38 Proven Reasons Why Influencer Marketing is so Successful

Love it or hate it, influencer marketing is and has historically always been one of the most effective forms of marketing.

During Roman times, politicians using gladiator fighting, chariot racing and free entry to the games, gained popularity with the people. With people talking about them, the politicians could win and hold office.

Politicians today are still using influencer marketing to gain votes and hold office. But you're also affected by influencer marketing in many other ways. Remember begging your mom to buy a particular type of cereal because your favorite athlete or celebrity was featured on the box? Or saving the codes from the cartons and filling out a form to receive a free toy? That's influencer marketing in action.

What Is Influencer Marketing and Why Is It So Effective?

Influencer marketing is nothing but good ole' fashion word of mouth advertising from someone with influence and trust - like - celebrities or even your next door neighbor.

People HATE being sold which is what makes word of mouth advertising so freaking EFFECTIVE. 92% of people LOVE recommendations from people they trust. Today, that's even truer as people have lost faith in large corporations, governments, and traditional media due to lack of honesty and transparency. So much so, 80% of people age 32 and under read blogs, social media, product reviews and talk to others before making a purchase.

Why Traditional Advertising Is Failing

While I don't believe traditional advertising is going away, it will need to do some major adaptation and change to survive, similar to the way influencer marketing has adjusted and changed over time.

The reason traditional advertising is currently failing is:

• Overexposure to advertising.
• Today's buyers want inclusion. They want to feel like part of the process, being included and talked with not talked at or sold.
• The internet and streaming services make it easy to avoid ads and commercials.
• Most people ignore the paid ads on search engines, favoring the organic results.
• A lack of faith and trust in big corporations and corporate brands.
• Trusted recommendations and opinions are more accessible than ever to access.
• Traditional advertising targets mass markets of people, many of whom aren't looking for the product or service.

What Makes Influencer Marketing So Powerful?

The biggest reason influencer marketing is so compelling is because of targeted, word of mouth recommendations. People like sharing and hearing personal experiences with products and services. As a result, it influences their decision-making process. That reason alone is enough for the 39% of marketers who increased their 2018 influencer marketing budgets.

But word of mouth recommendations isn't the only reason why influencer marketing is so successful. Here are 37 more just as valid and proven reasons why.

1. Increases Brand Awareness

Remember how fast a rumor spread through school? That's what an influencer does for brand awareness. They talk about your product or service which in turn gets other people talking and before you know it, everyone knows about it. It's one of the fastest most effective ways to create trusted brand awareness.

2. Excellent Way to Build Brand Credibility and Reputation

People believe the influencers in their lives, so if you can get the influencers to trust you, you gain brand credibility and reputation by default. When people are talking good about you, others within their circle believe you as well. Of course, this can backfire and have the opposite effect if you do something seen as less than stellar.

3. Target Your Exact Audience

Mass marketing targets everyone, which means you're wasting your marketing budget. But when you chose the right influencers to represent your brand, you are getting an exact audience of people who WANT what you're selling. Which leads us to...

4. Warm vs. Cold Leads

WARM LEADS are ALWAYS better than cold. And that's precisely what you get with influencer marketing. Customers who already WANT your product or service. All they need is the introduction, the handshake, the hello, which is what the influencer does for you. And because warm leads set you up immediately with warm prospects, you...

5. Create Sales Faster

Turning followers into customers is much faster when they are primed and willing to drink the "kool-aid" you're selling. It's also more cost effective because you don't have to spend as much time or money warming up cold prospects.

6. Helps Penetrate Saturated Markets Easier

As more and more products flood the markets, it's getting harder to stand out from the crowd. Because the influencers already have reputation and followings, using them helps you get noticed much faster and can even create cult-style followings as it did for Instant Pot.

Rather than spending a fortune on traditional advertising or even Facebook ads, Instant Pot gave 200 pots and branding rights to influencers and sat back, letting them work their magic. Today, they have tens of thousands and growing devoted fans around the world. AND tons of cookbooks, recipes, free hype and more. All because they used influencers to launch the Instant Pot.

7. Makes Your Brand Look Authentic

Authentic influencers introduce new products and services with the results of their testing. So, when they are spreading the word, they are giving honest opinions, which in turn makes your brand look authentic when compared to traditional "buy me" advertising.

8. Amplifies Your Brand Reach Increasing Brand Exposure

Using influencers expands your brand reach because you gain access to the influencer's audience, which in turns talks with their audience, compounding the effect creating, even more, brand exposure.

9. Strengthens Your Social Media Presence and Builds Your Following

Influence marketing campaigns help build your social media presence because of exposure to a broader audience who in turn will follow you because:

• They like what you're offering
• Or the influencer asks them to support you through signups, contests and offers.

All of which builds your social media presence.

10. Creates Content

Influencers are content creators, creating content you can use and reshare. Blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media posts, photography and more that you can re-purpose across all your platforms.

11. Provides Real Reviews and Testimonials for Your Products and Services

Reputable influencers only give honest reviews and their audiences know it. So forget buying your reviews and testimonials and spend that money on influencers who will help spread the word with real ones. Plus, you can use those reviews and testimonials on your websites to promote your products and services.

12. Gets Around Ad Blockers

Ad blockers have gotten so freaking good! When is the last time you were bothered with seeing a popup ad? Because the content created in influence marketing is the real deal, there's no need to worry about ad blockers and your company gets seen.

13. Increases Customer Retention by 37%

Have you ever noticed how people have more faith and trust in the friends of their friends? Well, the same works for influencer marketing. The result of those personal recommendations and warm leads is a 37% customer retention rate over those who come in off the "street."

14. Cost Effective

The return on investment of effective influencer marketing is high with some companies averaging $11.69 per every $1 spent. Even at the lower end of the range, ROI is averaging $6 to every dollar spent.

15. Works for All Size Companies

Influencer marketing isn't just for the large corporations. Anyone can use it because influencers range in sizes as well. While a small company probably can't afford a celebrity, they can afford micro-influencers, many of who work will work in exchange for free product or product and a small fee. One advantage to micro-influencers, quite often they have much more engaged audiences, which leads to higher exposure faster.

16. Boosts Your SEO

Because influencers mention you and link back to your website, you gain huge SEO boosts which can help push you up in search engine ranking and make you easier to find.

17. Helps Your Build Relationships with Your Consumers and the Community

Influencers help bridge the gap between you and your future customers by creating dialogue and relationships. And when you build good relationships with your past, present and future customers, you increase brand awareness, reputation, trust factor and free word of mouth advertising.

18. Influencers Engage, Interact and Nurture Your Audience

The reason influencers are who they are is because they offer something their audience wants and they engage. People love interactive engagement, which is one of the reasons why influence marketing works so well. Influencers engage, interact and nurture their - now your - followers.

19. Influencers are Creative, Thinking Outside the Box

When you hire influencers, you are hiring creatives who are willing to think outside the box and try new things. They also KNOW their followers better than anyone, which also means they know what works. Give them your goals and step back, letting them do the work. You'll end up with campaigns, you never even considered, without spending the cost required to hire professional ad creators.

20. Get Honest Feedback

The value of gaining honest feedback alone is worth the cost of influencer marketing. Influencers trying out your product are quick to let you know if something isn't working well. And prominent ones will let you know before telling their audience, giving you a chance to correct the issue. Plus, feedback from their followers can also point out problems or issues can be corrected by putting your product and service in a much better place.

21. Makes Your Brand Human and Reachable

Using influencers makes your brand seem more human and reachable because people can interact with influencers. It's also because they receive personal stories and experiences and can relate. When your brand seems more human, people are more apt to reach out and connect.

22. You Gain Brand Advocates

While you might start out paying an influencer, many end up becoming unpaid brand advocates after the contract has ended because they continue to talk about products they love. It's one of the reasons people trust influencers. They talk about the things they love without being paid. Which leads to...

23. Free Advertising

72% of influencers will continue to share content they already created and talk about your product unpaid which means A LOT of free advertising value.

24. Provides Authentic Storytelling Not Just "Buy Me" Ads

Influencers don't just make ads, saying "buy me." Instead, they share their experiences with the brand and product. They tell people how it made them feel, act, or look along with plenty of details about how it affected them. You'll hear it time and time again; people love stories over ads which is what influencer marketing does.

25. Influencer Campaigns are Scalable

Influence marketing campaigns are scalable to any size budget and audience. You can easily target 100 people or 100,000 and spend as much or as little money as you would like. The more money and larger the size, the potential for bigger results but small campaigns can produce killer results, as well.

26. It's Social

People as a whole are social creatures and influence marketing connects squarely with the social side of things. People engage with the influencer and can ask questions, weigh in with their own experiences or hang out and find out about new products. Once again the interactive process at play.

27. Everyone is Talking About It

Influencers create buzz, hype and get more people talking about your brand. It's just like the office gossip chain. You and Suzy, the receptionist, left work together on Friday night. By Monday morning the whole office knows and is speculating. It's the same with influencers. They talk and spread the "gossip" over your brand causing everyone to talk about it.

28. Native, Organic Advertising

Yes, influencers are paid, but regardless of the sponsored disclaimer, influencer marketing shows up in natural and organic searches which creates native, organic advertising.

29. Results are Easily Trackable

Influencer marketing results are relatively easy to track. As a result, you can easily see what's working and what isn't and make adjustments. It's easy to identify new likes, shares, comments, views and followers. You'll also notice spikes in followers, signups and sales, or even steady rises, after campaign releases.

30. Makes Your Product Trend

Influencers are always sharing what's hot and new. The latest and greatest next trend or thing on the market so when people see influencers talking about your brand it creates a trend around it whether it's a new or old brand.

31. Compounding Content

Good content doesn't stop giving back, long after you've paid for it and moved on. And since influencers don't remove content they've created, the content created for your campaigns continues to sit there, driving more people to your brand. Plus, you can reuse the content on your sites which also compounds it.

32. Increases Conversion Rates 3 to 10Xs

Influencer marketing has a conversion rate of 3 to 10 times over company promoted content. Mainly because they only promote content their followers will enjoy. But still, that's a pretty big bang for your buck.

33. Influencers are In Every Industry and Niche

It doesn't matter what industry or niche you're in; you can find an influencer who can represent you. There is something for everyone in the influencer market.

34. Provides Education on Your Products and Services

Influencers don't just toss up a product with a "buy me" ad. They spend time educating their followers about how the product worked, what worked best, even ways they have discovered to use it that you might not have thought about it. All the education leads to informed buyers when they do make a purchase which also tends to lead to less customer support.

35. Can Help Reverse Negative Opinions

Say you did screw up with a product and gained a bad reputation but you fixed it and wanted to relaunch. One of the easiest ways to reverse negative opinions is to get influencers on your side. Because influencers talk about their experiences, they will tell the world that while they know the product was bad, here's what has changed. All this helps you get all those negative opinions turned into good ones. That being said, they can also do the opposite, as well.

36. Consumers Can Imagine Themselves Using the Product

Visualization is powerful. When influencers demonstrate and show off a product, people get the opportunity of seeing themselves using it creating a connection with the product.

37. It Works

Word of mouth advertising has always worked and it always will. People like hearing about product and service experiences from the people they know and trust. As a result, influencer marketing works.

And there you have it, the number one reason why influencer marketing is so successful plus another 37 supporting reasons why it works and how you stand to benefit from using it.

Word of mouth advertising (influencer marketing) is effective. Isn't it about time you got on board and stop missing out?

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