I've always been interested in influencers and how they can help brands reach their goals, and I began my path to becoming an influencer a few years ago. This is the first time we can say that it's working. As much as we're looking into it on all platforms, influencer marketing is a new concept, but it has enormous benefits for brands and consumers. This article will cover almost everything about influencer marketing, from what it is and why you should start using it to best practices and examples.
We hope to inspire you to take action and get inspired by it, and we are here to teach you a little about what influencer marketing is and how brands do it across different verticals. Let's dive right in!" -Ailish J. O'Grady, Co-Founder & CEO at MIXROCKER.
"Influencer marketing has taken off on social media and digital platforms over recent years, mainly due to social media users' growing reach and popularity. For example, one study found that 60% of people spend 3 hours or more on Instagram daily. This means that if the same number were to be spent creating content for marketers on social media daily, that would equate to roughly 1.3 million monthly posts. With so many opportunities for brand growth through engagement and awareness, now is the perfect time to learn more about influencer marketing and its importance".
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influence marketing is when businesses create partnerships with individuals who share similar interests and preferences to those of their own. Most often, these relationships are non-monetary, like promoting products and services. Still, sometimes businesses will offer other perks to enhance the relationship, such as advertising their products on their followers' feeds, guest posting on their blog, and having product mentions in their videos. While there is an overlap between influence and affiliate marketing, they're entirely separate concepts. Here's how both work:
Influencer campaigns, especially those paid and sponsored by an industry expert, aim to build buzz around your brand and gain support within a specific niche. They are used to cultivate community and expand the scope of your brand or product to wider audiences. Affiliate marketing works similarly by connecting customers (and potentially buyers) with companies and recommending products and services they may appreciate or even have used themselves.
These recommendations are usually based on factors like reviews, customer comments, etc., which are only sometimes the most impactful or engaging. So the business makes money while maintaining a good rapport with its audience. The critical difference between these two forms of promotion is one of focus on community versus sales.
If someone in affiliate marketing works primarily to sell products directly to you, then chances are you won't pay them any amount unless they generate some revenue. Otherwise, you can drop them off at the post office when you run out of letters. However, influencers can tap into communities, make connections, and create value with audiences outside their immediate network or expertise. For instance, if YouTuber PewDiePie was already a popular figure in his respective niche and wanted to broaden his influence outside it, he could do it through YouTube without necessarily selling anything. He creates entertaining, informative content for his target audience while building trust and showing appreciation for their input. This type of approach to promotion is known as influencer marketing.
There are plenty of ways for brands to use influencers within their networks. Some celebrities, influencers, bloggers, fitness enthusiasts, or entrepreneurs can stand out from an otherwise crowded field as authority figures in their particular category. Other times, influencers can attract new fans or help push specific trends that a company wants to promote. Finally, some companies and organizations may invest heavily into working with well-known online personalities or celebrities to promote their cause or provide coverage and feedback on relevant topics. Whatever the case, these approaches create potential room for additional partnerships and income streams.
Why Should Companies Use Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing has become incredibly popular over the past few years due to the rise of TikTok and other video apps. Not to mention that influencer marketing still needs to be higher-budget compared to traditional forms of marketing. Despite this, the strategy can be highly effective. Businesses worldwide find success with influencer marketing primarily because of the following reasons:
Improved Brand Awareness
The most significant benefit of influencer marketing is increased visibility. This makes it far easier to recruit sponsors, including brand advocates, whose efforts would previously require more effort and workforce. Additionally, successful influencers can drive traffic to their channels, thus increasing exposure and drawing more attention from potential clients. This leads to higher conversion rates, ultimately driving more repeat purchases.
More Efficient Media Consumption
With hundreds of thousands of available influencer accounts, brands that choose influencer marketing can grow more quickly than others. Because everyone is connected to their follower count, they can increase their outreach and maximize the quality of content on their profiles and easily select what they want to see and when they want to see it. Ultimately, this means that people are much more likely to interact with their favourite creators than random strangers on Twitter. With social listening tools like BuzzSumo, influencer profiles are far more likely to receive more likes and engagement than those created by traditional sources. Lastly, influencers use a wide array of mediums, allowing them to produce content much quicker, making it far less expensive for brands to purchase media space.
Increased Exposure and More Sales Potential
Influencer marketing requires a significant investment of resources. However, because of the large pool of influencer talent available for brands to leverage, it could lead to exponentially more meaningful results. Brands that engage with highly influential voices (those with millions of followers) within their niche are nearly 50x more likely to succeed, so more engagement equals more revenue.
Further, if a brand establishes a partnership with a celebrity, influencer, blogger, or entrepreneur, the possibilities to earn more money outside their social feed and other online avenues are vast. There's no shortage of options through collaborations, sponsorship deals, branded merchandise drops, direct sales to customers, and even plenty.
Increased ROI / Decreased Risk
Influencer marketing offers several key benefits, including that it allows for a deeper understanding of a brand's objectives and KPIs. On top of that, influencer marketing provides brand visibility regarding ad views, further increasing advertisers' earnings. Simply put, brands can save money, time, and labor by utilizing an influencer with enough unique personality to draw them in and garner their attention.
Best Practices Across Industries
As mentioned above, influencer marketing offers numerous branding opportunities for brands. But even though influencer marketing provides multiple angles for brands to reach their ideal audience, there are several commonalities across industries that brands must keep in mind when implementing the idea. Below are a few tips to remember:
Know Your Audience
Because influencer marketing entails partnering with various types of individuals with differing opinions and passions, it's essential to understand the demographics of your preferred audience. Does your brand cater to female millennials or younger adults, Gen Zers or Gen Xers, tech-savvy professionals, or amateurs? When attempting to gauge market interest and decide who to partner with on influencer projects, it's crucial to consider specific age groups that match the needs of your business. Consider whether your primary goal is attracting young and older generations to join your mailing list or purchase your goods and what content is appropriate for each group.
Create Content That Appeals to Interested People
As influencers continue to evolve and mature, there's also been a shift in their overall content style. By definition, influencers can capture the world by throwing up their hands in disgust or delighting audiences with memes, gifs, GIFs, and jokes, and they can also express themselves creatively. So, it's imperative to ensure that content is written in a way that appeals to your audience.
Don't write something that doesn't connect with the emotions you're hoping to evoke (or else you'll sound like an automaton), and try not to copy what your competitors are doing. Instead, experiment with writing formats you enjoy and use the styles they prefer to showcase your authentic voice. Even after developing a following and becoming recognized professionally, some influencers may find inspiration in creating original and creative infographics or captions.
Remember, you're competing against the best minds out there. Therefore, stay innovative and give yourself extra points by taking inspiration from whatever makes you feel confident about expressing yourself in the best way possible.
Focus On Quality vs. Quantity
