CAN INFLUENCER MARKETING HELP YOUR BRAND GROW?
Digital marketers might think of influencer marketing as one of the important methods of online marketing. However, due to lack of enough knowledge about the same, they tend to exclude it from their marketing strategy.
So, a basic understanding of how influencer marketing could help your brand create a buzz online is imperative.
Let’s learn about what influencer marketing actually is and how it could help increase brand awareness.
What is influencer marketing?
An influencer is somebody who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others.
With celebrities and social media influencers becoming the face of renowned brands, influencer marketing has made it possible for brands to reach out to the audience indirectly. These personalities aka influencers (including actors, popular artists, YouTubers, bloggers, vloggers, stand-up comedians, etc) often give shoutouts by sharing the brand content or advertise/ review brand products in a unique way on their social media platforms.
These influencers then post on behalf of the brands, introducing the brand to their audience creating a chain of followers instantly. More influencers, more popularity!
So, Influencer Marketing essentially consists of the following:
- Identifying individuals who create high-impact conversations, with your ideal target audience.
- Building relationships, by engaging and supporting these influencers to promote a brand’s products or services.
Why do brands need it?
A brand has a lot to benefit from an influencer marketing strategy:
- Increase in brand awareness (boosting SEO and sales)
- Ease in building trust & loyalty
- Access to a target audience
- Less time and money investment
According to a recent study comprised of marketers from a variety of industries, 94% said influencer marketing was an effective campaign strategy.
Influencer marketing has gained momentum for its ability to have people who influence the brand’s target audience to a large extent and multiply its reach all across. It is one of the most effective ways to market your brand and reach bigger audiences by increasing your online presence.
Influencer marketing on social media
Social media influencers are now talking about their partnerships with big brands openly.
Instagram allows influencers to make it more clear while doing a sponsored post with a brand. It highlights “Paid partnership with…” at the top of a sponsored post or story, thus, promoting the brand directly. This gives the audience a fair knowledge of what is being done and why.
Similarly, Facebook lets you tag your partner’s name in your sponsored posts.
Transparency and credibility help in building customers for the products or services being talked about.
It won’t be wrong to say that influencer marketing can easily help you launch your product or kick-start your business by reaching out to followers at the very beginning. The posts that you do, the campaigns that you execute, and the contests that you run as a newly launched brand might just go unnoticed if not done the right way. This is when you need to leverage influencer marketing to reach out to the untapped audience.
Start with it right now
Make sure that you know all about influencer marketing before you start with it and select your influencers. A few things you need to keep in mind are:
- Type of audience your influencers have (demographics)
- Kind of posts they do (organic plus paid content)
- Style of writing on digital platforms
- Post reach & engagement on their page
- Response rate
Influencers nowadays accept remuneration both ways, in cash or kind. In case of a barter system, the brand might just send them gifts, coupons, vouchers, goodies, etc as a token of appreciation for the services they’d render. However, they might seal the deal at some fixed amount — to be paid by the brand, as per the mutual agreement.
Influencer marketing only works if it’s a win-win for both — the influencer and the brand. Since this type of marketing has become the new fad, all agencies and brands should invest their time in figuring out the great organic influencers as they work the best.
Future of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing platforms, especially those targeting the 900 million monthly active users on Instagram, have boomed over the last 12 months.
So, the question here is — if your brand should invest in influencer marketing in future. Well, the following trends might just help you get the answer:
- With more B2B and B2C brands trying to connect with their target audiences via out-of-the-box campaigns, influencer marketing will become an indispensable arm of online brand marketing.
- Coming years will definitely bring along better measurement tools and technologies for marketers to keep a track of influencer marketing activities.
- Using macro plus micro-influencers will allow the brands to maximise their reach and awareness. A mix of influencers will let the brands earn more engagement and attention of niche audience, simultaneously.
Influencer marketing, undoubtedly, helps the brands engage with a larger chunk of the audience, increasing the brand’s sales substantially. However, these influencer marketing campaigns should be executed wisely in order to get the maximum ROI for your brand.
Want to know how you can leverage influencer marketing for your brand? Write to us at coffee@sparkeighteen.com or get in touch here.
