The Sunday Mail
Big Business Ideas
Stephene Chikozho
MARKETING is too important to leave it entirely to the marketing department.
It affects key decisions about a brand, services, products, planning, income and expenditure. Founders and CEOs should, therefore, play a critical role in marketing.
In a thriving business, chief executive officers (CEOs) are perhaps the most effective at capturing an audience.
Influencer marketing has become one of the hottest trends for businesses in Africa and beyond.
With ever-evolving markets, there are many reasons why.
Most importantly, it is a powerful and effective way to organically connect with prospective clients and build brand awareness.
Does it really make sense for an African business to invest in the founder or CEO brand, or is there a better way a company can spend its money?
Before we attempt to provide answers, we should unpack influencer marketing itself.
An influencer is someone who can get your target audience to engage with your brand, product or service.
This eventually leads to growth in brand equity, sales and revenue.
That is the ultimate goal of employing a person of influence to speak on behalf of your business.
Over the years and to some extent to this very day, influencers were celebrities in the arts, sports and other media-related fields.
These were actors, musicians, star athletes, top businessmen and many others.
In the present day, an influencer has evolved to be someone who has a massive social media presence and clout.
These people can advertise brands, services and products that their audience will buy.
In Africa, there are big influencers with millions of followers, and micro-influencers who have followers that pursue a specific interest or niche.
Either way, brands have flocked to these new-age influencers.
The reason is simple — these influencers have followers whom brands could target and turn into customers.
It is from the trends outlined above that a new type of influencer has emerged, who is changing the game for businesses and how they carry out their branding – the social influencer founder or CEO.
Until recently, only the founders and CEOs of well-established global companies had any sort of following on social media.
That is no longer true.
There are now business leaders who are extremely popular on social media and people know their company’s brand through them.
These are founders and CEOs who are popular in their niche or domain to which they sell.
Let us face it. It is not an easy task to build a loyal brand following for your business on social media.
It is a long, tiring endeavour and takes consistency, relevance, resilience and commitment to gain the following that a business will deem suitable.
In contrast, it is far easier to be an individual social influencer, especially if you are not a business owner or leader.
A simple reason for this is that these people have insights that resonate with their peers and fellow audiences.
They talk about things that certain people want to hear.
They are also experts in their field.
Nowadays, marketing is constantly evolving.
We often see emerging ways to reach the right audience.
Methods to do this are constantly changing, too. Businesses are trying every technique to find their way to success.
Social influencer CEOs can help bolster this and find avenues of growth the business did not know even existed.
If African businesses have CEOs with a sizeable and loyal following, who listen to what they have to say, it becomes that much easier to market and position the business.
These converted people are the ones African businesses can see as the ideal customers and people who can purchase the product or service being offered.
In addition, a CEO who commands a social media following can easily benefit the business in that the people who follow such a leader are not only potential customers but also present potential networking opportunities.
The human touch to branding
The ultimate goal of being a social influencer founder or CEO is to uplift your business and have a positive impact on it — be it in terms of revenue, brand recognition or networking.
The CEO can play a big role in building trust and humanising the product or service.
Clearly, founder or CEO influencer marketing:
establishes the founder or CEO as an industry thought leader
connects and retains customers
is cost-effective
drives employee recruitment
return on investment is usually good
introduces brand-to-brand ambassadors
is targetable and trackable
is an effective alternative to traditional advertising
Areas to keep an eye on
Founders and CEOs do not necessarily need to be spending hours on end on social media to get people to engage with their brands.
It is all about finding a way to connect with people in their community and help in creating some hype and positive vibe for the business.
Becoming a social influencer CEO takes some time and effort.
Overnight success is the result of years of continuous hard work.
While the founder or CEO influencer marketing channel can have positive impact, you still need a great product or service, which solves a real pain point for the customer.
Influencer marketing has to be used in combination with product marketing.
In addition, founder or CEO influencer marketing is not free.
To do it well, there is need for investment in time and other resources in engaging content creation.
Whether founder or CEO influencer marketing works for everyone is also debatable.
Founders and CEOs come with different personalities and traits, so are their strengths and weaknesses.
The same applies to the nature of their businesses and the markets in which they compete.
More importantly, how do you deal with the customer attachment to the founder or CEO that results from influencer marketing?
What if the CEO leaves?
What is the impact on the continuity and sustainability of the business?
These are important questions —which, based on specific circumstances affecting African businesses — need answers prior to or during execution for alignment and overall business success.
Stephene Chikozho is the managing director of Urbane Create Agency — a strategy, marketing and advertising agency. He writes in his personal capacity.
You can follow him on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) WhatsApp +263772409651 or email managingpartner@urbanecreate.com
