increase from 2016, eMarketer predicts. Ad avoidance creates a marketing opportunity for using organic, natural touchpoints to reach consumers—including via influencers.
When developing content for your marketing and business, influencers offer a lift in engagement, reach, and even conversions. Influencers also have the potential to create world-class content on your behalf, furthering distribution, brand reach, and engagement to highly relevant audiences.
Why Use Influencers to Carry Your Brand’s Message?
As the name implies, influencers influence. Their subject-matter expertise, reach, and sway can be a huge asset to your overall marketing strategy. A couple of more reasons influencers are effective:
They have a foundation of transparency and authority that advertising doesn’t. They are real people with authentic opinions, beliefs, and thoughts, and so people have a natural affinity toward them.
When your business and content are connected with their brand, a strong association is created between the two, thus boosting your reputation.
How Do You Vet Influencers?
Not all influencers are the same, however. In fact, there are plenty of phonies and lame ducks out there. So how do you determine whether they can make a difference for your brand ROI? Here are three ways.
1. Relevance
You need to select influencers who have a snug contextual fit with your business so that the content shared by the influencer reaches a relevant audience. Scott Disick and Kourtney Kardashian won’t cut it for a B2B SaaS solution, for example.
To gauge whether the influencer is relevant to your brand, answer the following questions:
- Is the influencer an expert in [your brand’s industry]?
- Is the influencer well-spoken in [defined topic].
- Is the influencer [place]-based (if geographic relevance matters)?
- Does the influencer’s audience match the demographics your brand targets?
2. Reach
Reach refers to the…
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