What is Influencer Marketing and How Can You Use It to Grow Your Business in 2019?

The digital marketing landscape is always on the verge of being disrupted by a new breakthrough. Marketers and business owners need to stay abreast of the latest trends and statistics. One such development that has taken social media and digital marketing by storm is the rise of influencer marketing. But what is influencer marketing, really?

It involves working with people who are considered influencers to promote a brand, campaign, or product. It is a highly effective method to expand reach, create brand awareness, reinforce customer loyalty, and drive conversions.

Many brands are proactively harnessing the potential of influencer marketing. According to a report by Linqia, influencer marketing was used by 86% marketers in 2017. And 88.5% of them considered it to be valuable for their overall marketing strategies.This makes it imperative for business owners to explore this avenue, regardless of the size and niche of their businesses. Before we discuss the questions of what is influencer marketing and how it can be leveraged, let us first understand the concept of influencers.

Understanding the Power of Influencers

To better understand the question of what is influencer marketing, you need to first understand who are influencers?

Social media influencers are different from the celebrities of yesteryears. In simple terms, influencers are people who can influence the decisions and opinions of other people.

They are often perceived as industry experts. They also share a friendly rapport with their followers. As a result of their influence, they tend to have a significant and loyal social media following.

Unlike some celebrities, influencers don’t live under the veil of secrecy. They use their social media profiles to maintain a personal connection with their fans.

This helps them develop a trusted community of followers who perceive them as authority figures on certain subjects. Such followers see them as role models and often swear by their recommendations.

It is evident that influencers have a certain amount of power within their fan communities. And it is this power that can be leveraged by brands to reach out to a massive audience.

Since their followers readily place their faith in the influencer, it becomes easier for brands to promote their products or services. An influencer marketing campaign, if executed properly, can help increase sales and provide a high ROI.

Let’s now try to better understand the question of what is influencer marketing. We will also explore the various advantages it offers when compared to other forms of digital marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

If you have reached 2019 without understanding the question of what is influencer marketing, it’s high time you brush up your marketing knowledge.

In layman’s terms, influencer marketing is the process of partnering with influencers to promote a brand and its products or services. It involves spotting the right influencers and working with them to create powerful campaigns that put your brand at the center.

According to Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 2.77 billion in 2019. It is likely that your potential customers are already using one or more social networking platforms. Reaching out to this target audience on social media is of the utmost importance.

However, owing to fierce competition and changes in social media algorithms, your content may not always be able to cut through the noise to reach your target audience. This is where influencer marketing can be extremely helpful.

Collaborating with an influencer gives you direct access to their loyal and engaged fan base. This is useful to expand your reach and boost brand awareness. It also saves you the trouble of identifying and targeting the right audience. That job is already taken care of by the influencer.

It’s important to note that adding an influencer’s voice to your content increases its credibility. Consumers are highly skeptical and often find it difficult to trust brands that blow their own trumpets. They often tend to ignore content that is overly promotional.They’d rather rely on content and recommendations from a trusted influencer. In fact, according to the previously-cited Linqia study, influencer content yields far better results than brand-created content.

Image via Linqia

Influencer-created content is often perceived as more authentic because it comes from real people who are also authority figures. Such content often drives more engagement in terms of likes and comments on social media and blog posts.

And if an influencer’s fan community likes your content, they are also likely to share it within their own networks. This helps you take your content to an even larger audience and in turn, enhance brand awareness.

Recommendations from influencers can also have a positive impact on your brand’s reputation. If an influencer posts about their positive experience with your brand, their followers will be naturally drawn to your products or services. This can be extremely useful in generating new leads and increasing sales. Needless to say, this has a significant impact on the overall growth of your business.

Partnering with influencers also has a positive effect on your website’s search engine rankings. By taking your content to a larger audience, you can drive more traffic to your site. In addition, influencer marketing also improves your inbound link profile. A properly executed influencer marketing campaign helps you earn high-quality backlinks.

Finally, working with influencers lets you leverage their content creation skills. Influencers create highly valuable user-centric content for their followers on a regular basis.

So when you collaborate with an influencer, it breathes new life into your own content strategy and gives you access to a treasure trove of user-generated content. In addition to keeping your social feed fresh and unique, this can also improve your search engine rankings.

Now that you understand the answers to the questions of what is influencer marketing, let’s discuss the real-life example of a business that has utilized it well.

Continue reading this article on Shane Barker's blog.