Why Influencer Marketing Suitable For Brands

Influencer marketing is everywhere. Various brands are using influencers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and various social media platforms. The original influencer marketing can be traced back to TV advertising (yes, relatively old). Influencers (in the past) were celebrities in advertising. Shah Rukh Khan is Lux, Saif Ali Khan is Lays, Roger Federer is Rolex, etc.

Nowadays, influencer marketing is not limited to TV. It is also not limited to celebrities. In fact, influencers are those who stand out/lead in their field/platform but do not necessarily have celebrity status. Think of YouTube and Twitter influencers. I used to work for a well-known TV channel. In our digital marketing efforts to publish shows, we often use influencers on social media—especially Twitter—to create a sensation for upcoming shows. Next, explain what influencers can do for the brand and how to do it.

What is influencer marketing?

According to traackr.com, "Influencer marketing is the process of identifying, researching, participating, and supporting those who create high-impact conversations with customers about brands, products, or services."

The core of influencer marketing is relationships. It means the relationship between the brand and the influencer, and the relationship between the influencer and the audience. The following are its advantages:

The benefits of influencer marketing

1. Broad audience

An important part of influencer marketing is that you already have an audience. There is no need to gather audiences; the fan base of influencers is audiences. No need to spend money to research and test the audience. A niche can be effectively reached through influencers. However, the key is to identify the right influencers. For example, style/fashion bloggers are very suitable for clothing brands.

2. Established trust 

Because influencers already have followers and may have established relationships with their subscribers/followers, trust and credibility with fans have been established. Marketing through influencers will also transfer this trust to the product/brand.

3. Improve brand awareness

 As mentioned in the first point, with influencers, the audience will become large and active. Influencers can greatly expand the influence of a brand online. Therefore, as a marketer, you need to provide valuable content to the audience of influencers to maximize the scope of influence.

4. Establish important partnerships

 Of course, influencer marketing means establishing a good relationship with influencers and even their networks. This can be extended to offline, cooperating with influencers for live performances, parties, events, live product launches, etc.

5. Improve SEO

Influencer marketing actually helps improve SEO. This is because backlinks from trusted websites/materials help improve SEO. Therefore, links from high-authority domains (influencers' websites) can improve website rankings. Not only that, but search engines also look for unique content and social sharing when ranking. Influencer marketing can meet these two conditions at the same time.

6. Cheating on social media algorithms

Social media algorithms are always changing. When I got used to Facebook’s algorithm changes, Instagram’s algorithm was also changing! This is no easy task. Influencer marketing actually helps solve this situation. How to do it? Social media algorithms always prioritize the best and most attractive content. Influencer marketing fits this idea. Various brands have realized that influencer marketing is a good way to defeat algorithms through real-time video, account takeovers, etc.

Influencer marketing practices

Choosing the right influencer

As mentioned earlier, you must choose the influencer that suits your self-interest-such as clothing brands and lifestyle bloggers, or foodies and catering brands. The important thing is to comply, otherwise marketing efforts will fail because the target audience is the wrong target!

Provide something that brings value to influencers

 When marketing, it is often easy to focus only on getting the best visibility for the brand. However, for influencer marketing, it is the responsibility to consider how to add value to influencers. After all, this is a business, and in order for influencers to promote the brand, it needs to provide value. In addition to the monetary value provided to influencers, also consider the content that can enrich their social activities-creative content, interesting video ideas, etc.

Allow creative freedom

If you plan to use influencers to promote your brand, you must give him/her some creative freedom. Many influencers complain that brands are too restrictive or imposing on others in the content creation process. Restricting the content of influencers often affects the authenticity of the event. It may also face the risk of worsening relations with influencers.

Summarize

Facts have proved that influencer marketing is a very effective medium. Finally, I want to leave some statistics to prove how effective this is:

According to a survey conducted by Collective Bias, involving 14,000 respondents in the United States:

• 70% of millennial consumers will be influenced by peer recommendations in their purchasing decisions.
• In addition, 30% of consumers are more likely to buy products recommended by non-celebrity bloggers.
• When shopping in a store, 60% of consumers have been affected by social media posts or blog comments.