The Pros and Cons of Local Influencers in T&T

Influencers have become a key aspect of local marketing. Their ability to bring awareness, engage with similar audiences and create content for a brand has made them, in some cases, a successful venture for local brands.

There are still some questions about their efficacy. In today’s blog, we are going to explore the pros and cons of brands using local influencers.

Pros:

1. They bring awareness to a brand or campaign

This relies on how the content performs. However, if done well, it can bring more attention to a product or service and help increase the chances of it being seen by more people, that otherwise wouldn't have seen the company's digital marketing.

This has been beneficial to the opening of new restaurants or bars and new products.

2. Audience Alignment

A successful influencer campaign relies heavily on the marketing team finding influencers with an audience that aligns with the company’s target audience. This ensures that the content reaches the people who would engage and actually buy the product or service.

An example of this locally is, Cedros Bay, who use influencers that are within the health, beauty and skincare industry, which are the three industries their products fall under. Much of their influencer content shows how the person integrates the product into their everyday life.

3. It Can Save Time for Your Marketing Team

Influencer marketing can alleviate your marketing team of constant content creation. Since the influencers handle the content and send you the analytics.

It will require you to organize everything around the partnership efficiently, including, content guidelines, creating the packages and handling the payment. The result of these parameters and the partnership is bulk content that can be received quickly and can be used over a long period of time.

Cons

1. There are risks involved

Local influencers are not unfamiliar with controversy. Therefore, influencer partnerships need to be well thought out and consider whether:

- If influencer marketing, as a whole, is aligned with the goal of the campaign

- The influencer's audience matches the target audience

- The background check for the influencer is thorough

- What metrics can be used to measure its success

There are many issues that can arise, therefore, the three questions above need to be answered before any influencer is attached to the brand. From the public’s perspective, this person is associated with your brand therefore, careful consideration is required before any agreement is made.

2. Measurements are unclear

Foreign influencer partnerships can be measured by reach, engagement, website link clicks and discount codes. However, the majority of local partnerships are not created with numbers in mind or well-defined KPIs for the campaign.

Protip: always have some sort of metric in place for an influencer partnership besides views, reach and engagement. This can be discount codes, affiliate links and traffic to your website (if applicable) on the day the content is posted.

3. Can Affect Your Overall Brand Image

A brand loses a certain amount of control when they work with influencers. The simplest error in the delivery can affect the way the public perceives your brand. For example, The Breeze Liquid Launch event at The Brix with many local influencers was seen as out of touch and not aligned with the product's core customers.

This must be avoided by brands by creating and sharing strict brand guidelines for content and having influencers send the content for approval before it is released to the public.

Any contracts like this must be approved by any corporate communications or public relations departments or consultants, to avoid future problems.

What do you think of local influencer marketing? Tell us in the comments or better yet be a guest contributor and respond to our article- Send us an email at info@connectivepros.com.