What is Influencer Marketing & Why Do I Need It?
Leveraging the endorsement of others is not a new marketing concept.
For decades, companies have turned to celebrity endorsements, using everyone from Hollywood starlets like Robert De Niro (Ermenegildo) revered athletes like Tom Brady (smartwater) to convince audiences to buy or use their products.
While these celebrity endorsements are still widely used today, they aren’t always budget-friendly, and in the light of social networking, they aren’t nearly as necessary or impactful.
Instead, business owners and their marketing teams can turn to influencer marketing, and develop a strategy built on engaging relationships with influential individuals in their specific industry.
Quite simply, influence marketing is when companies form relationships with the social “heavy hitters” in their specific niche, and through those relationships, their brand or product is featured on the influencer’s social media account, blog, website, or anywhere else. This is what brings the influencer marketing agency into high demand.
Food, fashion, music, sports, parenting, travel, etc.; you name the vertical and there’s a list of social savvy individuals that blog, photograph, and post their way up to an impressive amount (even millions) of highly focused followers.
In influencer marketing, businesses form relationships with those individuals in the hopes that they will endorse a product and share it with their followers, who will share it with their followers, who will share it with their followers, who will… well, you get the point: the reach can be absolutely incredible.
Why and how does influencer marketing work?
Many top influencers are average people who are simply passionate about something. A clean-eating food lover with a blog, an Instagram account, and a decent camera can easily become the next big voice in the food world.
The same is true for the next motorcycle enthusiast, everyday fashionista, or essential-oil-loving wellness coach. They love what they do, and their audience appreciates that.
That said, as consumers, we’re more likely to heed the advice of friends, family, or that everyday passionate personality we’ve come to engage with online. In fact, the overwhelming majority of American’s seek a recommendation before making a purchase, and 66% trust online consumer opinions. Word-of-mouth is powerful, and influencers move that power from one-on-one interactions to a cyber stage.
How does this tie into my content marketing strategy?
Solid, well-written, and engaging content is, as you now know, invaluable when it comes to brand awareness, perception, and loyalty. It’s essential. But, even if you have a robust content strategy (email, blog, social media), you may find that your audience reach is stagnant.
Of course, you can follow traditional methods to help exposure, distribution, and engagement. You can increase SEO efforts, amp up that email acquisition campaign, and tweak your current social strategy with the hopes of reaching even more members of your target audience.
But what if there was a better solution?
When an influencer likes your product or brand, they will go on to share it with their followers, or in this case, a group of highly interested individuals that embody your exact target audience.
When that influencer shares your content, your reach grows exponentially, your brand lands in front of highly relevant eyes, and everything from impressions to ROI will grow.
Influence marketing has become today’s “celebrity endorsement,” and a cyber hybrid of traditional word-of-mouth marketing. While the concept of product referrals and endorsements isn’t new, the increasingly important role social networks play in our marketing plans as well as in our everyday lives has redefined that concept.
With enough passion and motivation, anyone can propel themselves to influencer status, and the fact that we may see a bit of ourselves in our favorite social personality is exactly why influence marketing can make a huge impact on your brand.
