Influencer marketing is one of the most prevailing forms of marketing in today’s digital age. This form of social media marketing is enabling exponential brand conversions and sales within a short span of time. Honestly, at some point in time, we all have purchased a product by listening to a celebrity or someone we admire.
Influencers have been a hot topic on social media for a while now. And as social media has become a part of our daily lives, influencer marketing keeps evolving on each platform.
However, we know that some of you may not be aware of the solid benefits of harnessing influencer marketing. In this blog, we will briefly talk about the things that will make this marketing hugely influential in the future of online marketing.
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Online Consumers are Tired of Paid Advertisements
According to a report shared by research firm Yankelovich, on average, 5,000 advertisements are exposed to users in the U.S. alone. Ads are everywhere; they follow us through different online platforms. This continuous exposure to ads on a day-to-day basis is too tiring and leads users to a common phenomenon called ‘banner blindness.’
According to digital advertising platform Infolinks, 14 percent of prospects don’t remember the last ad they watched at all. The constant ad updates on-screen are making users choose
the reason people are willing to pay money for ad-free mediums like Netflix, Spotify Premium, YouTube Premium and others over free platforms.
Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is more appealing. Influencers create content, share, and review products to keep the audience engaged and build brand trust.
People no longer value ads, but they are more likely to listen to people or experts on social media channels. According to Dci, more than 309 people have installed ad-blocking tools to get rid of constantly appearing ads.
Influencer Marketing is Native Advertising
The major difference between native and traditional ads is that traditional ads interrupt the consumer experience while native ads pitch products or brands organically. Hence, native advertisements are more likely to gain user attention and are an efficient marketing solution for businesses.
Agency MDG Advertising states that 70 percent of internet users are willing to learn or acknowledge products via content rather than through ads. As per a study conducted by Dedicated Media, native ad channels increase purchasing intent up to 53 percent.
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Influencer Marketing Helps Your SEO
Influencer marketing will not only benefit you by increasing sales and user engagement, but it can also improve your website rankings. According to the Social Media Revolution, 25 percent of search results consist of user-generated social media posts of the world’s top 20 brands. The more influencers talk about your business online, the more relevancy you will be able to generate on Google.
Influencer Marketing is Targetable and Trackable
Without data, marketing is dark and hollow. For several years, the industry functioned in the dark due to the limitation of traditional strategies that comprised of dull user information on audience reach, the brand’s impact, and sales funnel.
However, things are different in the digital world. Here, marketers can analyze everything from website visits to pictures posts to likes, shares and more. Digital platforms yield static information data to marketers as well as influencers, allowing them to target potential users all around the world and gain more reach than ever.
Word-of-mouth recommendations are one of the few strategies that efficiently drive exponential sales. As per a report by McKinsey, consumers’ word-of-mouth recommendations drive twice the amount of sales than paid ads. Influencers marketing also brings about golden opportunities for brands to harness recommendation from well-known personalities who their target audience admires or follow.
Influencer Marketing Builds Niche Communities
One of the reasons influencer marketing is more efficient than traditional marketing is because influencers build a community of users who have an interest in their connection and like to stay connected. Micro-influencers are more implied within this rule as the audience here is smaller.
With a smaller audience, influencers are able to establish closer relationships with their followers. On the other hand, influencers with millions of followers are unable to create a personal bond with their audience.
Influencers with a small audience base are likely to gain more trust from their audience when they recommend a product and service because people see them as information providers rather than a brand ambassador.
Hence, brands now have the opportunity to efficiently connect with relevant and engaging communities without putting in much effort.
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It’s An Arbitrage
When marketing online, arbitrage prevails when a product is being sold at a cheaper value than its worth. Buying this product will get you a high discount value as the product’s real cost is higher than market value. Here, your profit gained is the difference between the product’s market cost and real cost. It basically offers brands the opportunity to make big profits with less investment.
Arbitrages are commonly experienced within the marketing industry. For example, when Facebook first introduced the ad network, the brand that went for it gained a high return on investment because the competition on ad-space was very low. But when the medium became famous, more and more marketers began bidding on the ad-space, which led to raising prices more than 335 percent in 2014, completely banishing everybody’s ROI and closing the arbitrage.
Currently, influencer marketing is arbitrage. There are many influencers out there waiting for brands to reach them. But, not as many marketers are investing in influencer marketing. This means that the value of buying the promotion of influencers is less than the real value (ROI).
Hence, you must think of investing in it sooner as arbitrage doesn’t last long. Invest in influencer marketing before the market becomes too saturated.
How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy
You now know how impactful influencer marketing can be. However, it is not as simple as it looks. In order to get high reach, it’s important to build the right marketing strategy as well as use the right social media channels that work best for your business and users.
Here are a few pointers that will help you achieve the right strategy:
- Set up your campaign goals.
- Define the target audience for influencers.
- Set your budget and the type of your influencers that fit well for your business.
- Search thoroughly before you choose an influencer.
- Create campaign messages for your influencers.
- Clearly state your expectation with your chosen influencers.
- Don’t shy away from giving rewards to the influencers.
- Analyze the results of your campaign.
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Conclusion
All of the data above clearly shows that influencer marketing is going to be a blast on the online medium for many years to come. Brands that have already incorporated this trend are likely to experience exponential sales in the coming year.
So, what are you waiting for? Find relevant influences for your business and accelerate sales and conversions like never before.
About the author: Bhavik Soni is a Creative Writer at Auto Monkey. We provide original analyses of the latest happenings in the social media industry. Connect with the latest Social Media Trends and News, plus tips on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools on the web.
