KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 — Influencer advertising and marketing has develop into a super-hot development in advertising and marketing over the previous few years.
Thanks to smartphones, social media channels have revolutionised the way in which client behaviour is formed.
Conventionally, brands needed to primarily depend on TV or radio commercials, print adverts or out-of-home promoting to get seen.
Today, the sky is the restrict for brands that want to attain out to their viewers.
Apart from digital media, many brands at the moment flip to social media influencers to market their services or products.
Thanks to the demand, it looks as if everybody with a cell phone and a “trending” social media account can bounce on the bandwagon to develop into the following social media superstar to take a slice of brands’ advertising and marketing budgets.
The actuality, nonetheless, isn’t that rosy.
While the quantity of followers is one of the numerous components to find out if somebody’s social media affect is worthy, there are various different parts to evaluate earlier than calling somebody an influencer.
But, it appears some are dishonest their method onto the influencer advertising and marketing gravy practice.
According to digital advertising and marketing skilled Prashan Chitty, an influencer is kind of merely somebody who has the facility to affect somebody.
“You can’t be an influencer for those who can’t affect your viewers.”
Prashan mentioned there are various fake social media influencers with a big quantity of followers however don’t have any energy to affect them.
“This is as a result of the followers are fake and don’t have interaction with the content material.
“For instance, there are some influencers with a whole bunch of 1000’s of followers however solely a handful of folks have interaction with their posts on social media.
“Chances are their followers are bots or the influencer is not related to his or her followers,” mentioned Prashan who can also be the founder of Xeno Entertainment and has managed social media influencers for model advertising and marketing over the previous decade.
For the uninitiated, a bot is a software program programme that performs automated and pre-defined duties.
While fake influencers generally is a big legal responsibility for brands, Prashan mentioned not all genuine influencers are influential.
According to him, an actual influencer should generate partaking content material and never simply be a reasonably face.
“Pretty-looking influencers usually promote lower than an excellent content material creator.
“Content creators who put thought into their content material for social media have a lot larger engagement than somebody with a reasonably face holding a product.”
Xeno Entertainment founder Prashan Chitty shares his views on the influencer advertising and marketing business. — Picture by Raymond Manuel
He mentioned shoppers at the moment are extra conscious of deceitful tips fake influencers use to inflate their numbers to realize promoting income.
“The straightforward method is to ask influencers to supply their social media insights report back to look into their followers’ demographic, geographical location and web page engagement earlier than contemplating them.”
Prashan mentioned the problem now’s that anybody with a considerable quantity of followers needs to develop into an influencer to realize advert income.
“That’s not the way it works. Real influencers should make investments tons of effort and time to create worthy and fascinating content material often.”
To him, a excessive quantity of followers will not be the instant consider figuring out the standard of an influencer.
Sharing an identical sentiment, VoxEureka deputy managing director Crystalbelle Lau mentioned fake influencers pose a major threat to the digital advertising and marketing panorama.
“By diverting promoting budgets in direction of engagements that lack effectiveness, brands could obtain disappointing marketing campaign outcomes, particularly because the attain and affect claimed are sometimes not backed by an genuine viewers genuinely within the model’s choices.”
Lau mentioned any affiliation with fake influencers might additionally tarnish a model’s picture if perceived as inauthentic by its audience, probably affecting their client’s belief over time.
“Ultimately, these entities contribute to a diminished perceived worth of influencer advertising and marketing, compelling the business to undertake extra stringent vetting processes.”
It’s nonetheless too recent
Prashan mentioned the influencer advertising and marketing sector continues to be thought-about new and many consumers are nonetheless studying its potential.
“The actual increase got here in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic when many brands shifted focus to digital channels to market their merchandise.
“But, some shoppers are nonetheless not totally educated about influencer advertising and marketing and should not establish the correct influencers for his or her campaigns.”
According to him, there isn’t a fastened value on influencer advertising and marketing in Malaysia and it’s usually measured by the particular person’s recognition.
“If the influencer is large and in demand, will probably be as much as the particular person to set the value. We have influencers who cost nothing lower than RM100,000 for a easy job.”
Comparing Malaysia with different international locations, Prashan mentioned the influencer market right here has but to mature.
“China’s influencer market is tremendous mature and shoppers don’t even pay influencers for his or her providers. They solely do affiliate internet marketing with influencers who take the model’s merchandise and promote in livestream in trade for a fee from the gross sales.”
According to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2024 by Influencer Marketing Hub, the business is about to develop to roughly US$24 billion (RM114.80 billion) globally by the tip of this 12 months.
Despite the demand, the rise of fake social media influencers and the effectiveness of the advertising and marketing marketing campaign stay a rising concern.
The report mentioned 55 per cent of the respondents intend to make use of synthetic intelligence (AI) for influencer identification whereas 63 per cent plan to make use of AI to execute their influencer campaigns.
