As the world established its presence online, businesses had to let their marketing strategies evolve accordingly. In this internet-powered age, having multiple digital marketing strategies is necessary to keep up with the growing competition. In the last couple of decades, the influencer marketing strategy emerged within digital marketing and distinguished itself from every other marketing channel. Below, we break down the concept of influencer marketing, its effectiveness, and ways to leverage it properly.
Definition
With the rise of social media, influencers rose as people who had amassed a substantial number of followers. They mainly create content and are valued by their audiences for their opinions, knowledge, and insights into specific niches. From a marketing point of view, one can define influencers as people who can influence consumers’ buying decisions.
Influencer marketing is a technique where brands leverage the influence of influencers to market their products. This marketing strategy uses the word-of-mouth tactic to convince consumers to look into a certain brand. With influencer marketing, brands hire influencers for endorsements or product placements to market their products to the audiences of those influencers.
Influencer Marketing Statistics
- The influencer marketing industry is predicted to expand to more than $16 billion in 2024
- Nearly 90% of marketers say that influencer marketing results in higher ROI than other marketing channels.
- The earned media value on influencer marketing can go as high as $18 per dollar, with the average ROI per dollar spent being around $6.
- Over 70% of marketers state that it brings traffic of a higher quality than other sources.
- Around half of the marketers believe that it gets them better customers
- Over half of the female participants of a survey had bought a product due to an influencer post, and 60% of them indicated that they refuse to engage if the influencer’s content does not seem genuine.
Reasons Behind the Statistics
Understanding the reasons behind the effectiveness of this method is necessary to design a successful marketing strategy. Here are some of the major reasons why influencer marketing works so well:
1. It Reaches Your Target Audience
You can not guarantee that your campaigns will reach most of your potential customers with other advertising methods. Influencer marketing, on the other hand, eliminates this uncertainty.
Influencers usually have followers who share certain interests. If your product fits within a creator’s story, you can be assured that your target audience will be their regular audience. By partnering with the right influencer, your marketing efforts will reach potential customers, as opposed to uninterested people browsing the internet.
2. Influencers Can Sway Your Target Audience
As people follow and engage with an influencer, a rapport develops between them. This trust gives influencers the ability to sway audiences. Around 90% of consumers believe in online recommendations just as much as they believe in personal ones. Therefore, influencers are the right people to contact if you aim to make consumers take a genuine interest in your brand and its products.
3. Influencer Marketing Doesn’t Bother Your Target Audience
Influencer marketing is distinctive in seamlessly integrating advertisements into the users’ browsing experience. It gives control to the consumers, increasing the probability of them paying attention to your product. So, it can be more effective in turning them into customers than other marketing strategies.
4. Consumers Prefer Influencers Over Brands
To people, brands remain faceless entities, and it is easier to relate to and trust influencers. Fusing your marketing campaigns with creators lets your products become a part of individual stories, facilitating connection development between you and consumers.
Leveraging the Statistics
Now that we’ve been through the statistics and the reasons behind their success, let’s examine ways businesses can ensure they make full use of the potential of influencer marketing.
1. Find an Influencer That Fits In
Finding an influencer that is right for you is critical to successful influencer marketing campaigns. Not only does it warrant that you reach your target audience, but it also ensures that your brand is reflected properly.
Partnering with an influencer implies that you agree with their content and agree to be a part of it. Ascertaining that your brand is presented accurately entails ensuring that your chosen influencer’s content agrees with your brand’s values.
2. Do Your Groundwork Thoroughly
When searching for creators to partner with, you must look beyond the obvious. Do not be tempted by followers and like counts, as macro-influencers and celebrities do not have high engagement rates, and the numbers can be fake, to begin with.
In 2024, 90% of marketers intended to partner up with micro-influencers. This is mainly because micro-influencers have higher engagement rates: they are accessible to their audiences. Influencers with higher engagement rates can get you long-term customers who genuinely appreciate your products.
When choosing an influencer, monitor the amount and frequency of their paid posts. Creators who start leaning towards producing paid content over organic can not sustain their engagement rates.
3. Grant Them Freedom
When partnering with influencers, keep in mind that their audience is there for their content, not yours. Letting creators maintain the authenticity of their content will serve your purpose better than micromanaged campaigns.
Curtailing creators’ creative freedom may even lead to conflicts with them, which can ruin your reputation within their circles. Not only will a bad name pose a hurdle for you in finding influencers for your campaigns, but it will also be conveyed to social media users one way or another.
4. Invest in Long-lasting Partnerships
Nurturing meaningful connections will benefit you and the creators you team up with. It will facilitate communication and collaboration, and this will be felt on the audience’s end, winning you a good name in both influencer and audience circles.
Endnote
Investing in influencer marketing lets you make the most out of your investment in marketing your brand. If you haven’t invested in teaming up with a creator yet, visit this site to see how managing influencer marketing and related CRM have been made easier than ever before.
