The world of influencer marketing is both strange and exciting. Because of its rabid popularity in constructing a solid marketing strategy, navigating the intricacies of the influencer stratosphere could send anyone into confusion simply because there’s so much to digest!
To begin, what exactly is an influencer? Simply speaking, an influencer is someone who has direct influence over consumers and their particular buying decisions. Essentially, an influencer is someone who has a large following on social media, and has the ability to garner the trust of their target market.
The truth of the matter is that influencer marketing is one of the most efficient means to create your brand and garner brand loyalty while simultaneously raising awareness in your target market. In addition, it’s growing more rapidly than typical digital advertising, now that a lot of marketing strategies are focusing solely on leveraging the followers of industry leaders to achieve growth and success.
One of the most ingenious elements of influencer marketing is that the audience is already constructed, so once you’ve established a trusting partnership, you’ll be able to provide your audience with integrity and value.
Benefits of Working with Influencers
Partnering with influencers should be considered as a dynamic stratagem in your marketing efforts as it actively engages fresh audiences, as well as helps you garner new customers into your swirling sales funnel.
If you’re on the fence about working with influencers, here are the 12 benefits of going this route:
1. Builds Trust
The relationship an influencer shares with their followers is cemented with trust, integrity, and emotional connection. This relationship is strong because these followers immediately trust their content and recommendations.
When you partner with an influencer, you’ll be able to gain that audience and the trust they share with the influencer. They’ll share your content, you’ll share theirs, and thus begins a relationship from which both of you can benefit.
2. Strengthens Brand Awareness
It’s no secret that influencer marketing significantly expands your marketing reach and brand position in a social media landscape. Not only will the relationship build trust in your brand, but will also offer consumers a specific awareness of your brand.
These followers will begin to understand the intricacies of your brand and its story, as well as the specific solutions you offer in the marketplace.
It’s important to note that the most pivotal ingredient in building efficient influencer strategies is providing content that adds value to both parties. The relationship you share with an influencer should be a symbiotic one.
3. Enriched Content
Sharing influencer content can help fill in the gaps in your content schedule.
If you’re struggling to come up with content or find yourself having large gaps in your content calendar, you can turn to an influencer to provide you with quality content that can be utilized by both parties. This, again, helps you build an even stronger relationship with your own audience and that of the influencer! Websites like unrulyagency.com can help you create astounding content to fill in the gaps by connecting brands with social media influencers.
4. Reaches Your Target Audience
When you work with relevant influencers, you can be certain that your content will be well-positioned within your specific demographic or niche. This assists in saving big money on market research and other advertising efforts as these tasks have already been accomplished by your influencer. That’s a huge sigh of relief for you and your bank account!
5. Provides Value To Your Audience
At the core of all marketing strategies is developing and delivering reputable content that solves a problem, as well as educates and excites your intended audience. Influencers are already aware of their followers’ needs, wants, and desires, so all these pieces of information can be shared between parties. In effect, this helps you leverage their content to provide value to your audience.
6. Builds Winning Partnerships
Partnering with influencers is a powerful marketing strategy that establishes relationships for future campaigns and collaborations. These influencers often know other influencers, and, through this, your outward influencer relationships could be strengthened significantly.
7. Take Advantage Of Hot Topics
It’s the primary function of an influencer to understand trends, movements, and what’s currently on top of the viral stratosphere. Typically, they’re often the force behind these popular trends and massive movements. When you align yourself with an influencer, you’re pivoting your brand behind a trendsetter. When employing an influencer, you’re employing marketing innovation.
8. Unlimited Sharing Potential
One of the least discussed benefits of influencer marketing is the unlimited potential of the campaign. When you allot a certain amount on typical advertising spend, there’s always a cap to your potential reach. With each particular impression, you end up paying for each one.
In the argument for influencer marketing, though, the campaign has untapped potential to be shared and possibly even go viral, which ends up giving your message much more reach than you end up paying for. The content promoted by the influencer can garner unlimited brand awareness and keep gaining traction.
9. Become A Millennial And Gen-Z Hotspot
Most conventional advertising outlets are being phased out. The likes of billboards, TV commercials, and paper advertisements are slowly becoming irrelevant in today’s marketing landscape. Who left these forms of media behind? The Millennials and Gen-Z audience, of course!
The ever-increasing popularity of digital means and social media platforms have forever altered marketing. Also, since social media platforms are a bit crowded with content, it’s more important to stand out than ever before.
This is where the help of influencers comes in handy. Likely, they have members of either generation. Having said that, influencer marketing is becoming the mandatory channel for reaching these audiences. And if you’re able to garner their loyalty, they’ll likely bring immense value to your brand.
10. Managing Brand Reputation
Whether you’re involved in delegating company dialogue or starting the conversation, people will be actively discussing your brand, either positively, negatively, or pivoting toward indifference. It is beneficial to be cognizant of this discussion both before and after initiating an influencer marketing program to understand how the community surrounding your brand particularly operates.
As a brand, it’s increasingly important to increase your focus on brand conversation, and monitoring the tones of these conversations can dictate how you approach an influencer and how an influencer can delegate your brand in consumer discussion based on your social media presence. This way, you can understand how to choose the best influencers specifically involved in those active communities. As a brand, you’ll be remiss not to join these conversations and by simply acting as an observer.
You, along with your influencer, have to be an active and engaged member of each particular community. Not only does this foster unity between you and your influencer, but it’s also a return on investment.
Engaging in this manner can also help identify consumers spreading misinformation about your brand and your company. With the help of an influencer, this is an opportunity to collaborate with your audience as well.
On the other hand, what if you discover that people are spreading false information about your company? This is an opportunity to make your side of the story known in a polite and professional way. Through a public forum, you may address the issue professionally, thereby asserting a sense of control over your brand’s voice in the marketplace.
Meanwhile, when you see consumers praising your brand, don’t forget to show your appreciation and gratitude to them, both publicly and personally.
11. Boost Search Engine Rankings
Still unsure if influencer marketing should be integrated into your digital marketing spend? Collaborating with influencers not only boosts social media channels but can boost almost all the other digital marketing techniques you’re currently implementing.
It can improve your search engine rankings and expand your brand even further. Influencer marketing improves overall brand awareness, so by proxy, it increases the traffic to your website. When your content gets shared, you’ll begin to earn several authentic and high-quality backlinks, which continues in garnering brand attention.
When working with an influencer, the quality of your content can improve. All of these corresponding fixtures can increase your search engine rankings and drive website traffic.
12. Gain More Followers
If you partner with an Instagram influencer, this can greatly benefit your e-commerce space and drive revenue. To do this, though, you must garner a significant following in your social media spaces. You could start to leverage different apps to navigate subscribers from your competition, but that process is difficult and not always guaranteed.
In partnering with an influencer, though, this allows you to utilize their influence in garnering both bloggers and audiences. Bloggers already have tons of followers that value their opinions, so if they can communicate your brand’s story most linearly, you can expect top-notch engagement and return on investment.
Conclusion
An influencer is someone positioned on social media with a large following who has significant authority in garnering the trust to their targeted market. It’s a rapidly growing in favor of typical digital advertising, with a lot of marketing strategies focusing solely on leveraging the followers of industry leaders to cultivate growth in your own business. Influencer marketing is positioned to assist brands in gaining brand attraction. With a full understanding of these benefits of influencer marketing, you’ll soon be able to implement an influencer in your campaign.
