In 2019, the line between online marketers and influencers will become more blurred.

The influencer market is booming, especially with the introduction of the micro-influencer. Because influencers are quickly becoming more affordable, I have detailed some of the pros of each advertising method.

Pros for influencers:

Better targeting of demographics

Even with the massive amounts of data available through Google and Facebook, online marketers still cannot compete with influencers’ demographic targeting. Your demographic is already watching the influencer’s content, you simply need to put your product in front of them.

For example, for a vehicle brand, a sponsored video by a YouTube channel that reviews cars will be more effective at targeting your demographic than a social media advert. A social media advert may get more website traffic, but a lot of this traffic will be casual audiences, whereas the YouTube channel will be able to target enthusiasts who are more inclined to spend money.

A friendlier way of advertising

Not everything needs to be advertised in a way that wows an audience, and sometimes someone giving a recommendation does a much more effective job of selling a product. Because influencers are able to talk directly to consumers, their recommendation feels like it’s coming from a friend, rather than a brand.

For the beauty and fashion industry, this has proved really effective for advertising. Additionally, we’ve now seen cosmetics companies pay influencers to slander brands. Whilst this isn’t a positive move for an advertiser, it highlights the effectiveness of these influencers’ voices.

Knowing your advertiser

Trusting a new company with your advertising can be intimidating; especially when they’re are so many bad marketing agencies around. One huge benefit with hiring an influencer is that you get a sense of their work, in addition to knowing their face, without even needing to get in touch.

Pros for online marketers:

Purpose-made advertising campaigns

Advertising usually requires a bespoke plan, as opposed to sticking to one format.

Whilst we know that influencers are beneficial to a lot of industries (especially beauty and fashion), there are also many that can’t benefit, so require a more detailed advertising plan. These plans can include; PPC, networking, social media ads, SEO, remarketing, and more. An online marketer will then decide which of these advertising methods will be most effective at creating sales/leads based on your industry, products, and competition.

This is the core of an online marketers’ job, as opposed to an influencer who will be more focused on creating quality content for their audience.

Easier tracking of return on investment

Through website analytics online marketers can determine the effectiveness of a campaign, and roughly how many leads or sales were generated because of an advertising method. Then, the marketer can determine how to make it more effective in the future, or if the advertising needs a more significant shift in direction.

With influencers, the return on investment is more vague, and often seeing if there has been any return on investment becomes very difficult. Yes, you can provide discount codes for their audience to help track the sales, but this isn’t definitive data, and probably won’t account for the total amount of sales generated by the advert. Additionally, there is very limited data for improving the effectiveness of advertising, preventing scalability.

Protected from negative implications

As influencers are personally tied to your brand, any negative press on them is also negative press on your brand. The upside of using an online marketer is that they’re not usually under any limelight. Their brand doesn’t directly affect yours, and the likelihood of them being linked to a scandal is very low.

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