Over the last few decades, the world has seen some massive changes owing to the rapid digitization across the globe. And the marketing and advertising industry did not waste a second in jumping on this bandwagon.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is one of the latest additions in the sphere of advertising.
It is a classic technique where a famous personality or a relatively known face promotes a particular item on their platforms. Most influencers use social media, blogs, vlogs (video blogs), or a combination of all these for marketing the said items.
Though the concept dates back to 2006, what we know today as influencer marketing became established only after Instagram entered the game.
Why is Instagram Becoming An Ideal Platform for Influencers?
While Twitter and Facebook had always been advertisers’ paradise, Instagram turned becoming an influencer into an actual profession, further boosting this type of brand promotion.
Most of these influencers are people we either follow or look at daily. And so, when they promote a product, we are prone to believing them rather than some hoarding saying the same things.
Influencer marketing has turned out to be the best way for businesses and brands to attract more customers. Many small businesses have leveraged influencer marketing to scale up, get more visibility, and provide higher returns on investment. As a result, influencer marketing is fast becoming a preferred platform to make a brand more visible and successful.
How to Look for a Suitable Influencer for Your Brand?
It is important to note that influencer marketing is not limited to celebrities. These days, many brands and businesses are turning to other influencers to build a highly engaged audience community.
It leads us to the next question. Where to find suitable influencers for your business?
Here, we have tried to answer this question.
- Hashtags
The first and most logical way to look for influencers is through hashtags. For the unversed, hashtags make any social media content accessible and searchable on social media platforms. Thus, searching for brand-related hashtags is the best way to look for influencers.
Here is how you can go about it:
- Look for #blogger #sponsored or #influencer on Instagram and find the best results.
- You can also check out the profile of a creator whose social media post touched a chord with you.
- If you like the aesthetics and content of a post, see if it is in the same niche as yours.
- If an influencer has an impressive number of followers, check their engagement rates.
- If they fulfil all the above, add them to their list for outreach.
- Social Media
Another way to look for social media influencers is by roping in those already talking about you. You can find out about such influencers by tracking where your brand is mentioned. An array of social media listening and monitoring tools can help you find influencers talking about your industry.
- Influencer Identification Tools
There is no shortage of influencer identification tools that help in looking for influencers or your own followers. These tools also help research competitors’ influencers and select a few of them who are highly engaging.
- Campaign Management
Credible platforms today help businesses and brands manage their influencer marketing campaigns effectively and efficiently. Managing communications with influencers becomes easier as the platforms provide user-friendly integration with Outlook and Gmail to ensure all communications are in one place. Bulk emails, customized email templates, and more make managing campaigns easier.
What Benefits of Influencer Marketing Make this Strategy So Extensively Used?
Once someone becomes a big-shot influencer, many brands out there would love to have them as part of their influencer marketing team or even as the face of the product. The concept might seem a little off-beat compared to other traditional forms of marketing and advertising. But the benefits of influencer marketing make it an extremely popular choice for brand promotion and endorsement.
Here are the top 5 advantages of influencer marketing strategies:
- Greater Brand Awareness and Credibility: Influencers play a crucial role in increasing brand awareness, specifically in cases with a particular target demographic. If you are accustomed to how social media works, you will notice that most influencers have distinct followers.
Influencers incorporate product endorsement within their regular content. The strategy makes the advertisements engaging and relatable. Most importantly, people on the Internet connect to these influencers almost on a personal level. So, when they say that a particular product has brought some positive change in their lives, people are more likely to believe them. The audience ultimately buys the endorsed product to experience what their role models do.
Since nothing is more assuring than word-of-mouth, influencers boost the credibility of your products as well.
- Greater ROIs and Increased Profits:
Compared to other marketing methods like posters, billboards, and electronic media, the return on investment is much higher in the case of influencer marketing.
If you go by the statistics, influencer marketing ROI is almost 40% greater than the other mediums. Studies show that almost half of the most prominent brands and business houses today consider this aspect one of the best perks of this advertising strategy.
Since the returns are significantly greater than the amount invested, influencer marketing effectively boosts the overall profits and revenues, benefitting the company.
- Improved Content Quality:
Why do we need advertisements?
Simply stating that this newly manufactured laptop is great will not sell any gadgets. You need to appeal to people. Advertisements draw attention. They stand out from the rest, making us interested in whatever is being sold.
However, we often notice a monotony in certain kinds of ads, especially over a long period. Influencers breathe new life into the ads, making them refreshing and original. One way is to utilise an influencer marketing hub.
It is a platform that connects influencers and Instagram-famous individuals with brands that would work perfectly together. The influencers brainstorm, coming up with new and improved ideas that can greatly help improve sales and the quality of the content the customers are consuming.
- Influencing Customers’ Purchase Decisions:
Most of us actually take some time before deciding whether to go ahead with the purchase or wait. We make these purchase decisions keeping many factors in mind. The item’s cost, the reviews, and usability are some of the chief criteria. Influencer marketing has its way of affecting this decision-making procedure.
Consider a well-known public figure telling you that they use the product in question regularly and have seen massive improvements in its use. Many of us won’t even raise an eyebrow. Instead, we would love to use the same products as their favourite influencer to experience the same improvement.
Thus, influencers act as catalysts in situations where the consumer would have otherwise spent sufficient time making the decision. They help consumers choose an easier way without much deliberation.
- Saves Time and Money:
Today, time is money, and influencer marketing is one such advertising strategy that saves both – time and money. Instagram profile checkers are very reliable analytical tools that use artificial intelligence to calculate the number of people following a particular Instagram profile. So, hiring an influencer to promote and endorse your brand means that you already know that at least the ardent followers will be made aware of your products.
Generally, the number and the quality of their followers determine an influencer’s ability. When we use celebrities to star in an ad film, they charge lump-sum amounts. Even then, there is no guarantee about how the public would take the advertisement.
With influencer marketing, not only do you save money by not investing as much as before, but you also save time. At the very least, you can be sure that the influencer’s follower base will be seeing your products.
Conclusion
As we can see, the benefits of influencer marketing are pretty awesome. Apart from the advantages mentioned above, there are several other reasons why this type of marketing strategy has almost become the clear winner.
Thanks to these influencers, the range of advertising platforms have increased, as has the concept of branding and product endorsements. Influencer marketing is a great alternative because you can apply the method to all products. From automobile companies to the beauty industry, there are very few business organizations that do not have this said strategy in place already.
The success of an influencer marketing venture depends on two things — the influencer themselves and the company they are collaborating with. Choosing the right influencer to promote your products is as important as the product itself.
Do you want to maximize your company’s sales and ensure that revenues exceed the expected value?
Then, influencer marketing is the way to go.
With a massive surge in online users, the days of conventional advertising techniques are a thing of the past now. The future is all about how best you can use the world wide web to promote your company and increase your brand’s visibility. And though influencer marketing is only the first step, it can make all the difference your company needs.
So, what are you waiting for?
Become a part of the change and make the most of influencer marketing today!
