Pulse August 2018 | Page 59

“The main reasons big brands work with influencers are to shift brand perception, target new consumer groups, change the conversation, and provide engaging content.” (DMOs) are jumping on the influencer bandwagon, particularly on Instagram: the Hawaii Tourism Board, Visit Dubai and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, to name a few. Almost half of DMOs surveyed in a recent study by Skift Research report a very high or good ROI from working with influencers. The Cons to Working with Influencers While many big brands have had big wins, there have also been some epic fails over the past year. Influencer campaigns can easily go upside down if you’re not careful. From celebrities copying and pasting their instructions into their posts, to Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi controversy, to the discovery that many influencers are either buying followers and comments or have a huge percentage of fake followers, these fails illustrate how influencer marketing is the wild west of internet advertising. The FTC has put measures in place to ensure more transparency, but sometimes it’s difficult to properly scrutinize influencers. Influencers can also be a hard spend to justify for smaller brands. In one very viral incident in January of this year, a hotelier in Dublin named Paul Stenson banned all social media influencers from his hotel and adjoining café after a YouTube star asked for a free stay in exchange for promotion on her social media channels. Stenson had a point to make: if he let influencers stay for free, who ultimately pays the bills for her stay? Who pays the hotel staff? Who pays for the utilities used during that stay? And, cheekily, he added, “Maybe I should tell my staff they will be featured in your video in lieu of receiving payment for work carried out while you’re in residence?” He also argued that it put the authenticity of an influencer into question if they said good things about something just because it was free. It’s a point well-made for small brands who don’t have large marketing budgets. You may be able to take it on as a marketing expense if you’re a resort spa, but for smaller establishments, it may cut into your hard costs and profit margins, and take money out of your employees’ pockets. If you’re constantly comping influencers’ services and adjusting commissions and gratuities downward, you’re doing your staff a huge disservice. It can be difficult to quantify the ROI for an influencer campaign for spa brands. It’s hard to tell exactly when the guest made the decision to visit your spa. Even with a trackable link or discount code, “to have an exact quantifiable amount in terms of how much revenue was produced from that one visit is extremely difficult,” says Halla Rafati, public relations director for the Four Seasons in Toronto. n Influencer marketing is a powerful tool, but it isn’t for everyone. If you want to grow or gain greater market share, you’ll have to get serious about your marketing spend, tracking its ROI and how effective it is in the long run for your spa. ireNe MaCCaBaNte is the co-founder and creative director of chix creative, which specializes in branding and marketing for high-end spas and spa products. macabante has over 20 years of diverse experience in graphic design, web development, user interface design and marketing. August 2018 ■ PULSE 57