4 Reasons Your Brand Should Be Using Influencer Marketing in 2019

A few years back, influencer marketing really took off before we really even knew what to call it. Particularly on Instagram, ordinary people began racking up followers due to producing amazing and unique content, over a range of different genres, and became known as ‘social media influencers’. These people have a great deal of ‘power’ in the social media world, inspiring and motivating people to do certain things. And so, influencer marketing was born.

It’s a concept that already existed, only it was referred to as word-of-mouth, and we didn’t have social media platforms to help it spread so quickly. Now we do. And in 2019, your brand should be using influencer marketing to its advantage. Why? Here are four main, integral reasons.

1. People trust friends, family and the people around them more than brands

It’s no secret that word-of-mouth is an effective form of marketing. Sadly, it’s one that is difficult to control. Remember that restaurant your friend told you about? No, not the bad one, you won’t be going there, the really great one with the delicious entrees? Or how about that vacuum cleaner your Mum recommended you? The family recipe you use for entertaining guests when they come over? My point is, we listen and learn the most from the people who are immediately close to us. We are more likely to buy something because they told us to, than if a brand told us to. Why would we trust a brand? All they care about is money, right? Selling to us and making a profit? My point exactly.

This is why influencer marketing can be so effective. People trust people that they idolise or love, and will take their opinions into account when analysing or making a decision. By using an influencer, it helps your brand tap into that and to implement an element of control into the word-of-mouth conversation. Ads posted by influencers don’t really look or feel like ads, which is another reason they can be so effective. So, why not let an influencer that is right for your brand do the talking to your target audience, and start to build an element of trust? Speaking of which...

2. They help to build brand relationships and a community

Following on from that, influencers are a great way to build a community of people who love your brand. Think about it. An influencer already has a community of people who follow them, so by promoting your product or brand in a way that seems more authentic and word-of-mouth-like, then you can start to build that brand relationship between you and your consumers.

Once that community is built, it’s only a matter of time before it begins to grow and take off. Best case scenario, your brand could end up spreading just like influencers do, becoming more popular through word-of-mouth and on social media. That’s when you need to know how to capitalise on that and keep bringing out things that your target audience will love.   

3. They have a high ‘organic’ reach to generate sales

Of course, you can’t forget about the main goal, which is to make money. Brand awareness, brand relationships, brand trust and brand loyalty are all important stepping stones to getting to the point of sale, and keeping consumers coming back afterwards to make repeat purchases.

But a main reason that your brand should be using influencer marketing is that a genuine influencer is able to achieve a high organic reach of people. While there isn’t really any such thing as ‘organic’ reach anymore, influencers have been able to defy this with their pure levels of popularity.

An influencer (if they’re a legitimate one) doesn’t pay for their followers, or to put their content in front of people’s eyes. It gets there simply because so many people love it, and with this power of numbers and the shareability of social media, the content reaches more people. This means you can generate sales through influencers quicker, easier, and oh yeah, cheaper too.

4. It’s cost-effective

As mentioned above, using influencer marketing is cost effective because you don’t need to pay cost per thousand (impressions) or for reaching people. Other advertising can be expensive, especially if you’re paying to produce and run high quality content such as television advertisements, digital campaigns, or out of home advertising such as billboards and transit advertising.

Influencer marketing can cost whatever you want it to cost, as long as the agreement stands between you and the particular influencer/s involved. For example, this can be a once off payment, a payment plan, per sale (using tracking codes to identify if the sale came directly from an influencer), or in the form of sending free products. All of which are a lot cheaper than investing thousands or millions of dollars in advertising that is less of a sure thing.

And so as you can see, influencer marketing has proven to be very effective for brands in the past, simply because it seems more authentic than advertising directly to them yourself.

However, it’s also important to be mindful of the downsides to influencer marketing. Since taking off, this form of marketing is now becoming questionable due to the exact issue of authenticity that made it popular in the first place. Nowadays, people are beginning to question influencers, wondering if they really care about or enjoy the products that they promote, or whether they’re just doing it for the free things, the money, and the #Instafame. Or, they are also questioning whether or not their ‘influence’ is real (think about the use of bots, paying for fake followers etc.), which means identifying proper influencers can be tricky.

So how do you combat this? Choose your influencers wisely and through many of the authentic influencer-search platforms out there, and you’ll hopefully be alright. It’s also important to make sure the influencer/s that you choose align with your brand and what you stand for. And make sure that the people they are influencing actually trust them. Start there, and you could be on your way to success in no time.