The Surprising Brilliance of Social Influence
For most influencers, their blog is a means of sharing their personal life and allowing their followers a glimpse into their world. Whether they’re a fashion blogger, celebrity, forward thinker, or industry maven — they have a close and intimate relationship with their audience and when they speak on brands, products, or services, people listen. Through sharing their lives they influence people’s perception of the things they love. In their own right they have become Snobs and BrandSnobs in the most iconic ways.
For the astute contemporary marketer, the rise of the social media influencer creates a world of new possibilities. A new channel for brands to connect with consumers has now been unearthed. This more direct, more organic, and more scalable channel far out performers any traditional avenues. With the creation of branded content with social media influencers, brands can amplify their message and seduce their target audience in tandem.
The following are some highlights on why small businesses or startups alike should include influencer marketing as a part of their marketing strategy.
Highly targeted, highly cost-effective.
The traditional model of attempting to reach a big, vast audience can be very expensive and inefficient. With an influencer-marketing strategy, you can create a highly targeted campaign by zeroing in on very specific variables, like the geography of consumers or a certain age group or demographic. For instance, collaborating with an influencer who has a high concentration of millennial followers and a strong following in a particular geographic location makes for a more focused and budget sensitive campaign for certain brands.
Reaching an engaged audience is far more valuable than simply reaching a large audience. In this case you can more accurately and more precisely reach your audience with less expenditure than traditional marketing avenues.
Brand loyalty on Steroids.
A startup will not have the benefit of years of customer relationships and brand loyalty. By tapping into an influencers loyal and highly engaged group of followers with a clear endorsement by the influencer, equity with potential customers can be harvested more quickly.
One can leverage the longstanding relationship an influencer has with an audience based on a crucial pre-established trust.
You are essentially being introduced to the person’s followers with an implicit credibility: This gives a brand a major advantage, especially when paired with the vital market feedback that social media posts provide on consumers; this can be “likes,” shares, and comments.
Track ROI with ease.
With influencer marketing, return on investment is highly quantifiable. A wide array of metrics are present for a business to analyze. Success on an influencer-driven campaign is easily appraised. For example, new follower acquisition is an important key performance indicator. A follower in essence is a potential customer, a warm lead, who can be targeted and advertised to at no additional cost. Potential consumers are more likely to become a purchasing customers if he or she opted to hear from you.
Premium content without premium prices.
Content creation requires hard work and resources from talented individuals. Startups and small-business owners often have to outsource much of this to marketing firms to get better results. Now consider, influencers aren’t just distributors of content, they are also talented, social media savvy content creators. Collaborating with a fashion influencer will not only bring you exposure, it will bring you professionally produced photo and video content that you can repurpose and re-use on all of your brands social media platforms.
All that should make any savvy marketer or business owner an eager-beaver to try out influencer marketing. With carefully chosen, highly relevant influencers, a small business owner can target the most relevant consumers. Who wouldn’t want such high performance action for a fraction of the cost compared to traditional media marketing.
Stronger than any advertising you can buy, consumers trust real people and are more likely to believe the word of someone they follow than the marketing spin a brand will throw at them. It goes without saying that brands can capitalize on this intimate relationship that exists between the influencer and his social following. Influencer marketing can capture and maintain the interests of consumers in a more dynamic and organic way than other marketing methods.
I shall close by saying next time you’re considering traditional advertising for your small business or startup, dip your toes into influencer marketing and track the return on investment. Find an influencer that aligns well with your brand and loves what you do. You will be pleasantly surprised by the results.
