While influencer marketing has existed for many years, the digital age has propelled the industry into a new era of success.
More recently, brands worldwide have used influencer marketing to increase brand awareness and customer reach, which, for many businesses, has worked time and time again.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing describes a relationship between a brand and an influencer. It is a marketing strategy that sees brands pay influencers to promote their products or services.
For example, a candle-making company might gift an online influencer a package of candles, and the influencer would then create a social media post promoting that product to their followers.
5 Reasons Influencer Marketing Works
Influencer marketing is as popular as ever and will likely remain so because of its high effectiveness. Any business can benefit from this kind of marketing, too.
While there are plenty of beauty influencers, other influencers promote various products and services such as car parts, home décor, workout apps, and much more. If it exists, there’s an influencer for it.
Still, if you’re unsure if influencer marketing is the right approach for your brand, here are five reasons it works.
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It Gets the Word Out
Launching a new product doesn’t always produce the best results. Sometimes, brands might not reach their desired target market, which is far less likely to happen with a good influencer marketing strategy.
With influencer marketing, your product or service will reach the right audience, ensuring the word is out about what you’re selling. In turn, this marketing technique will likely boost sales and brand awareness.
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It Involves Trust
Influencers gain popularity online for a reason. Whether they have shining personalities or a wealth of knowledge about a particular topic, their influence on their audience creates trust.
To support that fact, around 70% of teens trust influencers more than celebrities! You can benefit from that trust by teaming up with a trusted influencer in your industry and promoting your product or service together.
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It Reaches a New Audience
Finding new audiences is always beneficial, even if your brand already has an established customer base. After all, the greater your audience outreach, the more sales you make.
Working with an influencer means gaining access to a range of new people. Additionally, if you work with the right influencers (i.e., ones that match your brand), you acquire an audience of people who are genuinely interested in your business and the products or services you sell.
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It Leverages Social Media
Social media is a significant part of day-to-day life. From posting reels on Facebook to liking tweets on Twitter, almost everyone has at least one social media account they use daily, which acts as a gold mine for marketers. With so many people currently using social media, there is a chance to gain an engaged audience online.
Influencer marketing works because it goes hand in hand with social media marketing. On social media, the potential audience is almost limitless. Plus, it’s easy to target specific communities. For instance, if your business sells baby clothing, you can reach out to parenting social media influencers who may promote your products to their fellow parent followers.
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It Creates Excellent Content
Online influencers know what they’re doing regarding online content; they did not reach their level of popularity with unappealing posts.
Over the years, they have mastered their social media skills and fathomed their audience to a point where they know precisely the type of posts that generate results and drive attention. Therefore, if you work with an influencer, their talents in content creation reflect positively on your brand.
How to Create Influencer Marketing Strategies That Work
As you can see, influencer marketing is a profitable strategy that grows your customer reach and builds a better brand image. Yet, there is much more to this type of modern marketing. To reap the benefits of working with influencers, you must create an influencer marketing strategy that works for your brand.
Building a successful influencer marketing plan is not as easy as reaching out to a reputable influencer and hoping they accept your offer. If you’re ready to boost your brand through influencers, be sure to do the following:
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Choose the Right Influencer
Choosing the right influencer for your brand is essential. It bodes well to select an influencer who matches your brand’s image, niche, and overall goals; a brand that sells software won’t get far by reaching out to fashion influencers.
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Measure Success
Measuring your ROI is crucial for building an ongoing influencer marketing strategy that works for you. You can make better decisions in the future by seeing what works (and what doesn’t).
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Work with Smaller Influencers
Many companies think that numbers mean everything. A large following is desirable; however, smaller influencers (micro or nano influencers) can significantly improve your brand’s reach, especially if the influencer covers a specific niche with a captivated audience.
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Research
Influencer marketing evolves constantly; what was popular last year might not work so well now. To build an influencer marketing strategy that delivers consistent results, you must research and keep up with the latest trends.
For example, there’s a current emphasis on authenticity. Followers want to know that the influencers they look up to are genuine in their promotions, so you must target influencers with a sincere interest in your product or service.
KOL (Key Opinion Leaders): Using KOLS to Keep Up with the Latest Influencer Marketing Research
You can keep pace with the latest research into influencer marketing by checking out KOLS’ (Key Opinion Leaders) findings. Using the KOLS search engine, you can find a wealth of information about influencer marketing, its impact, and how it might change in the future.
For instance, one interesting piece from KOLS Liselot Hudders, Marijke De Veirman, and Michelle R Nelson talks about the impact of influencer marketing on children. In their article, these KOLs discuss influencers’ observable power over the younger generation.
KOL Marijke De Veirman also contributed to another fascinating publication on how recognition of sponsoring on Instagram impacts adolescents’ brand evaluations, which revealed that influencer posts increased brand likability.
If you’re interested in honing influencer marketing and broadening your research on the topic, these KOLS and many other KOL experts in the industry provide a deeper insight into the world of influencer marketing.
Interesting Related Article: “4 Reasons Why You Need Influencer Marketing for Your Brand“