Making the Case for Influencer Marketing
The future of successful brand awareness is going to rely heavily on social media marketing. Period. Trying to argue anything contrary is no longer a moot point — it’s actually just a waste of time. This year digital advertising spend surpassed prints ads for the first time in history and continues to grow. Going digital is no longer the trend. It’s already here.
As brands continue to shift their marketing dollars towards digital assets, the conversation moves towards how to allocate the marketing budget within that confine. Depending on the specific needs of a brand, a successful marketing campaign is a combination of digital media ads, social media marketing and influencer marketing.
Building the case around how to allocate that marketing budget for those categories, or specifically for your brand can be particularly nuanced and depends on the brand.
In my experience as the Director fo Marketing for NK Agency, a creative agency in Los Angeles, I’ve found sitting with a brand and unpacking general marketing concerns brings up a lot of questions — in part because there is a lack of awareness and general understanding of marketing. Naturally, there is some pushback. I see less pushback with digitals ads or social media marketing but when it comes to understanding influencer marketing — brands are skeptical. I want to help people grasp the concept of influencer marketing.
For those who don’t specifically work in marketing or advertising, the concept of the Influencer has had a particularly negative connotation. Several years ago, before we even coined the term “influencer”, Instagram seemed to be a platform for bikini clad women living in Bali to take selfies and talk about detox tea. Yeah, I get it. It seems nonsensical and ridiculous. How is that even a business? Actually, it was a multi-million dollar business. And as for that bikini clad woman with hundreds of thousands of followers? She did have influence — she might even still.
But that isn’t who THE influencer is anymore. Instagram is now mainstream, and has a broad demographic (including my 70 year old mother) who are all scrolling through their feeds, and following all kinds of people of influence.
I want to define the term influencer in social media, as someone who has particular influence within an industry. Someone who has subsequently built a genuine following around that subject matter by creating content to capture and captivate their followers. Let’s be clear — the word genuine here is key. A genuine influencer yields a genuine following.
What does this mean for brands? Think of how successful word-of-mouth marketing is for any business. Think of how important reviews are for products or services, as they help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. Endorsements at any level help boost sales. If you can identify people of influence within an industry, who have a genuine following, whose followers look to the person of influence for suggestions, guidance, advice, etc. — then partnering with an influencer and leveraging their status and reach to help promote your product is a powerful sales funnel.
If you are a brand who has questions about how to connect with the right influencer or how to set up an influencer campaign around your product or service, please reach out. On behalf of NK Agency, we are here to help.
To learn more visit www.NKagency.la
To inquire email Gina@NKagency.la
