Thinking of working with automotive social media influencers? Sounds great, doesn’t it? Lots of followers, views, and puts your name out there right? Yes, but it’s important to stop and consider all angles.
Influencers are not always worth the cost.
Big automotive social media influencers sometimes want expensive parts for free or huge sums of money to represent your company. It’s important to look at the cost compared to what you’re receiving. Your contract should be very clear about how often your company is mentioned, the quality and type of mentions, whether re-shares count, whether they can rep a competitor in the future, and so much more.
Look at the stats.
Someone can have a huge following, but if they only post once a month, they’re not going to have great engagement, and they’re not going to be effective for you. Are their followers mirrors for your ideal customer? Are their followers after products or services like yours, or are they following for other reasons?
For instance, there are a lot of female car enthusiasts on Instagram. The most popular tend to have certain physical attributes, which begs the questions: who is here for her technical insight and racing, and how many are following just for eye candy? Look at their content. Where are your eyes drawn to? If it’s her and not the car or products being promoted, that’s probably also true for at least some of her audience.
There are also popular influencers that seem tempting, but who are hard to work with. More than once, we’ve seen an influencer who doesn’t get their way throw an online fit. Negative attention with an influencer is difficult to manage. They tend to have fans who love to get involved, which often means a deluge of social media comments, messages, reviews and emails that can overwhelm your staff and drown out your message.
Because race car!
Putting your name on a race car feels good. One of our clients is a race car driver and our logo is on their car. How much business we have gotten from it? Zero.
This might be an unfair comparison since we’re a marketing firm and not a parts company, but most people don’t associate race cars with their own car. It used to be that a famous driver could spur motivation to buy, but the increased content available online has caused a disconnect in this area. There are more choices than there have ever been. Very few companies are the only one in their market and big sponsorships require big money. It may be worth it in your particular situation, but it may not. (Good news: we’re experts in helping companies decide this!)
Get the right help.
Be smart with your marketing budget. Don’t throw money at problems and hope for the best. Instead, work with the best. Our team at McWilliams Ink can help guide you through social media marketing, ads, SEO and all your digital marketing needs. We can also protect you from the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to automotive social media influencers.
For more information, questions, comments, and concerns please reach out to use via our contact form https://mcwilliamsink.com/contact-us/
Have a fantastic day!