Influencer Marketing: Importance of Trust

How important is trust?

I think trust is the crux of the whole thing. Influencers talk about this a lot, amongst themselves. If I, for example, started promoting products or services that were not good, on A Lady in London or my channels, people would stop trusting me and I would lose all my audience and then, obviously, I would lose all my sponsorships. The opposite is true too; if I really endorse a product, vetting the products and services really carefully, and making sure that they are things that I believe in, then my readers or followers have a good experience with those products and services, then it makes them trust me more and good things happen from that, too. Trust is really important.

What do you think the big brands missed about trust?

I think, some brands are necessarily looking to work with the right influencers. They want to work with influencers and they either do a big approach, where they work with tons of different influencers, without really understanding the specific influencers and their audiences. So they miss out on that factor, because they’re just working with people who aren’t a great fit. The brands, maybe, have a good product, but the influencer isn’t the right person to work with or their demographic isn’t the right one that they are trying to reach. I think, some brands just don’t quite see the need to really get specific about working with the right influencers and the people who are going to, firstly, both believe in their product and really endorse it, personally. Secondly, have the audience who is going to be interested in it and have a positive experience with it.

Is that because the brands are not up to speed on how the channel works or are not professionalized in choosing influencers yet?

I think it’s a bit of both. I think some brands are less sophisticated. They know that they are supposed to be working with influencers, because everyone is, but they’re not quite sure how to do it. So they just take the big, broad approach. I think other brands know that they’re supposed to do it and it’s harder and it takes more time, so they think, we’ll just skip that part and go with a bunch of influencers, who are either big, so they think they’ll get a lot of return on investment. Or they’ll go with influencers they haven’t fully vetted because, again, it takes a while to vet them. Alternatively, they’ll go with an agency who, again, doesn’t fully vet or just goes with whoever signs up with them.