What is Influencer Marketing: Importance, Benefits & Types
We humans are creatures of imitation. Our wants are usually driven by a tendency to compare ourselves and our possessions with those of the people around us. This human propensity has been getting tapped effectively by brands for many years now. Influential people have always been crucial to businesses in promoting their products or services. The 21st century has seen a rise in the use of social media platforms and a subsequent increase in people who have created content for these platforms and gained popularity for it over time. These people are called influencers, who tend to have a sizable chunk of an audience that follows their personal and professional journey quite closely.
Influencers generally have a sway over their audience’s decisions and online habits. They have proved their expertise or knowledge in a niche sector in some kind of way, which convinces people to trust their insights about other things as well. Brands therefore leverage this power and reputation of influencers through influencer marketing for the promotion of their products or services. Influencers are experts at engaging and striking the right cord with their audience. When they are given a product or service to advertise, they often get creative with the process or even choose to be straightforward about their trust in a particular brand. Their tone, style and approach are everything to getting the right message across to a highly vigilant audience. Overall, influencer marketing is a subset or a type of social media marketing, because it mainly utilizes social media channels for the advertising process. It can also be compared to modern word-of-mouth marketing on a scalable level.
What is the Importance of Influencer Marketing & What are its Benefits?
Increased Brand Awareness – Brand awareness is associated with distinguishing features and elements that help people recognize a particular brand with ease. It focuses on increasing users’ familiarity with a brand and its products or services. Influencers’ opinions matter greatly to their niche audiences, and this can work in your favor if these influencers can convey your brand’s voice, goals and message to people. Influencers are adept with creating content that is engaging and heartfelt. This genuine and communicative approach can help create a fresh brand image.
Build Trust & Credibility – Influencers are people who have proven expertise in their niche industry. They are already a relatable and trustworthy source of information and entertainment for audiences. When these influencers promote your product, it can help users view your brand with credibility. People are more likely to believe that their recommendations will be as effective as their content and thus give your brand a fair shot. If a trusted influencer drops a positive review, it encourages people to try a particular product or service with minimal hesitation and positive bias.
High ROI – Since influencer marketing can save you a lot of time and resources while being highly effective, it can fetch businesses higher Returns on Investment (ROI). While smaller brands can grow slowly, large brands can grow their customer base tremendously. Ultimately, social visibility is one of the greatest influencer marketing advantages. It acts as a game-changer for a lot of businesses and helps boost a brand’s overall online presence.
Greater Audience Reach – A lot of influencers already have thousands and millions of followers. Having them promote your brand can help you gain an incredible amount of exposure and reach an immense audience base. These can become your potential customer base and drive more sales. Not only that, but you can also target niche influencers and audiences as well as appeal to varied demographics, especially Gen Z and the younger consumers.
Better Content Quality – Since influencers are decidedly proficient with creating content that is engaging, innovative, informative and quirky, they can add a lot of value and quality to your brand’s content. It is a good way to switch things up and diversify your digital marketing strategies.
High Accessibility – Influencers rule social media. And social media is free and accessible to all kinds of businesses, irrespective of their industry sector or scale. Easy accessibility is one of the biggest advantages of influencer marketing.
What are the Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns?
Giveaways – You must have come across these across social media platforms. Giveaways are usually for products and brands organizing these often hold contests and ask you to perform specific tasks like drop likes or follow their accounts. Influencers can interactively introduce these giveaways and get a large number of people to participate in them, thereby increasing account traffic as well as brand visibility.
Sponsored Content – Sponsored content or partnerships entail influencers promoting a brand’s products or services for a certain price. It is one of the most common types of influencer marketing.
Brand Ambassadors – Brand ambassadors represent a particular brand over a consistent period of time. Influencers who play this role essentially act as the voice and face of that brand.
Gifts & Freebies – A lot of times, brands send gifts and free products to influencers who might be interested in them. They often politely ask to be endorsed in exchange for these freebies. Brands have to make sure that they pick these influencers strategically in order to effectively reach their target audience.
Events – Conducting live online events with influencers can be a great way to increase engagement and participation between your brand and its potential customers. Influencers who collaborate with you for this can put up posts, stories, videos and countdowns before the main event to attract more people as well.
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