Influencer marketing is a social media-based marketing approach in which the buying, selling or promotion of a product or service occurs through individuals or influencers who have the potential to reach your target audience.
Influencers sharing the same level of value as the product/brand towards its target audience can be the bridge. Despite the rise in the popularity of influencer marketing in recent years, influencer marketing is not a new idea. Influencers, athletes, celebrities and politicians have long been used to drive brand lift.
Across all levels, firms have been using and attempting to realize the full potential of an influencer marketing opportunity to date. To date, 83% of the marketers that have been using influencer marketing have characterized influencer marketing as a strong marketing strategy method.
The benefits of influencer marketing
For brands, influencer marketing campaigns can have many benefits. Among which we can mention:
- Increased brand awareness: The effect of the inclusion of a tag in a large and noisy network is strongly affected by the influence of an influencer, as the effect of the candidate is strongly amplified by the status of the influencer.
- Increased credibility and trust: When an expert or opinion leader suggests a customer, it builds brand credibility and trust in the customer’s mind.
- Precise targeting: Influencer marketing makes it possible for brands to deliver specific targeted audiences by way of content producers who already have a shared interest in, or familiarity with, a particular group or a common interest domain.
- Improved ROI: It is still possible to achieve reaping better advertising return on investment (ROI) by being more to the point and granular in the work done with the influencers.
- Increased engagement: Influencers are able to exert their power by delivering interactivity with their audience, leading to the acquisition of likes, comments and shares, ultimately translating into an improved brand image.
- Authentic and original content: Content has a long way off and can be very intimate and tailored to each consumer, more interested and relevant to some specific target audience than traditional advertising and possesses a personal touch which can be exploited to achieve a sense of authenticity to the promotion of product or brand.
- Access to valuable insights: The pros of influencers can provide immediate feedback and consumer knowledge on the product response for a good or service (i.e., quality). This kind of data can be beneficial (e.g., for developing new products and market plans).
- Campaign flexibility: On-the-fly adjustment of the influencer marketing campaign is highly flexible and dynamic. However, this is quite different from the other forms of advertising.
- Speed of implementation: With respect to traditional advertising campaigns, which usually need a substantial duration of planning and production, an influencer campaign is, by far, the easiest to configure.
- International reach: Global reach influencers can be used to gain global brand exposure at a relatively low cost as an alternative to conventional mass campaigns.
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