You may have heard that brands have found success working with influencers – but is the influencer marketing strategy right for you?
Trust us: the benefits of influencer marketing go far beyond having your brand associated with a ‘famous’ figure. In fact, there are a ton of powerful ways that your business can thrive with the help of an influencer.
Read below to learn how working with an influencer can:
Get a precise hold on your target audience
Save you money
Connect your brand to a wider market
…and so much more.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s quickly become a knockout success. It involves collaboration between two parties: the brand and the influencer.
The two parties make a deal, which usually involves the brand paying the influencer to show the brand’s products or services to their followers.
There are plenty of platforms that influencer marketing takes place on, including Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitch.
There are also plenty of unique strategies to use. The most popular strategies include:
Working with the influencer to create sponsored content
Offering the influencer free products to showcase to their followers
Giving the influencer a discount code to share with their followers
Why is it So Effective?
For brands, influencer marketing is one of the most successful marvels to come out of social media. But why is it so popular?
First, it’s unique. The relationship that influencers have with their followers is special, as there’s a level of trust that you don’t normally see between other advertisers.
Part of what makes influencer marketing effective is the long list of benefits, which we’ve included below.
Do I Have to Work With an Influencer That Has Millions of Followers?
Will your brand reach more people if you work with an influencer that has millions of followers? Of course.
Is it still worth it to advertise through an influencer with fewer followers? Absolutely!
Sure, it would be nice if Cristiano Ronaldo or Ariana Grande advertised your brand – they’re the male and female with the most followers on Instagram – but there’s still plenty of value in smaller accounts.
In fact, there are “brackets” of influencers that each have their own benefits. These brackets are:
Mega-Influencers, who have at least 1 million followers
Macro-Influencers, who have between 100K and 1 million followers
Micro-Influencers, who have between 10K and 100K followers
Nano-Influencers, who have between 1K and 10K followers
Influencers with more followers have a larger reach, but they aren’t the only ones who can help your brand succeed. Besides, they charge brands more, and their following is less targeted.
Your brand might benefit from working with a smaller influencer. They charge less, they are more likely to collaborate with you, and their audience is often more engaged.
Why Working With an Influencer Will Benefit Your Brand
1. You’ll Build Brand Recognition
When an influencer advertises your brand, they show it off in full motion. The content they post is engaging and descriptive, and it has an element of human touch. As a result, social media users can quickly become familiar with your brand.
2. You’ll Gain Direct Access to Your Target Audience
Each influencer has a unique set of followers, and those followers often belong to a specific target audience. This is particularly true for influencers from niche communities, or influencers with a small-but-concise following. For that reason, influencer marketing makes it easy to connect with a specific type of social media user.
3. Your Return on Investment Will Be High
Data shows that influencer marketing really works: A study by Twitter and Annalect found that 40 percent of participants purchased a product after seeing an influencer use it.
4. Influencers Have Built-In Credibility
Internet users are now more skeptical than they’ve ever been. In the world of digital marketing, it can be hard to gain an audience’s trust. What makes influencer marketing so magical is that there’s already a trustworthy relationship built-in. People trust the opinions of the influencers they follow, and the influencer develops a reputation this way.
TIP: If you’re looking for an influencer that is particularly trusted, try to find an expert. While many successful influencers are everyday people, some are actually professional experts in their field.
5. The Reach and Visibility are Undeniable
Where else can you showcase your brand to thousands, or even millions of potential customers? More people are on social media than ever before, which makes it the best way to show off your brand.
6. There’s Plenty of Opportunity to Build Long-Term Partnerships
When you work with an influencer, you develop a partnership of sorts. This is a partnership you can work on and get more out of down the road.
By fostering strong relationships with influencers, you’ll be able to count on the ones you’ve already collaborated with to work on future campaigns. This cuts out the sometimes-tedious step of approaching new influencers.
7. Influencer Marketing is Cost-Effective
Influencer marketing is more budget-friendly than you might think. Here are some of the ways that this marketing technique is cost-effective:
Influencer marketing has a high ROI
There are plenty of options that vary in cost, depending on the influencer and the campaign you choose
Plenty of the work, like building an audience, is done for you
8. It Drives Conversions With Ease
Influencers can easily convert followers into customers. The numbers don’t lie: 28 percent of marketers say influencer marketing is the fastest growing method to acquire customers, according to a survey from Influencer Marketing Hub.
9. You’ll Connect to a Wider Audience
Since influencers attract so many people on popular platforms, people who wouldn’t otherwise stumble across your brand will be introduced to it. You probably already know your target audience, but you might attract new people you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of targeting.
10. Your Brand Could Become a Household Name
People don’t just use social media inactively; they talk to their friends about what they see on their feed. When an influencer introduces your brand to their followers, they’ll increase the chance that your brand will spread via word-of-mouth.
The Takeaway
Influencer marketing isn’t just about having a celebrity name-drop your brand. There are so many ways that it can transform your marketing strategy.
In this article, you learned:
Why influencer marketing is effective
Why you don’t have to work with influencers that have millions of followers
The ten ways that influencer marketing can benefit you
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