The FTC is getting involved in influencer marketing

The FTC is getting involved in influencer marketing

When it comes to successful ways to market your business, word of mouth has always been an amazing way to boost sales in a short amount of time.  Word of mouth is so powerful that we've seen hundreds of powerful influencers show up out of nowhere and start charging businesses to post positive content about them.  Influencer marketing is essentially word of mouth marketing in a digital form, and that is why it works so well.  When it comes to influencer marketing, there have been studies that have come to the conclusion that for every $1.00 spent earns you $6.50 in return.  There are even businesses that are seeing a $20 return for every $1.00 spent, which is a massive ROI for such a simple marketing tactic.

Since the surge of influencers charging for posts, there have been more things happening to the influencers themselves, mainly lawsuits due to the influencers publishing posts they get paid for and help boost the company that paid for it.  The FTC has actually gotten involved with influencer marketing and now makes these people disclose the business relationship, if any, with the products they're promoting.  This happened for the same reason review companies were taken down, you can't falsely promote something and manipulate the market to turn a profit.  This means the influencers can't say they love your product, post to all their social media accounts, and not disclose they were paid for the posts.  If they were paid for the post and don't disclose they were paid, they could actually get their accounts shut down, or they could be in pretty hot water with the federal trade commission for manipulating peoples opinions of a product or service.

Because of the FTC getting involved in Influencer marketing, big corporations are rethinking who they work with, and have actually cut ties with big influencers that won't add a disclosure detailing the relationship between the two.  The businesses are cutting ties because it's better to be safe than risk it and be sorry later on when the FTC starts to crack down even more on influencers who are falsely reviewing products or services for a monetary gain.

Some of you are asking "What is the FTC and what do they do?" so I'll explain.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a government agency that is considered independent, that protects consumers like me and you from scams and false information anywhere in the world, even online.  They ensure to keep the market strong and competitive, removing false claims and altered reviews, by enforcing the laws to remove anyone that is essentially selling snake oil.  Some of you will say they're evil, others will say it's a necessity, but most of us don't really care because we don't break these types of rules and are safe from their judgment lol

If you want to be safe when it comes to influencer marketing, you need to contact all potential influencers and make sure they will post some sort of disclosure explaining your business relationship between you and them.  If the influencer says they don't want to post something like that, you'll need to avoid using them as your influencer because it could be bad for your business later on.  You never want to be targeted by the FTC for something negative because you could be in pretty deep trouble

In conclusion
When you want to boost your sales, word of mouth marketing is always a great thing to produce, and influencer marketing is a sort of digital word of mouth marketing, which is why people around the world are paying these influencers to push their products or services.  To be safe, only work with influencers willing to put up a disclosure to keep both parties safe from trade laws.  This means you shouldn't work with influencers who don't want to advertise that your promotion was a paid one because you could lose more than a little bit of popularity, you could have the FTC on your case.


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Tommy Carey