Ralph Lauren – The question these brands must answer is how

The question these brands must answer is how they can continue to attract investment to influence programs as overall marketing budgets become tighter. Brands that have active and well-established partnerships with influencers have an advantage at this stage because they can use the influencer’s deep connection with their audience and the influencer’s familiarity with the brand to maintain a flow of content. To ensure their survival, association managers must fully understand the return on investment of their influencers and make the most of it to ensure that they can reach an engaged, responsive and attentive audience at this time and beyond. Net-a-Porter, Ralph Lauren Victoria Secret and other retailers have suspended their affiliate marketing programs while others are stopping or even abandoning their relationships with influencers. To better understand what survival looks like, we will examine two different brand scenarios that companies are currently experiencing, how these different circumstances are likely to affect their influencing strategies and what they can do to make the most of influencers. Molly Young of Impact examines two different brand scenarios that companies are currently experiencing, how these different circumstances are likely to affect influencers’ marketing strategies, suggestions for determining return on investment and what they can do to make the most of influencers. As a result, these companies reduce their marketing expenses by necessity, which directly impacts their influencer programs. Because influencing partnerships are long-term relationships, it is better to work with reduced budgets than to abandon these programs altogether. This strategy is essential to the survival of all influence marketing programs. Understanding return on investment is critical to achieving organizational acceptance and increasing investment, and many influence programs that have reached operational maturity were moving in this direction even before the pandemic. Whatever the current scenario, brands have the opportunity to strengthen rather than weaken their influencing programs. Another option is for brands to consider creating performance-based influencing partnerships and not spend money until they succeed. Nurturing an influencing program with resources and support, while making it a channel for acquisition, delivers results for brands over the long term. Influence marketing has gained popularity recently, and pre-pandemic forecasts predict that investments will reach $15 billion by 2022.