The Untold Truth about Influencer Marketing

An Introduction to Influencer Marketing

Did you know that most companies utilize Influencer Marketing as one of their main strategies? This strategy involves engaging key individuals who produce niche content (e.g., health and fitness, fashion, beauty, travel) to bring across a brand’s message to a sizeable target market.

This form of marketing has risen to prominence over the past five years, and is forecasted to reach $15 billion by 2022.  An Insider Intelligence forecast has illustrated that 67.9% of marketers from sizeable companies in the United States will use influencer marketing in 2021, and this number is predicted to increase to 72.5% in 2022.

Influencer Marketing Fraud

The prevalent utilization of Influencer Marketing has brought about a rise of fake influencers. These fake influencers artificially alter their followers and engagement rates, as part of a facade to possess the same value as a genuine influencer. These fake influencers then form connections with brands, which is known as ‘Influencer Marketing Fraud’. In 2019 alone, influencer fraud had cost companies $1.3 Billion USD.

How do we then differentiate fake influencers from the real ones?

1. Fake Followers

A fake influencer is easily identified through disproportional engagement rates (a high follower count but low engagement rate). In this case, there is a high chance that the influencer in question purchased fake followers from internet vendors, such as goread.io or buzzoid. These followers have a high chance of being bots, and only provide statistical value (follower counts).

2. Participation in Engagement Pods

In recent years, social media sites such as Instagram have started to clamp down on paid artificial growth services. Despite their valiant efforts, many influencers have resorted to manipulating Instagram’s algorithm by coordinating comments and likes on posts. This is known as ‘Engagement Pods’. These pods comprise of groups (mainly Telegram, Facebook and Discord) of users who share a mutual desire for artificially increasing engagement.

This form of artificial engagement is more difficult to detect it comes from real users. However, comments given are often generic and predictable overtime.

Conclusion

Picking the right influencers for your brand is crucial towards your brand’s success. It is quintessential to not only determine their engagement and reach, but also the authenticity of their engagement.

What are some of the techniques you would use to pick Influencers for your brand? Make sure to share them in the comments!