As competition grows in the marketplace it’s getting harder for brands to reach their audiences via traditional marketing channels. So, they are forced to look at new ways to connect and place their brand in front of their target audience.

One tactic that has in recent years been used more and more to drive quality website traffic and leads is by using influencers.

Influencer marketing is considered less intrusive and more trusted, so it helps you to build a strong and vested community around your brand.

The role of the influencer is to help build authority in your expertise and for them to promote your band by mentioning it through their own content and social media channels.

The goal for brands is to project through the influencer a certain value or benefit that would appeal to their target audience that is endorsed by the influencer.

Fashion, beauty and design tend as an industry to have the largest number of influencers, a recent study found that almost 60 percent of brands in these sectors utilise an influencer marketing strategy. And the tech and gaming industry spend the most annually on influencers.

But influencers come at a cost, one which in recent years has spiralled with the shift in consumer behaviour to purchase online.

In addition, there are a number of disadvantages to using your typical social media influencers, from the effort to track down the right one, the risks involved in having little control or a wrong fit and influencer fatigue – when a particular influencer is over-used.

So, a virtual influencer has all the advantages of a real influencer but without the disadvantages. And this is where AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology and modelling virtual humans has come a long way from the early days of avatars.

Instead of a brand paying ever escalating costs for influencers – use a virtual influencer who can travel the world for free, be placed in any scenario or setting and tell your story in a uniquely personal way to your brand.

With a virtual influencer as a brand, you have total control over the look, feel and message. A brand story can be told in a very personal way by for example creating a virtual influencer based on a real person such as a key staff member (past or present) or totally made up.