The usefulness of Influencer Marketing

Introduction

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool. That’s the reason, it has an important role in a brand’s social media strategy.

So, the significance lies in credibility when compared to traditional ad campaigns.

Consumers make their purchasing decisions based on what they see or hear on social media. According to research, 78% of respondents said that the companies’ posts on social media affect their purchase decision.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

We can consider influencer marketing, a type of social media marketing. The influencers who are individuals, and sometimes organizations that enjoy huge social followings and have a considerable impact in their field, come forward to advertise the proposed product or service.

So influencer marketing is where we collaborate with influencers to deliver brand messages to the target audiences.

If we think closely, it is quite similar to Word Of Mouth(WOM) marketing. Here, influencers recommend and promote the intended product or services instead of friends and family.

Influencers are available in almost all sorts of categories, fashion, beauty, and health. And they can be any of these – an individual, a group, or a brand, performing as an influencer.

People follow these content creators as they create engaging content. So if we advertise with them across different social media platforms, it facilitates the company to improve brand awareness. This, in turn, helps in generating new leads.

Why does Influencer Marketing work?

This modern marketing method works because influencers have spent a lot of time creating a name for themselves. A trust they enjoy with their target audience. The followers recognize and hear them and they care about what influencers have to convey.

On a psychological level, recommendations from influencers become social proof for brands.

To consumers, the trust factor is more with influencers. The Search Engine Journal says that around 91% of consumers aged between 18 to 34 have trust in online reviews and recommendations. This number is very much similar to recommendations from their family and friends.

An influencer with their knowledge and visual demonstration does a wonderful work of attracting and establishing trust with consumers.

Influencers create content in which they are experts (as per their niche). People follow them as their content commands attention, and keeps them wanting for more. The best part is companies who want to engage these influencers don’t have to come up with content or ideas themselves to present the products or services. The influencer, they have collaborated with does that for the brands.

Another benefit is influencer marketing does not suffer the fate of ads because they are blocked these days with ad blockers. With traditional online marketing, this is a big hindrance in reaching the target audience. But here, with influencers, people themselves flock to their content. Hence, the message reaches effectively.

Around 70 years ago, when sociologists introduced a model of the two-step flow of communication, it proposed that opinion leaders influenced a considerable amount of people.

So, this influencer marketing is not a new concept in the marketing world.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

There are many.

Brand Awareness & Reach

Most influencers on social networks have millions of viewers.

Instagram’s 50 most followed influencers have more than a billion followers. So, it is obvious that on that basis influencer marketing, in which we partner with influencers, will bring an excellent opportunity to the table.

If the niche that they operate in suits our products or services, there lies a potential to reach millions of consumers.

Heavy promotions and sales campaigns involving too much time and money have become almost obsolete these days. It is more practical to advertise with influencers who can seamlessly combine brand objectives into their expression and content.

Influencers are, in a way, artists who make the advertising activities more engaging at the same time genuine for a target audience.

Earlier consumers are often overloaded with loads of commercial advertisements every day, but not anymore.

Also, the barrier of AdBlock apps and extensions is broken and social users can learn more about the brand offering.

Credibility & Trust

Since an influencer is knowledgeable in their field, they have followers who depend on them. Hence, they have considerable “influence” on them. That’s why people believe in their opinions and recommendations.

The good part is these recommendations won’t make the influencer marketing campaign feel like an advertisement anymore. Instead, it becomes a worthy story.

Studies have shown that the number of teenage subscribers who are inclined to connect to an influencer rather than traditional celebrities is 70%.

Content Strategy

We will have to understand that producing fresh and entertaining content is just not that easy.

At times, we, as a brand, are out of ideas and feel stuck. This is exactly where influencer marketing can help overcome the problem. By creating engaging and quality content to interact with their followers daily. This brings significant benefits.

Win-Win Relationship

An influencer marketing program is all about creating and maintaining a positive relationship with the audience. Associating with Influencers can help build that brand connection.

When brands hire, generally they don’t hire influencers for one-off campaigns. It is a long-term partnership. The research estimated that advertisers work with influencers for six or more months.

Quite naturally, longer influencer partnerships between brands and influencers save time, resources, and money. Not only that, but it also helps establish credibility, which has a more substantial effect on the company’s audience.

Therefore, it is a win-win collaboration as both parties have become stakeholders in the result.

By partnering with a relevant influencer who appeals to the same market we want to serve, profit comes immediately from influencer campaigns.

Improving SEO, Revenue and ROI

Let’s see how influencer marketing help boosts our SEO, ROI, and bottom line.

Directly and indirectly, search engine optimization gets affected positively by influencer marketing.

As influencers have numerous loyal followers, the partnership will help the brand reach more audiences rather than doing classical SEO activities only.

We know the links are one of Google’s most important search ranking criteria. The chance to build backlinks as we reach a larger audience through influencer marketing activities becomes huge.

We should keep in mind that those links are indicative and they do not impact search ranking. Yet, we cannot deny an indirect effect. How?

Because they support building brand awareness and driving traffic.

So if we engage multiple social communities, there lies an opportunity to obtain additional followers and connections. Naturally, it will lead to additional organic traffic, backlinks, and other metrics that SEO needs.

One study says branding or engagement-focused influencer marketing generates nearly eight times more ROI compared to other campaigns.

Influence Purchase Decisions

Influencers motivate the audience. They will guide the purchase decision-making process.

Since the audience respect and trust these influencers, this leads them to have a pretty positive perception of the brand.

It is said that six out of ten YouTube users tend to make purchase decisions based on their favorite content creator’s suggestions.

Several studies suggest that influencers can affect a customer’s purchase decision-making at all levels.

Increased Sales

The impact of influencers is what makes them “super sellers”. And that’s why it is exceptionally workable for businesses to create and manage the messages to be delivered to the target audience via influencers. This will shoot up the sales tremendously.

Second, influencers are present on different channels, which means more audience.

Cost-effective

For brands, it becomes tough to promote products or services by traditional methods. The cost of ads and resources kept on rising. Influencer marketing can help keep costs down.

The cost of an influencer mostly depends on the size of the audience and the niche they operate in.

So, this influencer marketing benefits outweigh the cost spent on it, then other classical means. This means a better return, increased sales and more savings.

Many influencers produce content from their homes or their studios, this will help further lower expenses.

Saves Time

The biggest advantage is in terms of time. With influencer marketing, we will get our brand promoted almost on a daily basis.

Especially in a moment of market stagnation, influencer content succeeds. Additionally, content with fresh ideas has the chance of becoming viral.

The content created by influencers can be reposted after a period of time. This ability might save you a considerable amount of time and money.

Besides this, one can use the feedback received from audiences to design new campaigns or to re-target a specific segment of customers.

Sharability

Interaction with the audience almost happens every day. They keep the audience engaged by posting new content. As influencers are generally present on multiple channels, it becomes easier to share them on those channels.

There are several ways influencers help brands to spread their messages, for example, a post on Facebook, inspiring storylines on Instagram, review videos on YouTube, and so on.

Therefore, the viral potential is high. Shareable content is important because it will quickly raise brand recognition, continuously grab attention and generate leads.

Fits all sizes

It doesn’t matter what size of business we have or what industry we belong to there is always a place for everyone. This is due to the fact that influencers also come from different sectors – health, fitness, traveling, cuisine, beauty, business, technology, science, etc.

Companies would use various marketing strategies to communicate with end-users effectively.

For example, a low-cost strategy is suitable for small businesses. However, a comprehensive plan for bigger businesses. This requires higher investment to work with star influencers or other celebrities.

Examples of Influencer Marketing

Addison Rae

Influencer deemed to be a celebrity, with 38.7 million followers on Instagram for her beauty-focused posts has led her to secure a Netflix show and release a debut single.

American Eagle is a clothing company targeted toward high school goers. Addison Rae teamed up with this company for several clothing campaigns.

Their partnership includes a variety of clever advertisements, including a mom jeans TikTok video, a billboard in Times Square, and a unique TikTok dance celebrating American Eagle’s collaboration with Disney.

Addison is known for her dancing too on TikTok, and creating her own dance for her followers to recreate is a clever way of promoting the American Eagle and Disney collaboration

(businesswire.com)

Chris Hemsworth(of Thor fame) 

He partnerships with Boss under the Influencer Marketing campaign.

A German luxury fashion house, partners with Chris, a celebrity with 42.5 million followers on Instagram.

By sharing photos of himself wearing BOSS suits and Boss Perfume, it delivers a subtle message to his followers and potential customers. To look impressive like Chris Hemsworth, BOSS products make that happen.

(hugoboss.com)

Conclusion

With the ubiquitous social media, influencer marketing has become all the more important for brands.

Influencers offer an ideal way to meet new customers, raise brand recognition, and boost conversions with the help of their content. Contents are posted daily and are grossly engaging. These all come with unlimited sharing potential for their fans.

It is now quite clear that influencer marketing can achieve the online goals of a business and will fetch better and positive results.

In summary, influencer marketing returns more than it costs. The important thing is to collaborate with the right influencers who align with the business objective. A recipe for super effective digital marketing strategy.