On the topic of influencer marketing, a common misconception is that influencers are *only* celebrities, tv stars, and famous artists. While it is true that members of this particular group of influencers have high visibility and reach, there are also risks associated with engaging a high visibility influencer in your marketing efforts. Some of these risks are:
- "Capture by spokesperson" : When a single individual becomes highly coupled with the success of a brand, that gives them too much leverage. This leverage often increases the cost of marketing efforts. There are notorious examples where the celebrity was able to negotiate equity stakes in the double digits (of the entire market value of the brand).
- Reputational risk : Imagine this scenario: your brand markets a line of hair products for men and hires a famous soccer player with a beautiful head full of hair as a spokesperson. The risk: one day, the athlete decides to shave his head without notice! This example is a real-life situation that recently happened to a famous brand in the United Kingdom. The sales of the brand dropped by 40% overnight.
Vertical influencers to the rescue!
There are other kinds of influencers: People regarded by the public as references for specific market verticals, think: Gamers, Youtubers, Product reviewers, locally recognized people, activists, and the list goes on and on.
By engaging with vertical influencers, you can reduce the cost of your campaign and hedge on the risk (it is better to have 100 influencers with less global prominence than one highly paid and super high international visibility.)
You can find the top influencers and key opinion leaders (KOLs) for any concept and language using the search bar above. Our technology ranks and sorts the influencers by their level of influence for the specific concept in your search query.
Influencer Marketing FAQ
What's the Difference Between Reach, Influence and Expertise?
When deciding which Influencer or KOL to engage with, there are different metrics one can look at:
Reach | The Reach of an influencer is the total number of people the influencer might be able to reach. |
Influence | The Influence metric is more sophisticated than Reach; it captures the total number of people the influencer might be able to reach that are also influencers for that topic. This idea is usually illustrated with the " Two Step Flow of Communication " diagram, popularized by Lazarsfeld and Katz around years 1955-1956. |
Expertise | The Expertise metric captures how knowledgeable is an influencer or KOL about a given topic. |