Have traditional marketing strategies truly died out? Why a multidimensional system of influencer marketing has a more promising future in a post pandemic world?

Before we can step in discussing the trend of influencer marketing considering the global impact of Covid-19 at present, it is of great necessity to first take a look at how influencers and marketing surrounding it are defined.

In fact, the definition of influencer marketing have been changing above suspicion according to technological advancement. Influencers have long existed and they exert their influences upon others (mainly their followers) in different forms under different background of times. In a narrow sense, influencers in the dot com era are referred to the group of people who can influence the buying decision of potential buyers (followers) by promoting or recommending the products or services on social media. Therefore influencer marketing, as a newer concept compared to traditional marketing, would simply indicate the use the help of these experts in particular fields or charismatic Kols to display and advertise items via endorsements or other forms.

It then leads to another question: why is influencer marketing important in terms of the role it plays in digital marketing to challenge traditional marketing?

With the conventional use of social media for marketing, marketers can be easily overwhelmed by the workload from planning content, designing format, integrating a strategy set to targeting audience and persuading purchase at last. This is not to mention that marketers now have to understand the constantly changing big data algorithms in pursuit of search engine optimization. However, the adoption of influencer marketing, especially the adjusted ones to be discussed soon, can save all the troubles mentioned and marketers can put all of their efforts in finding the right influencers while updating their methodology consistently.

At this turning point (pandemic) that everyone around the globe faces at the moment, the outlook on influencer marketing might need to be reevaluated. Indeed, the impact of the spread of Covid-19 is so significant that there is a word deliberately used to characterize our current situations following the changes in ideology and in societal structure brought about by such disastrous event: the post-pandemic world.

To start with, it can be foreseen that marketers would have to tell a better story and in a realistic way at the same time. This has requested a higher standard for influencers to convey messages to their audience. These messages and content have to adjust to the new living habits that influencers just have developed (and most of us might have as well). It needs to be made clear how our products can stand out among all other things during quarantine and travel restriction. A group of people selected to influence would together discover the new way of usage and market for Party A accordingly. In addition, influencers would have to compete in a more realistic dimension as well. The importance of an influencer would no longer be measured in terms of number of followers but the rate of engagement and depth of connection of personal bonds instead. It means that micro-influencers would be the resources that brands seek after and the necessity to build a influencer network (as a way to integrate human resources) to make more strategic moves would be added to the agenda.

Secondly, the portion of online marketing would grow even faster as the traditional advertising techniques such as outdoor bill boards and offline store advertisements would no longer be effective. It is now the time that the popularity of online content rockets and that would further strengthen the importance of influencers as they are considered trustworthy among all other content from unknown source. Moreover, the lives held deliberately to boost sales during that period are estimated to become a more common thing. In China, such way of live marketing by influencers has already consolidated its status as a major tool to sell in form of Business to Customers (via influencers). Celebrities and even the founders of the businesses have joined in this game to make individual sales.

Last but not least, the relationships between the companies and the influencers may be bound by a relatively long term in-house contract rather than out of a one time distribution task purpose. In seek of a more efficient way of collaboration with influencers in an age that emphasizes customer relationship and lifetime customer value, marketers have more motivation to build an in-house influencer program to support successful switch up of relationship mode. The identity of influencers and marketers might gradually merge meaning influencers should have the basic marketing skills if not more whereas marketers themselves might seek opportunities to become more influential. In addition, marketers might shoulder more management workload (similarly managers have got to have a more comprehensive knowledge pool) suggesting a likelihood of a more bottom up structure for influencer marketing. The marketing part of the business mode with cooperation with influencers is more efficient because organizations focus on maintaining good relationship with influencers and influencers therefore maintain good relationships with customers. It would save a great deal of budget on researching and targeting the niche market.

Nonetheless, such emphasis on influence marketing would cause an immediate challenge for companies to deal with. As the system of the influencer network become more and more complicated, the cost to maintain and update it would rise in the meantime. Manual search for influencers would be expensive and inefficient whereas the algorithms of computer generated list of influencers might be exploited, which in turn hinders the process of search for qualified and related influencers. The lethality of such supposedly promising marketing strategy lies in distrust. Untrustworthy influencers generated inappropriately have the possibility to wreck the whole system. To overcome this challenge, it might be needed to build up an organic network that encourages interaction between influencers. In this case, not only would they join forces, by doing so it also calibrates the system simultaneously. New retailing or more generally new marketing that we constantly try to innovate is always merely a more efficient way and suitable part of the bigger business mode. It takes the exploration of all diligent marketers and consumers and its future is definitely worth waiting for.