Influencer marketing combines a multitude of traditional marketing methods with the latest digital techniques and social trends.
By definition, a social influencer is someone who affects other people’s purchasing decisions. They are powerful as they have usually gained their popularity through organic growth, growing a loyal and invested audience. People may follow an influencer because of their knowledge, interests, personality, aesthetics or most commonly relatability. Ultimately, an influencer has their audience’s trust.
Good quality influencers are selective with the brands they work with and the campaigns they choose to promote, as they don’t want to appear in-genuine and lose popularity. The best influencers have a connection with their audience. Ultimately an influencer’s followers enable them to have their monthly paycheque and be successful, so when they show gratitude towards their followers it creates a mutually strong relationship between them.
An influencer is essentially the middleman between a brand or business and their customers. If a business can find influencers that fully represent their brand and have the exact same demographic, then each collaborative campaign they invest in will be successful.
For an influencer, it’s a win-win. They get to trial free products, are given gifted items, and creative freedom, get to share recommendations with their followers, chat and engage with their following about the product and they often gain the opportunity to share exclusive discounts and offers with them too. Brands with larger budgets may also offer huge giveaways of luxury prizes that influencers can give to their following.
Personally, we believe all businesses need to invest in influencer marketing and here’s why:
It’s dominating right now
In 2021 it was reported that influencer marketing has grown into a £12.82 billion industry. Businesses are making £5.37 return in investment (ROI) for every 0.93p spent on influencer marketing. There’s a huge margin for profit!
You gain fast but steady success
Most influencers are always on a journey of growth, so the chances are that whilst you’re working with them and after you have worked with them, they will still be generating more new followers that fit your demographic. This means you’ll still generate traffic after the paid promotion ends. As well as the overnight succession of followers, leads or purchases you can also factor in sales a year down the line which have come from others just discovering the influencer you worked with.
Influencer Loyalty
If you have a super high-quality, unique or useful product that an influencer falls in love with and continues to buy after your paid promotion ends, then they will potentially promote it for X number of years to their following, for free. So many influencers, especially females in the beauty industry, will create videos on YouTube and share recommendations on Instagram stories or TIKTOK of their ‘holy grail’ products, if your product makes it into some of these then, you’re going to see lots of on-going success from it as the recommendation is super authentic.
Everything is trackable
Brands can track every aspect of an influencer campaign. When businesses give discount codes to an influencer to share with their following, they can track all sales generated from the campaign. Brands can also track website traffic and social following growth after influencer posts or vlogs about them. Brands can quickly learn which influencers are best to work with and continue to work with them, often offering them their own collection or design collaborations.
There’s an influencer for everyone
The beauty of influencer marketing is that there are influencers for every field. Not all of them may be stereotypical influencers (like the one you thought of, just then). Some ‘influencers’ are a little more subtle, just genuine people who have an interest in a certain field that has resulted in them becoming popular on social channels. They may have an inspirational back story, be an expert in a niche product or subject or could have just gained popularity through longevity, by shouting about their topic for years.
You can keep to your budget
There is a huge range of influencer audience sizes: Micro-Influencers <15K, Regular Influencers 12K-50K, Rising Influencers 50K-100K, Mid Influencers 100K-500K, Macro Influencers 500K-1M and Mega Influencers 1M+.
They all base their pricing or brand agreements around their following size. So, this means that no matter your business size there is always a suitable influencer to represent you. The even better news is that Micro Influencers usually tend to get the best engagement and response because they are more engaged with their audience, share more personal posts, are actively responding to their following and are generally more relatable.
Smaller businesses don’t lose out
Micro-influencers may not have the highest reach, but they certainly have higher engagement than most other influencers as covered above, which in turn equals growth. Micro-influencers are affordable and for the amount a smaller-scale business will spend on the campaign, they will likely gain back in sales if they choose their influencer correctly.
Influencers don’t always want £££
You don’t always need to pay for influencers in the traditional sense, micro-influencers will accept PR packages and gifted items in return for a place on their social feed and or stories. They may genuinely already love and use your products or services or be aware of your brand and would love to try more of your stuff. This means they will be happy to receive your items or services for free. You’re essentially just letting them go at cost price. This is definitely something to consider as a way of pulling in sales during these financially uncertain times.
It’s leaking onto LinkedIn
It’s not just Instagram where paid promotional activities thrive, we’re seeing a growth in the number of influencers on LinkedIn too. This is increasingly popular for service-based businesses, and it really is getting them noticed and helping them grow.
Everybody is a winner
If a brand has chosen an influencer wisely and knows their demographic aligns well with theirs then every penny they spend on the campaign will return to them, plus profit. The influencer gains work and or products, and the audience makes a purchase of something that suits their aesthetic, lifestyle or interests.
Repeat custom
According to the E-commerce platform Shopify, online retailers should focus on the 80/20 rule when growing a business. Statistics show that 80% of business usually comes from 20% of their customers. If you do one influencer campaign and gain just 1000 new customers, then 200 of them could continue to purchase multiple times, way after the original campaign ends.
Video content is king
If your business chooses an influencer who regularly vlogs, creates youtube videos, TikToks or reels, then you have hit the jackpot. Video marketing and influencer marketing combined really are the winning jackpot for sales in 2022. If an influencer is live reviewing a product, unscripted in their natural setting then their following will be invested. Their Instagram reel or Tiktok could trend and reach an audience beyond their own, of people who like your product. The possibilities are endless.
Now, we like to be objective with our blogs and outline the pros and con’s every topic we cover but we’re really struggling with this as, to us, the answer to the blog title is a straight-up, yes!
We will say one thing, like anything, you need to define your own audience correctly and ensure you find an influencer who has a following which suits your demographic, otherwise, your efforts won’t reap many rewards…
We now offer influencer marketing as a service and hold a database of influencers from a wide variety of industries. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.
