A few years ago, many thought influencer marketing was a stage set for only celebrities and couple of famous bloggers. There have been many developments since in this domain, we’ve seen many social media influencers rise and saturate the market. Brands now target their audience through these influencers and find fruitful results from their campaigns.

Influencer marketing strategies can be hard to plan since you’re positioning your brand with a help of a social media influencer which can risk brand image.

In this article we’ll go through the benefits and possible outcomes that come from influencer marketing.

What is influencer marketing?

Simply, influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that involves endorsements, shout-outs and product mentions from influencer individuals. Selecting an influencer for your brand or product mentions is based on numerable factors, such as

  • Number of followers/fans
  • Nature of their audience/ niche
  • Credibility of the influencer

The reason of success of influencer marketing during these times is because of high amount of trust these individuals (influencers) have built up. Suggestions and recommendations from them serve as proof that a particular brand is worth using.

Significance of Influencer marketing

Influencers are present all over social media networks, such as Instagram, Facebook, twitter, Snapchat, Tiktok etc. with different demographics. This makes them ideal for brands to select the ones that would suit their brand representation.

Although, there were concerns that covid-19 would impact influencer marketing negatively, instead it increased brands attention towards them, since digital media was the only escape in the pandemic if they were to evolve their businesses and sustain brand presence. From which influencers were a perfect fit to utilize and to come up with a revised social media strategy.

From $1.7 billion in 2016, influencer marketing is estimated to have grown to have a market size of $9.7 billion in 2020. That's expected to reach $13.8 billion in 2021.

While majority of the brands have 59% of their budget allocated for content marketing and 75% of the marketers intend to dedicate about 70% of their allocation to influencer marketing in 2021.

Outlook of influencer marketing is very promising since many surveys conducted indicate that it’s a very effective form of marketing.

Benefits of using influencer marketing in your social strategy

 

1. Builds brand trust

Since influencers have established credibility, trust and loyalty with their followers. Their fans comply to their suggestions and recommendations.

Influencers have an engaging audience which is exactly what you want when you share good content with them. This is why you also need to understand the importance of a content strategy.

Influencers put forward your content in front of the audience and act as an ambassador of your brand which directly influences their audience to perform the desired action that you require from them

2. Improves brand awareness

Since there are masses using social media, it’s an opportunity to shape brand perception by acquiring services of an influencer that could act as a representative of your brand, and would help reach your brand to your target market, which would resultantly improve brand awareness.

The key to maximizing your influencer strategy is to provide value to your customers through appealing content.

3. Higher reach

By hiring the right influencers, you can target the desired target audience that falls in your niche. This way you don’t have to spend any additional funds in market research to discover the right audience for you. Because the influencer is already catering a particular audience group.

4. Long-term partnerships

When you connect and interact with an influencer, you don’t know exactly how long this partnership would last. Sometimes, these ventures become long-term which can open up to more opportunities for both the brand and the influencer.

This way the influencer becomes more of an employee of the brand, who just acts as a head ambassador and a representative, meaning you can develop a strong relationship with your audience through them.

 5. Content flexibility

Publishing and sharing influencer content with your audience, sometimes help in filling gaps in your own content strategy.

This might be helpful when you run out of content ideas or simply need value addition in it. Influencer content for sure can open content avenues for your brand.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing can help startup brands to establish themselves or help those who have been struggling in gaining traction in their social media.

Understanding the benefits of influencer marketing can deem success for brands and accelerate their efforts in achieving their business goals in making higher revenue. Many businesses have already experienced delighting from influencer marketing. Would you?