Why should brands care about influencers?

NEW YORK, USA: Within this online environment, Twitters, Bloggers and other online content generators and prescribers have attained a very strong relevance for brands due to their extremely high degree of power and influence over a well-segmented audience. They are able to both build trust and drive purchase decisions... and brands are fully aware of this fact.

The first Influencer Marketing status report published by Augure and elaborated with the data collected from nearly 650 marketing and communication practitioners across USA and Europe, revealed that 73 percent of those surveyed have been working in Influencer Marketing strategy for at least the last two years. In fact, 60 percent of practitioners declared they are already investing part of their budgets in Influence Marketing.

Nonetheless, the fact that this trend is still in its earliest stages is giving brands and agencies several challenges that must be faced:

• Identifying the truly relevant influencers for their own specific brands (61 percent)

• Being capable of capturing their attention and maintaining their interest (56 percent)

• Measuring and accurately assessing Influencer action ROI (44 percent)

For this reason, Augure is organizing a webinar chaired by Michael Jais, Augure's CEO and featured by Zachary Reiss-Davis of Forrester Research. They will be analyzing the current state of Influence Marketing and offering the keys for developing tailored winning strategies in this new reality. Some of their touch points will be:

• How to recognize the influencers that really count for your brand

• What are the best strategies to capture the attention of influencers and collaborate effectively with them

• How to measure the outcome of your influencer marketing programs

Zachary Reiss-Davis, of Forrester Research, who will be featuring the webinar, is focused on helping marketers reach new customers in the discovery stage of the customer life cycle using social reach strategies, including influencer marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and social advertising.