Influencer marketing is the new strategy adopted by marketers who had recently found themselves in a difficult situation, trying to sell to buyers the old school way. That was not working anymore, to their disappointment. People had gotten too smart to fall for advertisement that they deemed to be fake or “clearly pushy” to take note of. This left marketers with little choice until the idea of influencer marketing lighted up in somebody’s mind.

• Marketing Plan B in Action

This kind of marketing does the same thing in an innovative way, to try to sell to potential customers with an alternate marketing strategy, with Plan B!

Influencer marketing platform provides the option for an intermediary in the form of an influencer to be hire by marketers to do the job instead of reaching out directly to potential customers.

This intermediary is a public figure who commands hundreds of thousands of followers over social media. For that matter, it can be anyone as long as they have a huge fan following and are in some way relevant to the product being marketed.

• Profiting From The Monkey Business

Influencer marketing basically involves marketing to end users in-directly via influencers. The influence of the public figures on a huge number of people is what does the trick because the influencer’s fans hold him in high esteem, approve of what he does, and try to follow him.

For instance, if an influencer wore a particular brand’s cap or a ring or a shirt, there would be a high probability that just like a monkey, many of his fans would follow suit!

This has to do with the psyche of fans, as they would look at the influencer’s actions from the lens of goodwill and appreciation for him. This is exactly the thing, which the marketers would be banking on since they would try to use that perspective to their financial benefit, profiting the influencer in the process as well.

Therefore, when an influencer wears a certain brand, many in his circle would want to wear the same item to associate them with him even more. This is what influencer marketing is all about and is the indirect way to selling products to customers with influencers in the loop.

• Exploiting the Trust of Blind Followers

Strictly speaking, influencer marketing is about exploiting the trust that fans have on influencers for the sake of financial gain, with the influencer guilty of abetting!

This is what influencer marketing is in a nutshell. It relies on the sympathy for a public figure and exploits into earn business profit out of it.

Whether or not it is unethical is not something marketers care about and in most instances, influencers do not care either, which many sound as unfortunate to many.

If both the parties are making a good profit out of doing a simple act as just displaying something, they are both happy to do so irrespective of whether the influencer honestly and genuinely appreciates the product he is displaying.

• The Necessary Social Media Broadcast

The way that influencer marketing is put into action is with the use of social media. This is because social media is informal and is a place where influencers informally interact with their fans.

This also means that since influencers are posting from their verified official accounts, therefore, it gives the impression that whatever they share is a choice they consciously make instead of forced by marketers to do so.

So the choice for a clothing brand or a food brand perceived as personal by followers, free from external pressure.

Little do they know that it is not free from external influence as they think it to be, but actually a clever marketing gimmick to fool them into buying!

• Soft Marketing Tactic Nevertheless

However, it is certainly true that influencer marketing is different from mainstream advertisement in that it is neither pushy, nor does it repeat the same tagline over and over again as advertisements played on TV and the internet routinely do and irritate people with it.

It is very simple and soft because it hides behind the personal tastes and likes of an influencer. Therefore, there is no room to expose it as real marketing because that would call off its bluff completely!

Influencer marketing therefore is the new game plan in the marketing world that takes aim at customers who have become smart over the years, in a bid to try and entice them again as they have gone out of the control of marketers! These customers now turn deaf ears and blind eyes to advertisement, which they now consider as junk and a means to minting money instead of offering them some real benefit as value for their money.

• Proven Results Previously

Studies show that fans would go great lengths trying to buy the exact same product that an influencer seen pictured with. This was due to many reasons such as the excitement and satisfaction they got from doing what their influencer did. In some odd way, it seemed right for them to replicate his actions. This way, they felt better and had a sense of belongingness to the larger community that formed the huge fan base of the influencer.