For inventive marketers, the rise of influencer marketing creates a world of possibilities. The use of social media influencers in promoting brands opens up new channels to connect with customers more directly, organically and at a large scale.
Influencer marketing is one of the quick and best ways to build your brand on the online platform and create awareness among your target customers.
The beauty of influencer marketing is that - your targeted audience is already available, you just need to establish a win-win partnership with your influencer and start offering fantastic value to your audience.
The power of social influence is rising, which is creating the ultimate need for a fresh approach considering the relationship between brands and users.
Nowadays, social media influencer is much more important than paid ad, provided that the marketer truly realizes how influencer marketing works and how to yield and enjoy its benefits.
By creating content for their brand with social media influencers, marketers can genuinely amplify their message while seducing their target audience.
If you are looking for building your brand quickly and generate more leads, then it’s time to dive into the magical world of influencer marketing for the following benefits.
But before talking about benefits, let's see what these statistics have to say about influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing: The fastest-growing channel
The following graph is of a poll conducted by Tomoson, which shows that marketers rated influencer marketing as the fastest-growing online customer acquisition tool.
Marketers are increasing their budget
The same study shows that around 59% of marketers plan to increase their budget for influencer marketing over the next 12 months.
Strong ROI from Influencers Marketing
This graph shows that marketers are making $6.50 for each $1 spent on influencer marketing, with the top 13% earning $20 or more. 70% are earning $2 or more, with the rest either breaking even or failing to generate ROI.
Consumption of social media content is high
According to a study done by Crowdtap, people aged between 12 to 32 years spend 30% of their time on social media, consuming "peer-to-peer" or "user-generated" content, and around 13% watching television.
So, it's clear that Influencer marketing is on the rise. Companies either big or small, new businesses or startups are now trying to build relationships with influencers.
But you must be wondering - How do you convince influential people to talk about your business?
Well, it's difficult to do but not impossible!
You need to give them something of value so that they can talk about your brand.
Engage with influencers using the following tactics
i. Create a Valuable Experience that allows influencers to interact with other influencers, and there you can share some information about your products or services.
You will get the opportunity to build a personal relationship with them, and if they like your content, the possibility is that they will share your post on social media.
ii. Offer Exposure to your influencers as they have built their followings by getting exposure and talking on social platforms about what they love. You can ask them if they can do a live chat with your audience or give an interview for a blog post.
But for this, you must have good followings on social media so that influencers don't feel like it's a waste of their time coming to your office.
iii. Ask For Advice as influencers like to share their thoughts with people. You can arrange a meeting to get their views and perspective on relevant trends in the market or your industry and customer needs while getting some feedback on your business performance.
iv. Hire As A Spokesperson or Speaker. It’s best to identify influencers who support what you do and try to build a relationship with them so that they can become a spokesperson for your brand.
v. Pay them for doing a product review for your brand. It is the fastest and most direct way to engage an influencer to create content for you.
vi. Give influencers free publicity as this will motivate them to share your post. Good publicity motivates people as it says something good about them and highlights positive traits, and who doesn't like to hear good things about themselves?
vii. Frequently visit their Favorite Sites and do the guest posting or pitch an article about your brand to people who are related to your field and have already written something related to it.
viii. Invite Collaboration by involving influencers in creating a piece of content of their interest area. Schedule an interview with a targeted expert and request him to do a guest post or get a quote on your blog.
ix. Create Remarkable Content as this is the most important thing that attracts influencers. Mostly influencers earn and retain their follower's trust and credibility by maintaining a very high standard of quality. If you want these influencers to share your content, then you must create exceptional content. Try to come up with unique concepts and ideas and strive for creating ambitious projects.
Influencer marketing benefits to bolster your social strategy
Expand your audience
It not only expands your reach but also gives the right and appealing content to your target audience. All you need to do is - identify the right influencer who shares the same kind of interest as your brand do.
Increase your credibility
By collaborating with influencers, you not only expand your reach but also establish your authority and credibility. Influencer marketing is another way of approving your positioning through an influencer's powerful social presence as people nowadays have more trust in their peers than any brand.
Create unique content
When you create your content with an influencer, you get access to the pool of their unique ideas and creativity, which you add up to your strategy. This automatically enhances your content quality, and you get more audience who will consume your content and products/ services.
Generate new leads
Influencer marketing not only increases your reach but also generates new leads. You can track your leads generated by influencers by creating custom links. This will also give you an insight into the ROI generated by each influencer to your brand.
Enhance engagement
Collaborating with a social influencer also helps in increasing your brand's engagement with your target audience. As influencers create awareness and interest in your brand, more users may join your community and consume the service/product offered by your brand.
It Improves your SEO
Influencer marketing not just builds your brand and improves your sales but it also boosts your SEO. According to a study, social media posts account for 25% of search results for the top 20 brands in the world. The more people mention your brand on the social platform, the more relevant and popular your brand will be on Google.
Quickly builds trust
Influencers have built trust and credibility with their followers. Their audience respects their content and recommendations.
If you share their content, you will soon attract their attention, and if your content is unique and valuable, they will start sharing it and put your message in front of their audience.
Improves brand awareness
As mentioned earlier, influencer marketing can expand your reach and position on the social platform. Social media users will begin to notice your brand, who you are, your story, and the services you offer, thus improving your brand awareness.
Builds win-win partnerships
Getting connected and engaged with an influencer for the long haul can start a powerful relationship. Possible joint ventures, events, etc. may show up. You never know where these relationships could end.
Provides value to your audience
Influencers embrace the concept of inbound marketing, i.e., delivering valuable and inspiring content that educates people and solves their problems.
Influencers interact with people more often and are already in tune with their needs and want to serve them best. As a marketer, you can easily leverage their content to provide value to your target customer.
Final Thoughts
Influencer marketing can be incredibly beneficial for new businesses or startup brands; that are new to the market and struggling to gain traction in their social media marketing.
Hope this post has helped you in getting some insight into influencer marketing.
Don't hesitate to implement influencer marketing in your social media campaign. Influencer marketing is going to become more powerful every passing day, try to invest your time (and money) into this and try to build a win-win relationship with you and your influencers!