The rise of social media has led to the creation and increase in popularity of influencer marketing. At the heart of successful influencer marketing is effective content promotion. Influencers commonly build their own brands and audience by promoting explainer videos and other forms of visual content. Audience engagement is vital to successful influencer marketing, making interactive content highly valuable for influencers and the businesses who partner with them. After all, visibility is deeply related to influence.
There are many benefits of social media for business, and one of the best ways to maximize them is by pairing social media marketing with influencer marketing. When used strategically, you will earn $6.50 for every dollar spent on this form of marketing. With this ROI potential, almost any type of business will benefit from incorporating influencer marketing into their larger marketing strategies.
Definition of Influencer Marketing
The practice of brands engaging with social media personalities (or influencers) to promote their brand or product to the influencer’s audience. This is done in the hopes of increasing awareness of a brand and/or sales of a product.
Influencers build their own brand that’s relevant to their specific audience and niche on visibility on social media websites. Explainer videos, animations, infographics, pictures, interactive visual content, and videos are all important aspects of influencer marketing, both for businesses and influencers.
The Rise of Influencer Marketing
Just as you can use any social media platform to market your business, you can find influencers to partner with on virtually any social media platform. In fact, influencer marketing wouldn’t be possible without the meteoric rise of social media. It’s a sort of new take on the classic celebrity endorsement, but anyone in any niche can become an influencer as long as they have access to social media. They’re influential figures in their chosen niche, not necessarily celebrities, and simply use social media to connect with other people. They’re often perceived as role models who their followers look up to and trust, and thanks to social media, they can easily share their lives, thoughts, and opinions with others.
Influencer Marketing Statistics
Influencers use their status to influence their followers to purchase products from a particular brand — which is an incredibly effective strategy. Marketers spent a whopping $570M on influencer marketing in 2017, with $1.6B being spent on Instagram sponsored posts in 2018. Most brands that invest in influencer marketing spent anywhere from $25k to $100k on it in 2017.
Here’s a look at a few more influencer marketing statistics that highlight why so many businesses use influencer marketing to grow their brand.
- 84% of micro-influencers charge a max of $250 for a sponsored Instagram post
- 70% of teens put more trust into influencers than traditional celebrities
- 86% of women turn to social media advice when making a purchase
- 49% of people rely on influencer recommendations when making a purchase
- 22% of marketers agree the most cost-effective form of acquiring new customers is through influencer marketing
- 57% of brands use influencers
- 40% of people using Twitter make a purchase based off a tweet they read
- 67% of marketers have influencers promote their content
The Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Naturally, there are many benefits of using influencer marketing. You can use influencers to strengthen your visual marketing efforts, particularly when you use them to promote infographics, videos, and interactive content. Below are five more reasons to use influencer marketing.
Increased Trust
Influencers already have a following who trust this person. When an influencer promotes a brand or product, their followers trust what they say. This builds their trust in your business more quickly than traditional marketing methods.
Brand Awareness
Again, influencers already have a following, which likely numbers in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions. This makes it much easier to reach a greater number of people with information about your business, creating more awareness of your brand.
Diverse Marketing Strategy
Influencer marketing is a great way to diversify your marketing strategy and try something new. It doesn’t have to replace your current plan, just add to it. It can also help enrich your content strategy, allowing you to share different types of content, in different ways, with a different audience.
Active and Qualified Target Audience
Influencers don’t just have a built-in audience; this audience is active, engaged, and qualified. If you pair up with the right influencer, their followers likely have similar values and would be interested in the products or services you offer.
High Return on Investment (ROI)
More and more studies indicate that influencer marketing has a fairly high ROI, meaning that it’s an efficient way to spend your money and will likely lead to higher profits for your business.
Does Your Business Need Influencer Marketing?
There’s no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy that will work for every single business, including influencer marketing. It may not work well in your niche, you may not be able to find the right influencer to partner with, or it may simply not interest you. Whatever the reason, you’ve still got plenty of other great marketing options to choose from if you don’t want to pursue influencer marketing. However, it’s definitely worth trying if you’re interested in it, and it can be highly beneficial to your marketing efforts.
To get the most out of influencer marketing, you must integrate it with other forms of marketing. You’ll need a holistic marketing plan that focuses on customer needs rather than solely selling your products or services. Need help creating a holistic marketing plan? Contact IGW today.
