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The FTC is getting involved in influencer marketing



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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 $3.00 spent earns you $31.50 in return.  There are even businesses that are seeing a $30 return for every $3.00 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 The FTC is getting involved in influencer marketing

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

Comments

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cmoneyspinner
"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. "

Yes. I just read an article today about the FTC's recommendations. I agree with them. Honesty is business dealings is always the best.



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overcast
I think it was expected. And FTC took a lot of time to even catch up with this industry. I have seen people promoting bad products on the youtube. I think FTC needs to come up for the ads and the clickbaits too. That seems to be spamming all over the web. And I think buzzfeed type of brands spammed a lot with influencer marketing. I think it'd be surely bad if you ask me on that part there as well.



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Judas2018
This explains why Facebook changed its policy when it comes to sponsored posts. You always have to disclose by including the advertisers official Facebook page using the FB brand/advertising tool. Along with the #sp or #ad hashtag.



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Corzhens
This issue looks like a spoiler for e-commerce. Federal Trade Commission. Why do they need to get involved with the promotion of the product? Worse, they check on the feedback of consumers? It’s okay to prosecute false claims if it is damaging. Let me give an example of a damaging false claim – Gloxi is a product sold by a certain home tv shopping channel. It claims to make you grow up to 5 inches no matter what your age is. That’s definitely a false claim, right? But that Gloxi product is still in the market now. That should be investigated. Unfortunately, Gloxi is sold not in the US but in the Philippines.



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kgord
Well, there is really not enough oversight on the internet. I think anything they can do to police it, the better off it would be. I think it is just one of the things that should be done a bit more to be honest. I do n't have a problem with the FTC influencing marketing.



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Martinsx1
Well, I'm not surprised reading about the involvement of FTC in such ways in influencers deals. It's definitely bound to happen one way or another. I just hope that whoever is making use of influencer in marketing should endeavor to have all grounds covered in order to be on safe path.



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Kakashi2020
FTC is right and I for one does not believe that influencers can trigger good sales. Influencers can boost traffic but at the end of the day people are not dumb enough to believe an influencer just because of his blog. It all boils down to the product features itself. Does It satisfie ones needs or not, Is it a good product or not? Is it reasonably priced? All this taken into consideration makes a sale.

Influencers are just bloggers with some following out for a quick buck. If not and there's no irregularities then why the FTC paper, right? People knows that their doing reviews because their getting something in return either cash or products from doing it. So logic dictates that all reviews are flawed. The company your reviewing is paying the reviewer and it's legit? Their job is to herd and funnel people to the site by blogging, using YouTube and other social medias. This is good and also sales, marketing and advertising people are doing the same thing offline and some online for a very long time. (infomercials)

If the product or service the site is offering is good then people will buy it, then buying would come to a halt in a couple of days once someone posts some negative reviews into social media or worst in scam reviews. I've been around and in my opinion the only correct reviews are Bad Reviews and Scam Reviews.



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kgord
I didn't know anything about this but I guess you find out something different every day. It is something special when you find out these things. I guess the FTC is just being a watchdog over some of these online happenings, and maybe they should.



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SiamSEO
This is a good thing for everyone involved, and more importantly the customers will get more legitimate basis on their purchases. We've all heard of illegitimate ventures from these "influencers", and how they have profited off off the misleading information they have supplied, so something like this was just a matter of time.

And I predict that we will only see rise in regulations like this, because not only are the cryptocurrencies raising their heads, but people are basing more and more on their purchase decisions on the opinions of others online.



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kgord
Yes, you might be right about this. I mean the internet if really pretty open to scammers and maybe if the FTC gets involved it might help curb that just a bit. Every little bit helps for sure.



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kgord
Yes, I think the internet needs some regulation. It has been the "Wild West" for too long. I think we need to remember that it needs to be regulated like everything else. IF the FTC gets involved I think it will be a good thing.



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vinaya
Online trading is in an initial stage in my home country. Laws are still being made for regulating online businesses. One of the problems that faces the online business in my home country is regarding payment from international clients. Paypal is the most used payment gateway internationally. However, paypal does not operate in full function in my home country. Payoneer, payza and bitcoins are working, however, these payment gateways are not used by many people. The FTC exist for offline business, but the body does not look over online businesses.



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Barida
I've had some issues with some influencers giving out false information that tries to mislead people all in the name of trying to make profits for the company that hires them. An example is that of some products that we are sure that might have some bad contents being promoted by the influencers as good ones that should be bought. The move by FTC, in my opinion, is a good that will help to regulate the way some information are being spread on the internet.



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kgord
Well that is the reason they need to be monitored I guess. I don't have much faith in government agencies, but then again somehing is better than nothing.



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Barida
We can't say that we have much faith in the social media influencers as well. The thing is that the government is trying all they can to ensure that the people are not coerced into buying or doing things that they are not meant to be. I have always made that stance that it is the only way that things should get better.



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Judas2018
Any good influencer does a thorough audit or evaluation of the product or items they're going to be promoting, before entering into a contract. A good and smart influencer also has a pre-existing list of items they won't under any circumstances promote through their channels. So not as to waste their, or the clients time.



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flyinwashi682
I'd saay its pretty much getting involved because its getting more popular and stuff



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jaymish2
As usual bureaucracy steps in to complicate our lives and make them harder, like they are not already hard enough. No normal person will promote a product they haven't used or researched, especially an influencer who has a reputation to guard. Their business depends on people believing what they say. The government doesn't have to babysit us. We are actually adults. Imagine that!



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Corzhens
Is this news about the FTC getting involved has been verified? Pardon me for saying this but there are lots of fake news around. Before I use something that I have read in social media what I do is to verify with the newspapers. But in case the FTC – Federal Trade Commission – is coming out with a guideline regarding Influencers then I guess it is a good one for the benefit of the consumers in general.



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treecko142
Yeah, FTC getting involved is actually good in terms of ensuring the reliability of influencers, and can just improve the quality of stuff in general and improve business relationships.



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