What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. Influencers are opinion leaders with a social following base. They appear as experts or trustworthy sources of information.
Why is Influencer Marketing Important?
Influencer marketing is closely related to?social media marketing, as most opinion leaders gather their audience from social platforms. This channel gives you access to an enormous audience –?half?of the global population uses social networks.
Better yet, influencer marketing enables you to reach people you can't attain through traditional advertising.?Two-thirds?of consumers use ad blockers, but the same people willingly take advice from influencers.?80%?of users have purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
Brands that already employ influencer marketing have proven the effectiveness of this channel.?89%?of marketers say that?ROI?from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. It’s no wonder that 17% of companies spend over half of their marketing budget on influencers.
So, influencer marketing is crucial in the age of social media and ad fatigue. This channel helps build trust for your brand and drives impressive results. Now, let’s move on to the other benefits influencer marketing provides.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is an effective way to improve your marketing strategy, reach business objectives, and even cut expenses. Let’s get into details and find the benefits influencer marketing has for your brand.
Brand awareness growth
40%?of marketers use influencer marketing to boost brand awareness, and this strategy works great. Opinion leaders share your brand’s story, mission, and values with their follower base. It automatically expands your outreach and positioning online.
Content strategy enrichment
Influencer marketing is a golden opportunity to liven up your social media posts. You can repost the influencer’s content or encourage their followers to create user-generated content, as?24%?of brands do. You can also use blogger’s images for other marketing channels, such as?targeted advertising. To avoid problems with copyright, include it in the contract.
Quality lead generation
36%?of brands use influencer marketing to generate leads. 72% of them believe that this channel brings higher quality leads compared to other channels. People generally feel positive about the brands their favorite blogger advertises. Better yet, some types of content, such as reviews, attract warmer leads in the middle stages of the?sales funnel.
Cost-effectiveness
Other marketing channels require regular influxes of cash from your budget. For instance, to promote your brand through?search engine marketing, you have to top-up your account on the advertising platform. Otherwise, your ad disappears from the search engine results page.
A well-thought-out influencer marketing strategy can drive better results for lower fees or even allow you to barter in the future. Another note on influencer marketing efficacy – on average, brands make?$5.20?for every $1 spent on this channel.
Influencer marketing can contribute to your business by helping you grow brand awareness and online presence, as well as ensuring?lead generation. Depending on your objectives, you can choose different types of influencer marketing campaigns.
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Types of Influencer Marketing
Since influencer marketing is around, brands and opinion leaders have developed various types of campaigns. Let’s unpack some popular tactics that you can use in your influencer marketing strategy.
Social media takeover
This type of influencer marketing works great for growing your follower base on social networks. However, it takes a lot of courage as the brand delegates running its account to an influencer for an agreed period of time.
Most often, a brand lets an influencer manage their profile for a day. Another option is to invite an opinion leader to run a stream, as Miele did in the example below. They invited chefs Kyle Connaughton, Helena Rizzo, Gaggan Anand, and Paco Roncero to hold a series of online cooking events.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing?is a relatively cheap and effortless way to generate leads. This strategy boils down to paying an influencer for each customer who came from their website or social media account. Meanwhile, you don’t have to waste time choosing influencers and negotiating – simply publish an affiliate program on your website and wait.
Here is an example of affiliate marketing from The points guy blog, owned by the influencer, Brian Kelly. The blog is dedicated to cutting travel costs, and Brian offers ways to do so using credit, travel, and hotel cards. Apart from reviews, the blogger publishes offers from partners and gains points and benefits from each purchase.
Sponsored content
This type of influencer marketing often appears on Instagram. Brands pay for publishing a promotional post on the influencer’s account. The opinion leader takes care of content creation and puts out a post made according to the client's guidelines.
In the example below, jewelry brand Stone armory united forces with Gwen Rachel, who has over 200 thousand followers. The blogger took a picture of herself wearing Stone armory jewelry and featured the company’s account in the caption.
Unboxings
Brands often send gifts to influencers hoping that the social media star will open and review them. It costs next to nothing compared with the fees influencers charge for advertising. However, this strategy is quite risky.
First of all, the opinion leader may not review your product at all. Another point is the influencer’s negative feedback often becomes dangerous for brands. Finally, sometimes businesses lay themselves out to please bloggers but cut corners packing orders for customers, which drives backlash. So, work around these possibilities before employing this tactic.
The cosmetics brand, Too Faced, impresses influencers with breathtaking gifs for years now. Here is an example – YouTuber AleLaChula got the full collection of Too Faced products for free. The gift was so good the influencer created an unboxing video, which gained 45 thousand views.
Brand ambassador programs
Some people love specific brands so much that they are ready to promote them even for free. Influencers are no exception, so companies offer them?brand ambassador?programs. This tactic works because opinion leaders recommend their favorite brands heartily.
Sportswear brand, Lululemon, works with an extensive network of ambassadors and features them on its social media accounts. In the example below, you can see a video by Charlie Dark on the company’s Instagram profile. Charlie talks about the ups and downs of 2020 and shows his friends wearing Lululemon clothing.