Influencer marketing strategies always indicate that we need to find the most humane aspect of our campaign: to inspire and motivate, to create stories, to engage personally through different channels … all with the goal of engaging our followers. All this is going to happen as the virtual has emerged as influential.
As its name suggests, social networks are conceived as a digital space where we can connect with other people, change attitudes, seek advice, learn more about our culture.
And it is in this ecosystem that some very influential individuals emerge. Especially those people who have been able to attract the attention of thousands or even millions of followers around the world because of their knowledge of certain subjects and charisma. An image that marketing experts know how to “humanize your brands” or how to take advantage of it by still creating a collective campaign.
What is a virtual influencer?
The term “virtual influencer” is only very recent. What does it compare to? Where did this trend come from and how did it spread? We will cover all these points in this article.
Meaning
“Virtual influencers” refer to entirely fictional characters representing a brand, a company, or others. This consists of filming or photographing a human face and capturing its movements in order to reproduce them on the character in 3D. Perfectly modeled, some of them. They would even be confused with real people.
Virtual influencers could dethrone human influencers
The growing popularity of virtual influencers is bringing great change. These artificially generated models gain a lot of followers on social networks every day, especially on Instagram. But how are these generated? And above all, why do they gain so much acceptance and trust among users?
First, virtual influencers are almost impossible to recognize from their rivals, human influencers. The raw beginnings of human representation in 3D are far behind and some of them have structural cartoon elements but they are apparently quite interesting.
The data published by the social analysis ensures that the performance of virtual influencers can pale any of their human colleagues.
According to the study, ” virtual influencers have almost three times more engagement than” real “influencers. This means that followers are more committed to the content of virtual influencers. “
This is a trend that never comes as a surprise, especially when we consider what it means for the future of influencer marketing. If these searches are correct, and virtual influencers are experiencing such a significant increase, logically more brands will follow this trend.
New influence … new regulations?
In addition, we must consider that virtual influencers are available free of charge, neutral, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. According to this study, they are obviously extremely popular, especially among women aged 18 to 24 years.
As we said before, the characters range from hyper-realistic presentations to cartoons, which does not discourage his followers. In fact, the virtual influential chief is Lilmicella, with 1.7 million followers, followed by a Bratz doll-like character named Nunouri with 332,000 followers. By country, 23% of the audience for virtual influencers is concentrated in the United States. Below are countries like Brazil (9%) or Russia (5%).
So far, many of these profiles have reported that it is a virtual influencer. But it would be interesting to see if these brands would be controlled in the future without identifying them as real.
For now, creating such realistic 3D models is expensive. At least more expensive than the integration of real influencers. But with the advancement of technology, these costs will decrease. And it will open the door for companies looking to use them.
What is influencer marketing and how can it help you to promote your brand?
Influencers marketing is a novel marketing strategy. It is effective to achieve a series of partnerships between brands and companies. And those with high visibility and prominence on the Internet, which is known as ‘influencers’.
The internet and especially social networks have created the presence of a series of people who can be the equivalent of celebrities or celebrities in the conventional media, who have become the reference of a huge number of users.
This influential virtual world is characterized by having many hooks and charisma. Some, like YouTubers, have several thousand (and in some cases even millions) subscribers and followers.
Clearly, these national social networks are fairly real diamonds for brands, either because of their presence to criticize a particular product or simply because of the use of a clothing brand. Or any other item may go above the integer of many of the popular acceptance of a particular brand and it may increase sales like foam.
The advantages of influencer marketing
The main benefits of using influencer marketing techniques in our campaigns are the following:
- They manage to amplify the positive messages of our brand or company.
- Much conversation is generated online about our products or services.
- Traffic to our website or the landing page of our campaign is increased.
- Influencers are perfectly followed by a huge purchasing power and very consumerist: the target audience with thousands of generations.
- If designed well, a campaign with influencers does not have to be very expensive. And a satisfactory and profitable return on investment (ROI) can be achieved.
- The brand gains reputation and prestige.
How to design an influencer marketing campaign?
To design a good influencer marketing strategy to fit into our overall marketing campaign, we must follow these steps:
- All we need to do first is to identify the most relevant influencers. And, above all, the most suitable for our products and the values of our brand or organization.
- Once we have identified the influencers (or influencers) who are interested in our promotion, we need to get a favorable attitude from them towards their products or services.
- We have to get positive reviews of our brand or product from the influencer.
- Another option is to keep the presence (content) of these advertisers more or less hidden.
- We can also invite them to launch our products in order to promote them.
What do marketing professionals think?
Most marketing and advertising professionals (about 70% according to various surveys) are in favor of this type of promotion because they consider it effective. As such, a survey has confirmed that many companies are investing up to 20% of their budget in such effective marketing campaigns and want to increase spending on this item.
The ethical question
The use of influencer marketing sometimes leads to conflicts of ethical nature and professionalism. The bottom line is that many times influencers are dedicated to publicizing certain brands or their products or to talking for a fee or consideration of some kind.
The problem is that many times there is not enough transparency. It goes without saying that the influencer is criticizing a product because it is his real opinion, ignoring that he actually does it in exchange for something. In this case, their followers may be talking about a lack of honesty and a certain kind of deception, whose commercial interests of brands and companies do not need to know that their leader’s opinion is secret.
If you have been interested in this article on influencer marketing, you can read this post to know more about it. Hope you can apply so many tactics with the strategies for your business growth.
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