Authenticity in Influencer Marketing

Authenticity is the most significant challenge to influencer marketing, and it is something all the more important the bigger you are an influencer. For example, you work with brands as an intermediary between customer and company. In this way they will pass on your recommendations in their capacity as a recommending channel to target readers who trust what you say. Or follow your example.

Influencer marketing has grown into one of the most effective channels for brands to communicate their message. Through partnerships with influencers, companies can use the trust and the reach of an influencer to achieve significant results: from more people becoming aware of your brand, all the way up to increased sales.

However, influencer marketing remains very tough. Among the mountains of challenges that enterprises face, two stand tall. First, the need for authenticity is a necessary rule in influencer marketing; second, without it success is out of reach!

Why Maintaining Authenticity Is Key

Audiences of Consumers

Today’s consumers are more savvy about marketing than ever before. They can easily perceive the difference between a purely commercial pitch aimed merely for gain or an endorsement that is authentic and genuinely enthusiastic. An Consultancy survey published in 2013 found that 88% of respondents regard originality as very important in deciding which brands to back.

Plus Social Media Flights Back!

The web never forgets. If followers feel that an influencer is merely endorsing something for the money, the association’s “fakery” will be sniffed out. This sentiment can spread out into bad publicity for both the influencer and whatever brands they are promoting.

The Long-Term ROI of Authenticity

Authenticity-based campaigns are more likely to form durable relationships with consumers. Instead of just a one-time purchase, sincere influencer collaborations can lead to sustained brand loyalty.

Understanding the Challenge of Authenticity

There are a variety of reasons why authenticity comes up as such a big problem, including inappropriate collaborations, over-commercialization, and lack of transparency. For a deeper dive into how influencer marketing strengthens your brand and why authenticity matters, check out this article on why influencer marketing builds your brand.

Mismatched Influencer Collaborations

One of the most common problems is collaborating with influencers who are a bad match for the brand’s values or target audience. For example, it comes off as less than sincere when a fitness influencer promotes sugary snacks or environmentally-minded influencers endorse brands which contribute to ecological destruction.

The Over-commercialization of Influencers

The rapid growth of influencer marketing has led to an explosion in collaborations. While this is exciting for the industry, it means that influencers often accept partners that do not fit into their normal content or brand. The over-commercialization makes it difficult for followers to tell what’s real and what is just another paid-for post.

Lack of Transparency

While most countries require influencers to disclose paid partnerships using tags like #ad or #sponsored, some don’t follow these rules. When followers spot an undisclosed partnership it can feel dishonest and tarnishes the credibility both of the influencer and the associated brand.

The “One-Off” Culture

Frequent One-night Stands. Brands tend to look for short-term gains with influencers instead of developing long-term relationships. Since one-off promotions often appear as if they are merely “let me act as usual no matter what stage we’re in,” they do not touch consumers’ hearts and can hardly be sustained.

How to Overcome Authenticity Problems

However, while it poses a challenge for influencers to be authentic in marketing, this also serves as an opportunity. Here’s how brands can get it right.

Value Alignment Is Key

When choosing influencers, it is important to consider the values they share with you. This should be preferable to looking just at numbers like the number of fans or followers: Instead examine their lifestyle content and habits and find out more closely what they stand for. Ask yourself:

Are this influencer’s ideals the same as the brand’s?
Does their attitude and tone of expression match with how we use text for branding?
Are their followers an extension of the brand target audience?

If, for example, you are an eco-friendly fashion brand, then having your influencers are people who actively promote sustainable and conscientious living is absolutely spot-on for outreach among their followers.

Cultivate Long-Term Relations

Rather than doing promotions on an ad hoc basis, work at creating enduring relationships with influencers. By building them into your long-term marketing strategy, influencers will become verdadeira advocates of your brand. Their ongoing use, consumption and endorsement of your products will feel much more sincere and convincing to their audience.

Give Creative Freedom

Many brands run into trouble when they try to control every aspect of an influencer’s content. In order to maintain authenticity, give influencers enough leeway for self-expression in dictating how they write and what their messages say. They know best who the people that they are reaching out to are, as well as what those people are willing and able to accept in terms of approach and style.

Transparency Is Key

In your pursuit of the ultimate social strategy, always encourage open and honest feedback. Make sure influencers are labeled clearly as sponsors of content and that the partnership is genuine. Trust is built on transparency, both with the influencer’s followers and the general consuming public for that brand.

Use Micro-Influencers

With big-name influencers having millions of followers, they often wind up with lower engagement rates than micro-influencers. Micro-influencers have relatively small groups of followers (typically 10,000–100,000), but these followers tend to belong to a very focused niche. They actually follow them in a real way, not just clicking “like.” Such influencers thus tend to reflect pureness and simplicity This is something that the brands they represent can put their capital on. To explore how micro-influencers drive meaningful impact, you can visit Sanmo.us.

Closely Align Campaigns

No matter what your product is, you can avoid doing campaigns that only act as advertisements for the product. Rather, communicate how your product offers true value to the locale in which it is used. Work together with influencers to design these campaigns and let the message come off as a matter of course.

For example, if your company sells coffee, do not just market it by having an influencer post “Get yours now!” Rather, ask him to spread public service messages such as “Make the best brew, step by step of my morning.”

Keep Track of Campaigns

Use social-listening tools to take the pulse of consumer sentiment during and after an influencer campaign. Look for comments, shares, and overall engagement to see if your messages are hitting home. Information gleaned from these campaigns can feed back into your marketing strategy to further increase its authenticity.

Elevating Influencer Marketing

But influencer marketing has become one of the most impactful tools a brand can employ. Ultimately, what defines successful influencer marketing is these trailblazers’ recommendations, which become trusted by their followers. True authenticity in such marketing means that brands cannot treat it as an afterthought but rather must value it at the core of their operations.

By finding the right influencers, nurturing trust-based relationships, and maintaining transparency around all actions, brands can bridge the authenticity gap and succeed in today’s fiercely competitive social media marketing world.

By setting up campaigns carefully, you’ll make what’s to say of better brand investment than your own voice and be presented as part the conversation that does really shape those neighborhoods where are her customers for life.