Social Media Influencer Marketing–the Future of Advertising
Social media influencer marketing is one of the most powerful tools used by businesses nowadays to promote their products and services. Brands design creative social media influencer marketing strategies to uplift their brand awareness, consumer trust and recognition among new potential users. Influencers are opinion leaders coming from various walks of life who have a large number of followers that look up to them for aspirations, enlightenment and suggestions. Marketers identify such influential individuals and work in collaboration with them to gain access to their followers. These influencers then pitch the product to their followers as an endorsement or integration.
Many companies have started using influencers for marketing. A decent portion of their marketing budget and resources are allocated to this novel promotion channel. But is it worth considering? Before we delve into this debate, let’s understand the concept of influencer advertising and marketing in greater detail.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
At its simplest, influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing where brands pay influencers having large social media followings to promote their products or services. This is usually done through paid advertisements, free giveaways and endorsements. The main purpose is to use influencers to create excitement around a particular product or service. It helps the brands to reach out a large number of people at much lower costs than traditional advertising strategies.
Social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are considered to be one of the most popular platforms to connect influencers with brands. Furthermore, TikTok and influencer marketing go hand in hand since it is a well-known video-based social network after YouTube. It provides the most advantage to the brands that invest in it.
Why is Influencer Marketing so Important?
1. Precise Targeting
Determining the right audience for your products can be very challenging at times. Influencer marketing for brands allows you to skip the hard work by hiring the right influencers to promote your products. For instance, if you have a clothing brand then you can find influencers in your niche and partner up with them, such as fashion bloggers. This will give you access to their audience who have a great interest in fashion clothing, thus making your job easier.
This exact strategy is used by the famous brand, H&M multiple times. For instance, they worked with a popular fashion blogger, Julie Sarinana, for the launch of their 2017 catalogue.
2. Renewed Content Strategy
Content is king in today’s world. Posting engaging new content frequently is important for brands to stay top of mind. Influencers’ main job circulates around creating content to engage with their followers. Therefore, collaborating with them can give a new perspective to your content strategy. It allows marketers to leverage the influencers’ expertise in churning out interesting content with great speed and promoting their business to the right audience.
Apart from that, content featuring social media influencers promoting brands seems more trustworthy and relatable. It encourages the audience to give your products a try. As a result, your product is more likely to have increased visibility that would have not been possible otherwise.
3. Enhanced Brand Awareness
Influencers have a huge social media following which helps them to extend brand exposure. People look forward to new product trials and recommendations from the influencers they follow. Pictures and videos of products posted by them in real settings help people remember the brand. Furthermore, people feel more comfortable using products or services that are already tested by influencers. Their recommendations are perceived to be more authentic, and they encourage people to go for your brand.
4. Boosted Audience Engagement
Using influencers for marketing enhances the quality of your content and makes it more approachable. Influencers put great work into making their content creative and engaging so that people continue to follow them.
Moreover, their content is more relatable and entertaining than the standard advertisement created by brands. This makes their followers more likely to engage with your brand campaigns by sharing or tagging their friends, thus increasing your brand reach.
5. Increased Trust and Credibility
The trust between influencers and their followers allows them to build a loyal fan community. Their honest reviews about your products or services are considered authentic testimonials. Social media influencer marketing strengthens your brand’s reputation and boosts your credibility.
Finding the Right Influencer
The first step to influencer marketing for business is finding the right influencer for your campaign. Without thorough research and investigation, the marketing strategy is a failure and a waste of money and resources. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that the influencer you are paying to, creates content that aligns with your brand values.
There are two important factors to keep in mind when searching for influencers.
- Count of followers—the following should be genuine and large enough and justified for the amount they are charging you.
- Type of content—scroll through their feed and examine the kind of message and vibe they communicate. Is their content engaging? Does it align with your product? Can their audience relate to it?
While examining the content, the overall engagement statistics can be regarded as an important part of influencer marketing, however, discovering the common interest is the real task. For instance, a home goods business would want to collaborate with an influencer who is famous for their DIY projects. Whereas the airlines would want to partner with travel bloggers. Similarly, makeup brands would look for influencers who create exceptional looks with their make-up skills.
Brands can make an impact if they succeed in choosing the right influencer partners. For example, when one of the best influencer marketing platforms, TikTok was rising to the top, Charli D’Amelio became famous for her dance videos. In 2020, Dunkin Donuts partnered with the teenage influencer. She promoted the brand by posting videos of getting her signature drink, “The Charli” and enjoying doughnuts. This campaign was a success as the number of people using the Dunkin’app increased by 57 percent.
Similarly, the teenage-favourite clothing company, The American Eagle collaborated with a TikTok star, Addison Rae. She advertised the brand on her account promoting their jeans line.
Wrapping Up
Influencer marketing is increasingly becoming a necessity for brands and business promotions. Collaborating with influencers can help boost your brand’s reputation and boost audience engagement. It is predicted that influencer marketing in 2022 will continue to grow. The partnerships between brands and influencers would be much stronger and more diverse than ever.
If you are searching for a good influencer marketing strategy, or if you are still not sure how you can use it to your advantage then do not worry. BP4u Solutions got it all covered. Whether you need help with marketing or managing your campaign or finding the right influencer for business promotions, our virtual assistants can get you sorted in no time. Furthermore, you can use our creative content writing services to create eye-catching, high-quality content for your influencer marketing advertising.