Influencer marketing is a vital part of any good brand’s strategy. It is a type of marketing which majorly focuses on using the key leaders of the market to drive the message of a brand and to cater to a larger proportion of the demand. It goes hand-in-hand with two other influential forces of marketing – social media marketing and content marketing.
No matter what type of business you own logo design or digital marketing or a fashion clothing line, if people don’t know it, it doesn’t exist. That’s where influencer marketing helps you out.
Unlike traditional advertising, influencer marketing requires less investment and yields more return. Several organizations create campaigns explicitly catering to the influencer community that can help spread the word out. One thing to keep in mind is that social media and content marketing often fit influencer campaigns, but are not synonymous with influencer marketing.
So who is an influencer?
We have been talking about influencer but who exactly is an influencer? Unlike the common industry notion, an influencer isn’t just someone with a high number of followers, but someone with the power to influence his/her audience enough to make someone perform an activity like purchasing a product, using a service or registering for an event.
Top three factors to consider while identifying influencers for your brand are – Influencers:
- Reach
- Credibility, and
- Salesmanship
Reach is an influencer’s capability to provide or deliver a particular message to a large audience base. However, reach should not be the only considering factor. This is because of his/her credibility and salesmanship to that large reach will only be able to offer you the required ROI (return on investment). What is the point of investing in a person with more than 20,000 followers if they cannot generate any engagement or conversion, isn’t it?
How does Influencer marketing work?
The influencer gets sponsored or paid by the brand to post various types of content on their social media forum. Paid sponsorship works to its own advantages and guidelines. More substantial influencers and companies work exclusively.
Understanding what is fit for the brand
Before concluding and changing your marketing strategy, it is beneficial to understand if the influencer marketing scheme is even suitable for the brand. It is essential to know if the influencer is going to help in serving and helping you reach the product to larger masses? Does your product or brand has or requires a social media presence? If yes, what kind of presence and under what category? Does the chosen influencer fit your product and your target market? Take a decision based on the answers to these questions. Go ahead with influencer market if and only if you have some feasible solutions.
Why is Influencer marketing important after all?
There are many reasons why one should get influencers on-board. To make your campaign’s functioning smoother, allocate a specific budget for it in your marketing strategy.
Given below are certain pointers as to why one needs to hire influencers, from an influencer’s point of view:
- Consumers trust influencers: Social media activities are all around us, and hence the brand, if not marketed well online, will lose its value and charm eventually. Your brand is all about what its consumers think of it, and that’s what an influencer will do for you. They will use their audience’s trust in them for your brand.
- The shift from celebrities to people with opinions: Obviously, celebrities are much loved and play a pivotal role as always, but this era is more about people who have an opinion, and are leaders and influencers. The consumers look up to these influencers for honest opinion and feedback.
- The sudden and rapid growth of social media: social media is something everybody knows about and is on. It is not age bound either. Every age group is on social media, and it is the easiest way to reach out to the mass. The influencers write a blog or make a post on their Instagram and the number of people on Instagram today; it is relatively easy to market via social media platforms. for example, you own a logo design company and want to spread the word about it.
You will reach influencers and ask them to spread the word that would encourage clients to create a logo or use a tool to design a logo.
The bottom line
To sum up the entire scenario, Influencer marketing is one of the most essential and pivotal steps in making and sustaining a brand in today’s time. It is not for every brand though. Influencer marketing can be done only on a particular kind of products, and there have to be influencers who target the market with the product you wish to cater. If one does not evolve with the evolving world, then the brand will lose its power and charm. The consumers today trust all the recommendations from influencers.
They are the people who are selling the products today. It is no longer about what the biggest celebrity has to say about the product; it is about people like you and me, what do we think about the product which matters to the audience. So don’t ignore influencer marketing when you sit down to build your brand’s strategy.
About the author
Alice Jackson is a Blogger, Digital Marketing Consultant and a brain behind AI-powered logo maker tool at a crowdsourcing company, Designhill. She is a social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer, and an avid author. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, content marketing, personal logo design trends, startup strategies, and e-commerce. When not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels.
