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When the term "influencer marketing" comes up, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Is it people posing with products, pretending to use them? Is it people showing off their new clothes haul and taking videos getting ready? Or is it of people reviewing products who got them for free, giving amazing reviews when you have the same products and know that it isn’t good?

Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. Day by day, campaign by campaign, event after event, one thing remains completely clear in Trinidad and Tobago; businesses and the popular people we class as influencers have little understanding of influencer marketing.

What is influencer marketing? Well, let me offer up a definition from HubSpot: “Influencer marketing employs leading, niche content creators to improve brand awareness, increase traffic, and drive messages to brands' target audiences. It's this collaboration between brands and creators that allows businesses to expand their reach across their buyer personas.”

The three key goals of influencer marketing are sales, lead generation and brand awareness. Anytime a brand is looking to work with an influencer, the campaign should ultimately try to satisfy one of these goals.

Here in TT, we have some major problems when businesses try to use influencer marketing, and even more problems with the influencers themselves.

Businesses haven’t wrapped their mind around the fact that influencers are not just popular people with a large following. Influencers get the name because they can ultimately influence their audience to take action, aka to help them make a purchasing decision. They are typically experts in whatever niche they are in and are viewed as experts by their audience. When they showcase a product, they can mobilise their audience to go out and buy.

Businesses instead tend to find popular people and send them all sorts of random products or bring them in on campaigns that are unrelated to their niche, to try to take advantage of their following.

Influencers in TT are making the grave mistake of selling access to their audience to any and everybody for money. They will take on contracts from companies/products that have no relation to their content.

Here is an example. Last week, a company launched a new type of laundry detergent that is supposed to be economically friendly, targeting lower-income households. They threw an extravagant soiree at a hotel and invited all the people they could find with a high following on TikTok to check out the new detergent.

In the speech, they mentioned that soap has not been affordable to a wide section of households.

Why throw an event at a venue that your target market cannot afford? Why would you bring popular people who have never spoken about laundry soap or anything close to your niche?

As an influencer, why would you accept an invite to a brand that has no relation to the content you