Scroll down the feed of your favorite social media platform, and we bet you’ll spot images, posts, or videos of a famous figure endorsing some product. That’s what digital marketers call influencer marketing.
Reports show that 57% of businesses use this marketing tactic to increase sales, brand visibility, and loyalty. It keeps gaining traction because it provides a better ROI than content, email, affiliate, and other forms of digital marketing.
If your company falls among the 43% that are yet to join the bandwagon, this post has shed light on the vital information you need to take advantage of this form of digital marketing.
How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
In influence marketing, brands use influencers to endorse their products. Most influencers are famous people who have a loyal fan base on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, and YouTube. They are not necessarily celebrities.
These famous figures push products by simply mentioning, reviewing, and recommending products to their followers. Simple as the endorsements and mentions appear, they often convert better than content, affiliate, email, mobile, and display marketing.
This is because the influencers’ followers tend to trust them better than they would trust content from a random person. In return, companies pay influencers for the endorsements and or mentions.
How much do you pay an influencer? Influencer rates depend on posting frequency, influencer reach, and the type of content used for endorsement.
Reasons to try Influence Marketing
1. Influencers have a ready market
Influencers have a large fan base that believes in their ideologies. As such, these public figures will always have an easy time convincing their loyal followers to try out your product or service. What’s more? The fans trust influencers just like they would trust friends, acquaintances, and colleagues.
2. Influencers have solid marketing tricks
Many influencers have years of marketing experience. They understand the demographics of followers and the marketing language that could push your products better. As well, influencers understand the right time to endorse a product. With the experience, the experts will amplify your brand, generate leads, and improve your sales within a short time.
3. Influencers use multiple social platforms
Endorsers have followers on social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Given that, your product endorsement will reach a wider audience. You will never have to worry about leaving out the customers who do not hang out on your favorite social platform.
4. Influencer Marketing offers an instant reach
Some forms of digital marketing like ads and content might not reach the prospective audience on time. For instance, adblockers could block ads, and search engines could keep your content in lower search results. That means prospective clients will not get your marketing content.
Unlike the content and ads, endorsements will reach the audience immediately. The content will not pass through a search engine.
5. Influence marketing amplifies brand recall value
Endorsements will not just generate sales. But, they will also amplify your brand’s recall value. Customers will begin associating your products with their favorite influencers. In return, the amplified brand recall will bring in more repeat sales and enhance your customer loyalty.
Choosing a Good Influencer for Your Brand
The type of endorser you pick will determine the outcome of your marketing campaign. For that reason, if you don’t wish to take chances, hire an experienced, creative, personable, and responsive endorser to push your products.
One with such qualities will doubtlessly deliver the desired outcome. But, how can you identify these values? Here are ideas.
1. Look for one with a good reach
An influencer’s reach is the number of people likely to see the endorsement content. For that reason, if you want more sales and higher brand visibility, go for an endorser with several followers. Probably, the influencer should have at least 3000 active followers.
2. Get an endorser with a reasonable engagement rate
Engagement rate shows how well an influencer relates with their followers. You can gauge it using the likes, replies, shares, and comments a public figure gets in each post. Those with a higher engagement rate will always generate more sales since they enjoy strong connections with their followers.
3. Hire a highly active influencer
Good influencers should be active on their social media platforms. They should have a history of posting relevant content consistently and engaging their followers in the comment section. The high activity will build strong connections with their followers, making it easier to endorse products.
4. Go for an influencer with good audience quality
The influencer marketing sphere has recently attracted canning people looking to swindle marketers. The less-professional people buy fake likes and followers to make you believe that they have a large audience. However, such influencers will hardly deliver the expected ROI since the fake followers won’t convert.
The Bottom Line
Done right, influencer marketing can improve your sales, enhance brand awareness, and foster credibility. It gives a better ROI than other forms of marketing like affiliate marketing, content marketing, paid ads, and email marketing.
This is because it offers an instant reach and targets customers across several social platforms. Then again, getting good results would depend on the influencer you pick. A good one should have a large following, an excellent engagement rate, and active social platforms.
