Feb 6, 2022
Just as everyone thought that influencer marketing is dead comes a laundry list of how beneficial it can be for contemporary businesses. Indeed, influencer marketing services are here to stay, and here are the different ways this marketing strategy can help your business thrive in 2022 and beyond.
To contextualize the impact of influencer marketing, in 2016, it is estimated to grow from a $1.7 billion market size to $9.7 billion in 2020. Expectations were exceeded in 2021 when its market size was at $13.8 billion. In 2023, brands and marketers are expected to spend $4.6 billion on influencers in the US alone, up from $4.14 billion expected spending growth in 2022.
Suffice it to say, influencer marketing is far from being dead. In actual fact, influencer marketing is still thriving, and here are the ways it can be beneficial to any business.
Different ways influencer marketing can help business
1) Improve brand awareness
Influencer marketing improves the brand’s market positioning while also expanding its reach. Influencers are broadcasters, and once you partner with them, they can showcase your brand, its products and services, and its story to their audience. Such a capability to move the needle for any brand is inherent to influencer marketing because of their reach, which technically translates to influence.
The many ways by which an influencer can help you become the top-of-mind brand. Some of these are through:
Creating branded content (generally, but also include)
Creating tutorial, how-to, and unboxing videos
Encouraging participation in polls and contests with giveaways
Sponsoring an event involving the influencer
Some brands and marketers allow a social media takeover wherein the influencers are given credentials to the brand’s social pages. She will then post updates on the platforms the brand wants to improve its presence. The advantages of a social media turnover include having new eyeballs to look at your brand, adding a sense of credibility, making your brand more relatable, offering a fresh perspective and engagement points, and humanizing your brand.
2) Widen visibility and reach
Although there are different types of influencers—from nano to mega influencers, their level of influence affects thousands to millions of people. And they do so in a more non-intrusive manner. As a brand, you gain access to this massive following if you enlist the help of the influencers.
What’s more, marketing campaigns that seem more organic than actual advertisements are favored. This should be important because users have a general distaste for intrusive advertisements. In addition, it means you can vet influencers based on real engagements with the branded content they are supposed to publish on your behalf.
The content that the influencers published is genuinely extraordinary. Whether it is product placement or an actual mention, they use fresh and dynamic content in a way that is more inclusive in terms of both persons and experiences. You can chart new territories because the influencers can assist your brand in establishing rapport with the audience that you otherwise find difficult to reach.
3) Builds authority and credibility
The philosophy behind influencer marketing is pretty straightforward. When an influencer shares some branded content for all his followers to see, it creates a sense of credibility not just for himself but also for the brand mentioned in the post. The users become aware of your brand, recognizing its existence while fostering their perceptions about you.
Such genuine endorsement and sentiment paint you as a trustworthy and authoritative brand in your niche. There’s nothing more critical for a brand to be top-of-mind among its target market than well-built credibility. No one would want to do business with a shady brand. Oppositely, the people won’t transact with brands they don’t have confidence in. Influencers bridge this trust gap.
4) Reach target audience
Definitely, you will be working with influencers that won’t contribute or bring value to your business. Influencers have a certain fanbase that they also protect to their best capabilities.
Complementarity is the key term here. You’d want to work with influencers whose target audience overlaps with yours for. Or influencers who have previously worked in the same industry as yours. These are the influencers who will work for you solely, not with your competitors. Your choice of influencers is also crucial for this purpose.
Moreover, influencers are much better positioned when making an emotional appeal to their followers. The followers themselves or emotionally invested with the influencers they support. Even when she posts promotional content, they won’t use any ad blockers. For them, this is their way of helping the influencers do more content that they find fantastic, inspiring, and entertaining.
5) Drive purchase decisions
Generally, an influencer’s mention drives conversions and sales. Some consumers actually look up to the influences for their suggestions on what specific products they must buy. The most avid followers would ask their favorite influencers to review or suggest a particular brand and heed their advice when it’s time to buy.
As such, influencer marketing helps grow the sales figures substantially. This is more so since influencers present a product more positively than other marketing strategies, mediums, and platforms. A Nielsen survey claims that 92% of consumers trust an influencer and would immediately buy based on their recommendations next to that of their most trusted friends.
Essentially, there are several things that an influencer does contribute to the purchase decision-making process of their followers.
Top of the funnel - Build brand aware
Mid funnel - Produce needed engagement to drive conversion
Bottom of the funnel - Create actions
6) Connect to the target consumers
Speaking of their fan base, the influencers themselves collaborate with brands and businesses that bring value to their target followers. That’s why they work hard to stay true to themselves. If not, their fans and followers will not keep following them, withdrawing their support to the influencers and the brands that she endorses.
The influencers endow brands the access to these loyal followers, but not something they can exploit. Influencers foster connections, not exploits and hidden agendas. This is also why the influencers want to have their creative freedom when creating content for their followers since they know by heart how to appease them.
7) Generate profitable leads
The combination of these factors—from the big audience on their platform, which can be on Facebook, Instagram, or both, and the loyal fanbase whose levels of trust in influencers are so high—possibly lead to amassing convert-ready leads.
Influencers create demands using positive word-of-mouth (WOM), which they then leverage for the brands they work with. They also start relevant conversations and build relationships with their followers. So the levels of trust allow them to encourage their followers to do whatever the brand wants them to do, such as enrolling in a fitness class, booking a hotel room, etc.
Another thing that encourages people to comply with the call to action is the possibility of offering the products at introductory prices or with hefty discounts. In addition, influencers are entitled to vouchers that they can share with their followers to further push them down the sales funnel.
8) Drive conversions
With the last statement, influencers are generally effective at driving conversion. This is inherent because they influence them, guiding them in the brand’s direction and its products and services.
Some followers would even wait for the endorsements of their favorite influencers before making a purchase. If the influencer says not to purchase from this particular brand, they won’t. True enough, about 40% of online users buy the brand or product that an influencer has promoted.
When boosting conversions and amplifying online sales, product exposure is essential. The more the users are exposed to your products, the higher the engagement and conversion rates are. This is what the influencers do best—encouraging their followers to engage with branded content and asking them what needs to be done—such as following your brand on its social media handles, tagging friends on the comment section, or when sharing the content on their own feeds, and leaving a comment on the actual post. All these engagement points possibly lead to a sale.
All in all, influencers have a profound effect on their followers, and the brand may capitalize and leverage on such effects. This is especially true since these effects are directly and indirectly related and contributory to the followers’ purchasing journey. As expected, their power over their followers and audiences would only grow with time. For brands like you, this also means harnessing the influencers’ power over this strong fanbase’s purchasing decisions.
When you understand the influence and its impact on people, the next best thing is to utilize such a resource ahead of your competition. Think of influencer marketing services as an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Getting started with the process is easy. First, you need to find the right influencers to collaborate with. Second, trust them in creating branded content, and third, watch as their audience gets to know your brand at a deeper and more personal level enough to do business with you. And that’s the leverage you want with an influencer marketing campaign.