Managing expectations in influencer marketing

Managing Expectations in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is when organisations rope in influencers who may be a celebrity or an authority in the domain to promote the brand among its target customers.
Influencer marketing is the new mantra for business to carve a 'rags to riches' perception of their brands. But, influencer marketing as it seems is not a simple task because one needs to manage expectations at various levels.

Expectations of a business

The business expects the influencer to add their celebrity and influencer value to their products so that a greater customer base is attained. Not only that, in most cases, the aim is to brand a product as something trustworthy or eligible to be readily accepted by customers. Alongside, the business would like to tap into the large social following of the influencer.

The expectation of the influencer

The influencer on the other hand aside from the money he is making is conscious that the product/service doesn't downsize his stature or influencing value. Moreover, he/ she aims to increase his /her worth by association with the brand. Not only that, influencers may not always agree on a rigid script and may want more collaboration and agreement on what they want to get induced in the script. Not only that, influencers may also have different terms and timelines that would require management.

The Marketer's Expectation

As said before, any marketer with good rapport in the market would want somebody of the niche to influence for the company's products. Rather than a film celebrity marketing for educational products, they would expect some bigwigs from the educational field itself. So, that the brand's worth is not deflected or diluted or turned vague.

Expectations of the audience or prospects

The audience or prospects expect the product to hold good value if a top influencer promotes the product. So, an average product/service would be kind of betraying their expectations.

Cost Expectations

The influencer would try to demand as much as he perceives his influencing value to be. The organization would try to manage the influencer cost so that budgets for further promotions and advertising is present. The marketer would expect the influencer value induced in marketing to substantially increase demand for the product/service. The customer would expect the cost to be optimal, not very high, but the product/service quality to be great.

Advertiser's Expectations

The advertiser would expect more costs from the company to reserve top slots for advertisement and creative inputs as doing otherwise would negate the influencing value that can be created. Hence, with every influencer, even the advertising costs go up. They would expect maximum visibility of their ads or video or posts.

Social Media Expert's Expectations

For influencer posts or videos for Generation Z, Social Media Experts would prefer more of Instagram than Facebook or Twitter. Hence, channels of distribution would be restricted and focussed by them. Their expectation would be that the influencer truly caters to the audience segment.

So, influencer marketing is more like managing a lot of expectations, having clarity of what to expect from which section, and then moving forward. The influencer must be provided brand guidelines and the business should clarify the expectation they are having from the influencer. The Creative Unit, Advertisement agency, and social media agency should be clear as to how to position the influencer, and through what slots and social media channels, and at what costs. Proper sales and marketing metrics for analysis must be there in place to assess whether the desired business expectation is being achieved or not. The investment should be in a manner that returns are good for all the parties involved.