Influencer Marketing is a mainstream form of online & social media marketing. Although it has been a buzzword for a while now, some people still don’t understand what it actually means.
So, what is influencer marketing? Well, influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. For instance, take the idea of celebrity endorsement. Influencer marketing places this endorsement into a modern-day content-driven campaign.
It is basically the collaboration between brands and influencers. However, influencer marketing doesn’t just involve celebrities. Instead, it revolves around influencers who became famous on both online and offline platforms.
Today’s blog is all about influencer marketing, its significance, and its benefits! So, let us begin!
Significance of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a business communication strategy that uses influencers to promote a brand. It is closely related to social media marketing, which offers businesses an enormous audience.
As almost everyone uses social media, it is easier for businesses to easily reach people, unlike traditional advertising. Research shows that nearly 80% of users purchase something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
Moreover, brands that employ influencer marketing have a better ROI than other marketing channels. So it is no wonder that almost all major brands spend half of their marketing budget on influencers.
Thus, influencer marketing is vital in the age of social media as it helps build trust for your brand and drives favorable outcomes.
Let us now move further and explore the benefits of this amazing channel!
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Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is considered similar to word-of-mouth marketing but doesn’t solely rely on specific recommendations. Instead, it can be used as a standalone tool to improve various marketing campaigns.
Below are the benefits of influencer marketing. Have a look!
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Increased Brand Awareness & Reach
Most influencers on social media platforms have millions of followers. Since the audience is humongous, it will bring excellent opportunities to approach millions of potential consumers.
Unlike traditional marketing techniques, influencer marketing is sophisticated as it uses influencers for advertising, thereby combining brands with style and expression.
Influencers tend to make advertising activities more engaging and genuine for a large target audience.
Moreover, influencer marketing offers brands viable, unobtrusive ways to communicate with consumers regardless of adblockers.
This helps the consumers know more about your brand and what you are offering. As a result, this enhances brand awareness as more and more people become aware of your services!
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Enhanced Credibility & Trust
Influencers are adept in their field, so followers trust them and agree to buy what they promote. This is why big business brands often take the help of these influencers, as they help make the brand more open than usual.
The credibility of these influencers benefits businesses as the consumers trust them and tend to follow their recommendations!
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Enriched Content Strategy
It is not simple to continue producing fresh and entertaining content to keep the audience engaged. Sometimes, you are out of ideas and feel stuck. This is when influencer marketing helps fill the gaps in your content schedule.
Influencers who are familiar with producing fresh, engaging, and quality content bring significant benefits to the company. Moreover, working with such creators can prove to be more budget-friendly than contracting with designers, writers, or videographers.
Therefore, reaching out to influencers whose content is new, engaging, and related to your brand can be highly beneficial.
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Offers a Wide Range of Opportunities
Suppose you are working with a few creators who produce amazing content and whose audience lines up with your target demographics. So, how about using this data to fuel the ads?
Well, the answer to this is creator licensing. In this, the creators grant you access to advertise through their social media accounts.
You can use their data to find an audience you can reach out to! The ads will look like they are coming from the creator, which will seem more credible.
Moreover, both brands and influencers benefit from creator licensing. Their accounts get exposure to new audiences, which can help their followers grow.
Thus, it’s a win-win situation for both brands and the influencers as they get a wide range of opportunities to expand.
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Promotes Emotional Brand Messaging
Consider these two kinds of brand marketing communications:
- Hard-Selling, i.e., the sponsored brand primarily focussed on product features.
- A person talking about his/ her experience and why they connect with the brand value.
Which one resonates with you? Undoubtedly the second one. Right?
When brands humanize their campaigns with people, relatable content, and emotions – they strike a chord with their audience.
Likewise, influencers can give life and feelings to the products, helping consumers visualize the product in a better light, thus impacting their purchase decision.
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Enhances ROI
Influencer Marketing is part of corporate training that can equip you with numerous tools and strategies to help your business grow!
Today, many businesses get impressive ROI from influencer marketing. This strategy is great for every brand, and even research shows that the ROI from influencer marketing is higher than other marketing platforms.
Influencer marketing primarily focuses on branding and engagement activities that generate eight to ten times more ROI than other campaigns! Isn’t that amazing?
Thus, these statistics prove that profits generated through influencer marketing surpass its cost to deliver a high ROI.
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Drives Purchase Decisions & Boost Sales
Influencers drive their followers’ decision-making process to buy products and services at all levels. The products recommended by these influencers help the consumers understand the brand value, and as a result, they tend to purchase the products/ services.
Moreover, the primary marketing objective of every business is to increase sales. And influencer marketing can help them accomplish this goal.
Be it small brands or big, the sure-shot way to increase sales dramatically is by taking help from an influencer who can help push forward what the brand has to offer!
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Acquire Consumers Faster
Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing marketing channel for acquiring consumers online. Although organic search and emails are effective, they are too mature to match the yearly growth potential delivered by influencer marketing.
Therefore, it is essential to note that display advertising and affiliate marketing are not more strong enough as they used to be. Thus, to acquire consumers faster, it is best to opt for influencer marketing.
The Bottom Line!
If done correctly, influencer marketing is an effective strategy. Most of the success of marketing campaigns depends upon the kind of influencers brands chooses. Thus, if selected appropriately, the results can be rewarding!
The benefits mentioned above clearly represent why influencer marketing is desirable among marketers. Although it requires a bit of extra work as the brand has to cultivate and maintain cordial relations, many companies still find it highly effective.
So, if you haven’t tried influencer marketing yet for your brand, it’s time to give it a shot!
