What is influencer marketing, is it effective, and, more importantly, how should you leverage it for your brand?
Marketing can be tough. Effective branding, connecting with your audience and speaking their language, selecting relevant platforms for your service/product, and figuring out which marketing strategies are most effective for your target market can be a real challenge.
But you don’t have to tackle this all on your own. Take a journey through our ultimate guide to growing your business with Influencer Marketing.
Read our blog, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming An Influencer In Your Industry.
This is a truly comprehensive guide, covering everything you could need to know about influencer marketing. So read from start to finish (we suggest that if you are looking to win big!), or just jump straight to a specific topic of your interest.
What Is Influencer Marketing, And When Should You Use It?
Influencer marketing has taken the world by storm, and it isn’t difficult to see why. Unless it’s not your style, chances are you have at least one social media account. Did you know that an average user spends more than two hours per day on social media – and this number is only rising! Speaking from a marketing perspective, this indicates that we’re definitely under “influence”, and opportunities to promote business or products are endless.
This is where influencers come in – and they are everywhere! An influencer in this context is a person who wields their power over their target audience using their online platforms. But influencers are not just marketing tools. They are valuable partners who come equipped with the perfect marketing mix – persuasion and storytelling – to work on a strategy that best suits your business, for optimized results.
Leading digital marketers believe that influencer marketing has a lot of steam, and can go a long way to catch the attention of a variety of audiences – young, old, and anywhere in between.
Read our blog, Why Influencer Marketing Is Crucial For Your Brand, to discover the top five reasons why businesses are using influencer marketing, and find it extremely valuable.
The Evolution Of Influencer Marketing – Where It All Began
Influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing industries in the marketing world. Brands are increasingly leveraging the power of influencers to expand their reach, boost conversions, and increase brand awareness. Why? Because influencers are way more effective at engaging audiences than traditional media like TV, radio, and print ads. In fact, influencer marketing is giving traditional advertising a run for its money! But, what gave rise to this potent marketing tool we call influencer marketing?
According to experts, influencer marketing is likely to become a $15 billion industry by 2022. The customer acquisition rate and ROI from influencer marketing are impressive too, making it safe to assume that influencer marketing truly works. But is this a new phenomenon? Who were the earliest influencers? When did influencer marketing start?
Read our blog, The Very Beginning Of Influencer Marketing, to learn more about the history of influencer marketing and its evolution over the years.
The Word ‘Influencer’ Is Now In The Dictionary!
Despite being used from the 1700s in astrology, the term ‘influencer’ only recently received recognition in 2019 by Merriam Webster. However, the Oxford University Press released an exclusively online publication for social media called, “A Dictionary of Social Media” in 2016 with the word. With this release, the ‘influencer’ term has been introduced alongside a cosmos of words that are exclusive to social media. Dictionary.com included this term in its bank of words, not before 2016.
As influencer continues to expand in English and pull new terms and meanings into its orbit, the story of its evolution is worthy of an in-depth read, in our blog, When Was The Word Influencer Added To The Dictionary?
A Look At The Emergence Of The ‘Influencer’
Influencer marketing is the future. 93 percent of marketers now use it to expand their reach, boost conversions, and increase brand awareness. This marketing tactic has proven to be so effective that 69.8 percent of marketers are planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets in the coming years.
But how did we get here? The influencer marketing concept has been around for a while, with the earliest marketers figuring out that featuring influential people in their ads could sway purchasing decisions. This was before social media came to be, and people relied on print, TV, and radio ads for product recommendations.
For an in-depth guide into the influencer marketing history and what lies in store in the future as we navigate the dynamic social media landscape, check out our blog, How Did Modern Day Influencers Become A Thing?
So, How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
Have you ever purchased something because an expert or a celebrity you admire endorsed the product? Well, as it turns out, a lot of people have. Why? Because they trust their opinions.
Influencer marketing is the practice of partnering with influencers to market or promote your brand to raise brand awareness, increase traffic or sales, and drive a message to the target audience. At the very basic level, influencer marketing could be called a form of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions made by popular individuals, who have a loyal social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high level of trust that social influencers have built among their followers and recommendations from these influencers serve as a form of social proof.
Wondering how to leverage the reach of an influencer and grow your business? Read our blog, How Can Brands Use Influencer Marketing To Grow carefully approach influencer marketing, and discover the nuances of an effective influencer campaign to create marketable, profitable social media reach far beyond the realms of a quick click.
Why Should You Consider Using An Influencer Marketing Agency, And How Do They Work?
Influencers’ market expansion has given rise to new opportunities for marketing businesses online. Brands now have more options for strategizing and implementing influencer marketing campaigns as it has become a key component for any successful marketing plan. Effective influencer campaigns are essential for brand growth, but most businesses quickly realize that well-performing campaigns are challenging to develop, coordinate, and execute.
That’s why working with an influencer marketing agency can help. These agencies have a wealth of experience in structuring and managing campaigns to ensure your influencer marketing strategy’s success, by developing the connection between brands and social media influencers to create, manage, distribute and optimize influencer marketing campaigns. The best agencies manage campaigns from end-to-end with customized knowledge and experience for each brand’s needs, goals, audience, and industry.
But what does an influencer marketing company do, and what’s their importance in today’s marketing landscape?
Take a look at what they are and how they can help you in the long run with our blog, How Do Influencer Marketing Agencies Work?
What Will You Need For A Comprehensive Influencer Marketing Strategy?
If you’re not investing in influencers, you may be losing valuable customers. Influencers have already changed the world of marketing as we once knew it, and their popularity is only increasing as businesses start realizing their power to promote to the consumer.
Influencer marketing is the advertisement of products or services through endorsements by personalities with dedicated followings. It uses the relationship these people have built with their audience (on social media or otherwise) to encourage them to purchase advertised products. And it works. Audiences typically invest in influencers’ promotions to replicate their behavior, which exists as a form of social proof.
But this success doesn’t come without research, planning, and optimization. You need to have a plan if you want to get the ROI your business deserves.
Look no further! Get how-to, tips, and tools to create a stellar strategy to achieve your influencer marketing needs, with our comprehensive guide, How to Create An Influencer Marketing Strategy.
Tips For Finding The Right Social Influencers
Influencers – we’ve all seen them on our various social media channels or heard of them on the news. Some of us might have even bought something they recommended. A study showed that 82% of people were more likely to buy something that they were recommended by a micro-influencer, and its popularity is only growing. An endorsement from a powerful social media influencer can work wonders for your brand.
So, you might be thinking that it’s time for you to invest in this trend. But choosing the right influencer isn’t as easy as picking someone popular and hoping that your product does well.
Read our blog, How To Choose The Best Influencer For Your Business, for a deep dive into the entire process of selection, stressing the key considerations to keep in mind, to get the best value for your business.
Paying Influencers: What Brands Need To Know
Influencer marketing can be a tedious process, so you need to make sure that you get everything right before you invest. You need to find the right influencers, understand them, connect to them authentically, discuss your terms and conditions for the collaboration, distribute material, and more. Each part of the process requires a lot of research to ensure that the execution is done right.
There are four basic rules of paying an influencer. These are:
- Know the industry standards and where you sit
- Pay for what you need
- What you pay for is what you’ll get
- Influencers are people too
Using this knowledge well will ensure that your marketing campaign is unique, engaging and well-informed, by identifying influencers based on the niche they belong to, their campaign impact, and the promotion type you’re looking at. But, importantly, it also means that you don’t end up emptying your bank account to run an influencer marketing campaign.
Read our blog, How To Monetize Your Influence, to get a deeper understanding of things to consider when looking for an influencer in your budget range, and further explore different ways to pay influencers.
Top 10 Questions To Ask An Influencer Before You Consider Working With Them
Growing exponentially in the past years, influencer marketing is a tried and true strategy – and is here to stay. At the heart of influencer marketing are the influencers who are, well, influential, and are hugely sought after by brands and organizations alike to tap into their fan base and drive sales for the brand.
Once a brand has decided to take the influencer marketing route and finalized the budgets and marketing spends for the campaigns, several parameters are considered to zero in on the ideal influencer. When brands consider potential campaign collaboration, there’s bound to be some skepticism as the financial stakes are high. That’s just the nature of the game!
Our blog, 10 Questions Brands Will Ask You As An Influencer is both an excellent read for the influencer as well as the brand. For brands looking to narrow down on the influencers to collaborate with, the blog presents some relevant questions to ask.
As for the influencers, our blog also explains the reasoning behind this line of questioning, the significance of the questions, and tips on what to avoid saying.
For Influencers: The Inside Scoop On How You Can Make More Money
We know that influencers can earn money from their social media accounts. It isn’t just a hobby for them, it is a full-time job and is often made up of a few roles including content creation, community engagement, photography, public speaking, and more. As it’s a full-time role, influencers need to monetize their platforms and earn an income.
But how do influencers monetize their influence?
It’s not uncommon for influencers to have a variety of income streams from running their shows to selling products to substantial affiliate marketing on their blogs. As for brands, there is no set budget for influencer marketing services. What an influencer can charge depends on a variety of factors.
Read our blog, How To Make Money As An Instagram Influencer, if you want to peek behind the curtain to learn some of the ways influencers can earn money (and how much!). Also, get an in-depth understanding of how to monetize influence by employing the strategies presented in the blog to generate multiple revenue streams.
In case you are finding it difficult to monetize your influence, join our AI influencer platform and connect with brands in your niche.
Influencer Marketing Is Changing, Here’s How You Can Cope
Influencer marketing is constantly evolving and has been transforming the way marketers approach their potential customers. Social media is now flooded with influencers promoting products and services in every way possible – you likely will have seen it yourself.
And it’s only growing. Valued at $5.5 billion in 2019, influencer marketing is forecasted to hit a magnificent $22.3 billion by 2024, growing at a rate of 32.4 percent each year. Looking at its current growth rate and its forecast, it is set to play a major role in the future of marketing.
So, what has prompted this increasing growth in influencer marketing?
Read our blog, Why Influencer Marketing Is Crucial For Your Brand, to take a look into the factors that are contributing to its incredible increase in power – that has led to brands’ shift to including influencers as a primary ingredient in their marketing strategies.
What To Do (And What Not To Do) To Minimize The Risks Of Influencer Marketing Economic Bubble Burst
Influencer marketing has a stronghold on the marketing industry and has become a staple for many brands. It has become so popular and has such powerful effects that enterprise-level brands to local businesses are investing in it. The impact, reach, and ability to drive conversions that influencers have is what has made it so powerful.
The accelerated growth has led some experts to believe that the industry has exceeded its intrinsic value. They argue that influencer marketing cannot sustain the high returns that customers are currently witnessing. Projections that the value of the influencer marketing industry will grow to $15 billion by 2022 paired with the fact that nearly two-thirds of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets this year have led to talks of an economic bubble occurring.
So, is influencer marketing a safe bet for the future?
Read our blog, When Will The Influencer Marketing Bubble Burst? As we attempt to explain the state of the influencer marketing industry and what can be done to minimize the risks involved.
Lessons From Influencer Fails: When Influencer Marketing Goes Wrong
Would you shell out money for an ineffective marketing strategy or choose a more effective method that gives you results? You need to provide your audience with and be genuine if you want them to convert. One of the best ways to show your authenticity is through influencer marketing.
But not everyone gets the results they look for when they get involved in influencer marketing. A survey revealed that 61% of marketers face challenges in finding the right fit influencers for their marketing campaigns. The reason behind this is that there are different elements that need to be given due consideration before getting started.
For instance, teaming up with influencers who don’t have authentic followers, share inauthentic posts, or don’t showcase their sponsorships will cost your brand and have a negative snowball effect.
Our blog When Does Influencer Marketing Go Wrong, And How Can You Avoid This? delves deeper into these issues, and more.
Ready To Learn What The Future Has In-Store? We’ve Rounded Up Predictions And Top Influencer Marketing Trends
Influencer marketing – you either love it or you hate it. But you can’t deny that it’s rapidly changing the face of marketing as we know it. At AtisfyReach, we think that it’s the future of marketing and shouldn’t be ignored. After all, our choices are swayed by influencers every day – whether we realize it or not.
Some people still ignore this new and unfamiliar marketing technique, citing that these “self-made celebrities” aren’t worth their time. But like many industry changes, it should be embraced if marketers don’t want to get left behind. So, why is it worth considering?
Read our blog, Why Influencer Marketing Is The Future, to understand why influencer marketing should be a big component of every company’s digital marketing strategy for now and beyond.
Final words
There’s a lot to take in from our guide to influencer marketing, but here’s what you need to remember.
- Influencer marketing works because of the high level of trust that social influencers have built among their followers and recommendations from these influencers serve as a form of social proof.
- Effective influencer campaigns are essential for brand growth, and working with an influencer marketing agency can help. These agencies have a wealth of experience in structuring and managing end-to-end campaigns with customized knowledge and experience for each brand’s needs, goals, audience and industry.
- You don’t need to empty your bank account to run an influencer marketing campaign! Just research well to find the right influencers, understand them, connect to them authentically, discuss your terms and conditions for the collaboration, distribute material, and more.
How will you know when you’re standing tall? You’ll know – it’s when your customers help hold you in that position with their brand loyalty.
AtisfyReach is a leading influencer marketing platform that helps brands connect with the right influencers and execute successful campaigns. Our platform offers a range of features to make it easy for brands to plan, execute, optimize, and measure their influencer marketing programs.
Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, AtisfyReach has the tools you need to succeed in the influencer economy. With AtisfyReach, you can reach your target audience, build authentic relationships with influencers, and achieve your marketing goals.
Give AtisfyReach a try for your next influencer marketing campaign.
