08/04/2023
Why is Influencer Marketing Important?
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. Influencers are opinion leaders with a social following base. They appear as experts or trustworthy sources of information.
Influencer marketing is closely related to social media marketing, as most opinion leaders gather their audience from social platforms. This channel gives you access to an enormous audience – half of the global population uses social networks.
Better yet, influencer marketing enables you to reach people you can't attain through traditional advertising. Two-thirds of consumers use ad blockers, but the same people willingly take advice from influencers. 80% of users have purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
Brands that already employ influencer marketing have proven the effectiveness of this channel. It’s no wonder 17% of companies spend over half their marketing budget on influencers.
So, influencer marketing is crucial in the age of social media and ad fatigue. This channel helps build trust for your brand and drives impressive results. Now, let’s move on to the other benefits influencer marketing provides.
Influencer marketing is an effective way to improve your marketing strategy, reach business objectives, and even cut expenses. Let’s get into details and find the benefits influencer marketing has for your brand.
▪️Brand awareness growth
40% of marketers use influencer marketing to boost brand awareness, and this strategy works great. Opinion leaders share your brand’s story, mission, and values with their follower base. It automatically expands your outreach and positioning online.
▪️Content strategy enrichment
Influencer marketing is a golden opportunity to liven up your social media posts. You can repost the influencer’s content or encourage their followers to create user-generated content, as 24% of brands do. You can also use blogger’s images for other marketing channels, such as targeted advertising. To avoid problems with copyright, include it in the contract.
▪️Quality lead generation
36% of brands use influencer marketing to generate leads. 72% of them believe that this channel brings higher quality leads compared to other channels. People generally feel positive about the brands their favorite blogger advertises. Better yet, some types of content, such as reviews, attract warmer leads in the middle stages of the sales funnel.
▪️Cost-effectiveness
Other marketing channels require regular influxes of cash from your budget. For instance, to promote your brand through search engine marketing, you have to top-up your account on the advertising platform. Otherwise, your ad disappears from the search engine results page.
Influencer marketing can contribute to your business by helping you grow brand awareness and online presence, as well as ensuring lead generation. Depending on your objectives, you can choose different types of influencer marketing campaigns.
Types of Influencer Marketing
▪️Social media takeover
▪️Affiliate marketing
▪️Sponsored content
▪️Unboxings
▪️Brand ambassador programs
Influencer Marketing Tips
▪️Look for engagement, not followers: Number of followers used to be the primary metric for evaluating an account. However, focusing on the number of subscribers alone is the wrong tactic. Assess the engagement rate as well.
To get statistics on this indicator, look at the numbers of likes, views, and especially comments. The latter provides the most useful insights – if an influencer has only emojis or one-word phrases in the comment section, it’s a red flag.
▪️Go for micro-influencers: When speaking about influencer marketing, brands often mean promotion through medium and mega influencers. These are accounts with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. The truth is, opinion leaders with smaller follower bases can be more effective in terms of engagement.
▪️Build long-term partnerships : Working with several influencers is a more effective strategy than sticking to just one social media star. However, trying to embrace as many opinion leaders as possible is not the best tactic either. The best option is to make a list of bloggers and work with them repeatedly, building long-term relationships.
Consistency brings the best results – the core principle for various channels, including influencer marketing. When people come across your brand once and again, they are more likely to become paying customers.
▪️Invest in video makers: Video grows more and more popular every day. Even now, 4 out of 5 millennials prefer videos to other types of content. Meanwhile, traditional video advertising on YouTube does not work so well – viewers hate intrusive commercials and block them. The solution for brands is to go for influencers, who create videos.
Although YouTube is the primary video platform, you can find influencers who work with video content on Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks. So, you don’t have to sacrifice your target audience preferences to support this trend.