Does Influencer Marketing Actually Work? Here’s the Real Answer

Well, apparently everyone is now talking about influencer marketing. Marketers are throwing money at it left and right, agencies have started forming departments dedicated solely to it, and still there are some doubts — does it really work or is it a rather expensive practice of hiring someone to show off your product on social media using a ring light?

The thing is: yes, it does. At least in most cases, provided you develop an adequate approach to it.

Let’s Have a Closer Look

Statista predicted the global influencer marketing budget would grow to $24 billion by 2024. And that’s not an indicator of some kind of financial bubble — that’s an example of a market responding to changes in consumer behavior.

No one anymore just takes the word of traditional advertising. Banners are simply bypassed. Commercials are overlooked. But when your friend who has been following for the past two years makes a suggestion, it hits home.

According to a survey done by Nielsen, about 92% of customers believed personal recommendations compared to brand endorsements. It is quite clear that influencer marketing plays on the psychology of consumers in a very clever manner.

In the case of Malaysia, it can be observed that there has always been a steady rise in the influencer marketing scenario. As per a survey done by Dataxis along with Malaysian digital marketing studies, more than 70% of Malaysian brands have embraced influencer marketing in the past two years. In the wake of social media penetration exceeding 80% in Malaysia, influencer marketing gains momentum here.

Reasons For Success Of Influencer Marketing

The first thing that makes influencer marketing successful is audience trust. People trust their influencers and therefore, take recommendations. Although brands cannot benefit directly from this, they still get an entry point.

Here are some reasons why it is so effective:

• – Storytelling – It becomes possible to integrate your brand into authentic stories, which makes it natural for the audience and not at all intrusive.
• – Hyper-targeting – With a fitness influencer promoting your product/service on their Instagram page, you target the audience interested in fitness.
• – Increased engagements – In fact, micro-influencers (with 10,000-100,000 followers) can give you up to 3-6 times more engagement than mega-influencers, according to HubSpot.
• – Repurpose the content – Everything created by the influencer is going to be useful for your business and can be used again and again.
• – Search Engine Optimization – Tags, backlinks, and mentions help make your brand searchable.

And the best part about those reasons is that they are proven and result in ROI when implemented correctly.

The Honest Part – When Influencer Marketing Fails

There’s no need to be coy about it here. Influencer marketing can fail, and there are many ways in which it can fail.

Putting reach before relevance. While the temptation might be there, sometimes reaching out to a million followers isn’t worth anything if not even one of them is your customer.

Unclear objectives in the campaign. Are you trying to build awareness? Traffic? An event? The objective of the campaign determines what type of influencer and content you need.

One-time engagement with no follow-through. Nothing happens overnight. Building a relationship is important for building familiarity and trust.

Lack of consideration for quality engagement. There’s nothing worse than paying for fake followers. Always do your research before working with any influencer.

Inconsistency in voice. No one will appreciate inconsistency in the voice of your brand, especially when it comes from someone outside the company.

Influencer marketing that’s done well sees it more as a relationship than a business deal.

In What Sphere Is Influencer Marketing Successful? – Events and Live Experiences

One sphere, in which the potential of influencer marketing is visible enough, is the sphere of events and live experiences.

As we know, events are primarily associated with socializing, exchanging ideas with one another, discussing what is going on, what people plan. When influencers are invited to participate in such events, all these activities acquire a completely new meaning and generate valuable content, which would be used for reaching thousands of viewers in the audience.

This strategy was successfully used by the company called Kollysphere, which has been collaborating with influential individuals when creating content prior to and after their events. Of course, classic methods cannot be overlooked when organizing such events, but influencer marketing definitely beats them in terms of its impact.

Indeed, those events that are not popular due to common promotion strategies would become many times more attractive thanks to influencer marketing.

Micro Influencers vs. Macro Influencers – Which is More Effective?

That’s by far one of the top questions that brands have. And it all comes down to what the goal of the campaign is.

Macro-influencers (>100K – 1 million followers)

• – High reach and visibility
• – Good for brand-awareness campaigns
• – Expensive per post
• – Low engagement rate

Micro-influencers (>10K – 100K followers)

• – Strong, highly engaged communities
• – Highly believable and relatable
• – More affordable – best for small budgets
• – Great for conversion-based campaigns

Nano-influencers (<10K followers)

• – Niche audience segments
• – Highly-engaged followers
• – Good for local campaigns

For Malaysian brands working in the middle market sector, micro-influencers represent the best value for money. They’re more affordable and authentic, with highly-engaged audiences.

Determining the Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing

That is where the key problem with many influencer marketing programs resides. If you do not track your results, you cannot improve yourself and learn from mistakes. Also, you will be unable to provide any evidence of success.

Key performance indicators:

• – Impressions/Reach – How many users viewed your posts?
• – Engagement Rate – How many likes, comments, shares did you get relative to your follower count?
• – Click-Through Rate (CTR) – Are there clicks on links in posts from your target audience?
• – Conversion Rate – Were there any sales or subscriptions?
• – Cost-per-Engagement/Cost-per-Acquisition – That is all that counts.
• – Sentiment – Are people saying nice things about you? Is it an actual discussion?

It becomes pretty easy thanks to current capabilities of influencer marketing software or even simple UTMs in Google Analytics. There is absolutely no reason to launch such campaigns blindly anymore.

Influencer Marketing Insights in Relation to Malaysia’s Market

Firstly, the reason why Malaysia is a very interesting country to research is that it is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural society in which people use a variety of social media like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Different languages and cultures influence the effectiveness of content marketing.

The three communities include different influencers in each of them. In case any marketing campaign fails to take into account the cultural differences between these communities, the results will be worse than those that could be achieved by conducting a carefully segmented campaign.

According to the study conducted by Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), the rate of content consumption increased by 38% following the pandemic. Short-form videos have led in terms of the content increase. As a result, this finding would be beneficial to influencer marketing since it is much easier to make content go viral using TikTok.

Agencies like Kollysphere agency have considered these factors in their influencer marketing campaigns.

• Strategies to Kickstart Influencer Marketing Campaign

The following strategies should guide you on how to kickstart your influencer marketing campaign:

• 1. Define your goal: You can either want to create awareness, conversions, leads or participate in events.
• 2. Understand your target market: Besides understanding their demographics, ensure that you understand their preferences and social media channels.
• 3. Pick influencers whose values are similar to yours without necessarily looking at the size of their followers.
• 4. Be direct but give space for creativity to discuss what else they want other than the goals.
• 5. Ensure that any content that is developed through your campaign is shared by everyone.
• 6. Track all the activities including UTM links, promotional code, amongst others.
• 7. Create partnerships rather than collaboration.

The most effective strategies in an influencer marketing campaign include recommendation campaigns because people get recommended by influencers as part of their daily activities rather than as product owners.

Does Influencer Marketing Work?

This problem does not lie in whether influencer marketing works or not. Currently, influencer marketing undoubtedly works and will further grow into a highly effective way of advertising all around the world, including in Malaysia.

It is only necessary to determine whether you have applied a strategy to capitalize on your efforts.

Incorporating the right influencers, having the correct briefs, applying the right metric system, and even better – under the guidance of Kollysphere events experts, influencer marketing will prove very beneficial for your company.

Nothing miraculous or sudden occurs here. However, if done right, it can be called one of the most effective ways of branding ever developed.