Marketing can drive even the most seasoned professional up the wall. Addressing customer pain points, choosing appropriate channels for your product, and figuring out the right messaging can be a real challenge.
Everywhere you look, social media personalities are pitching an array of products to their followers, facilitating a mutually beneficial relationship between the brand and the influencer.
In this article, Ignite Visibility Social Media Strategist Josh Rohr will discuss the benefits of influencer marketing, why it’s effective and much more.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing: Why You Need It To Build Your Brand
As more businesses continue to refine their strategies, influencer marketing is projected to become a $5-10 billion industry over the next 5 years.
While business leaders are still struggling to find out how to find the right influencers for their niche, the reality is that these individuals have the ability to amplify brand awareness and boost your bottom line.
Let’s dive in!
What We’ll Cover:
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What is Influencer Marketing?
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Why is Influencer Marketing Effective?
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Benefits of Influencer Marketing
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Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing as a concept is nothing new. Brands with larger budgets have historically used models and actors to endorse their products since the 1930s.
But as consumers continue to stray from traditional marketing and towards social media and other forms of digital advertising, a new type of marketing has emerged—one in which online influencers have become a force to be reckoned with.
Influencer marketing is essentially a strategy that businesses deploy to promote their products and services by joining forces with social media users or bloggers that have a massive following.
Why is Influencer Marketing Effective?
According to BigCommerce:
BigCommerce on Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing works because people are often influenced by other people, and place a lot of trust in the recommendations made by social media influencers.
Today more than ever, word-of-mouth remains a powerful tool in influencing consumer behavior. That’s why people trust influencers more than brands.
They’re individuals who have built a loyal following through their content, which means when they post photos and videos of how a product or service has positively affected their life, people listen.
Influencers start conversations, making it easier for brands to target their audiences on a bigger scale.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
The benefits of influencer marketing go far beyond dollars and cents. Let’s take a look at why this type of marketing has become such a popular form of online advertising for brands across industries:
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Builds Trust and Credibility
When an influencer and a brand fit together like pieces of a puzzle, the message resonates more easily with their respective audiences.
Anytime you see a celebrity, industry expert, or social media personality willing to share content about a brand, it gives the company they’re promoting instant credibility. It creates the perception that the brand is an industry leader, based on the influencer’s endorsement.
After all, why do people choose to follow influencers on social media? Because they respect their recommendations and are more willing to check out the product or service as a result—plain and simple.
This kind of recognition is even more effective in niche marketing and can significantly accelerate the time frame in which brands can establish trust with customers.
Boosts Brand Awareness
Influencer marketing can greatly expand your content’s reach and positioning. Through influencers, social users will get to know more about the brand, the story, and the solutions that can be offered.
This is especially impactful if the influencer posts frequently and consistently, getting your product or service in front of as many eyes as possible.
The success of your campaign can be measured with follower count and hashtags, as well as the number of likes, comments, and shares.
Diversifies Content
Influencers tend to have a pretty clear idea about what types of content resonate most with their audiences. They know what gets clicks, likes, and shares. They also know what they need to do and say to convince users to make a purchase.
Working with these social media personalities directly can help you diversify your content feed. Plus, there’s plenty of room for experimentation. From testimonials to tutorials, influencers can come up with plenty of fresh, appealing content if you’re running out of ideas.
It also gives your consumers a much-needed break from promotional content.
Delivers Value to New and Existing Customers
A key factor in maximizing your influencer strategy is ensuring that the content adds to both the influencer’s and brand’s presence.
Audiences want to see value from a service or product. When real people share what they love about your company, more people are willing to engage.
And consumers won’t be able to see real value unless you select the right influencer who can create high-quality content that showcases your brand’s ability to solve problems, educate, or inspire.
So when searching for your influencers, be sure to carefully comb through their content and see how they choose to represent the brands they’ve partnered with in the past. This will help you determine whether or not they’re a good fit for your campaign.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples
Now that we’ve covered some of the advantages of implementing influencer marketing into your strategy, we’ve compiled a short list of some of the best influencer marketing campaign examples that you can learn from:
OTBT
Off The Beaten Track Influencer Marketing Campaign
OTBT (Off the Beaten Track) creates and sells women’s casual and travel shoes. Despite only being around for only a few years, this brand has quickly skyrocketed in popularity, thanks in large part to their robust influencer program.
OTBT’s Instagram account officially launched in January 2015, but only began soliciting the help of influencers in 2017. The marketing team chose to focus on micro-influencers who had 5,000 followers or less. Since kicking off the program, their influencer community grew from a handful to over 400,200.
Buick
Buick Influencer Marketing Campaign: “Pinboard to Dashboard”
One of the most recognized brands in the country, Buick has always been known as a premium automobile company that catered mainly to affluent executives.
In an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic, Buick reached out to ten design, fashion, and food bloggers to build Pinterest boards explaining how the Encore model could help them express their personal style.
By choosing influencers with no visible ties to the automobile industry, Buick found a unique way to prioritize messaging that was important to its audience.
After each blogger promoted their Pinterest boards on other social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the “Pinboard to Dashboard” campaign resulted in more than 17 million unique site visitors.
Tom’s of Maine
Tom’s of Maine Influencer Marketing Campaign: #NatureNurtures
Tom’s of Maine uses naturally sourced ingredients to manufacture personal care products like deodorant, toothpaste, and soap.
Their brand promise is “You can rely on us for simple, wholesome products that will be good for your family.” With their marketing centered on health and wellness, they wanted to be absolutely sure they were targeting the people who shared these same values.
So Tom’s of Maine approached micro-influencers and offered them free products in exchange for positive advertising. This led to a staggering amount of engagement—more than 4.4 million new clients within the first three months to be exact.
As of today, Tom’s of Maine has collaborated with over 20,000 micro-influencers, reaching roughly 20 million people.
GOODFOODS
GOODFOODS Influencer Marketing Campaign: Traditions, Celebrations, and Customs
GOODFOODS is an all-natural and family-owned food producer known for its dips and salsas. The company was seeking to increase brand awareness and generate sales of its products.
When deciding how to use influencers for marketing, the GOODFOODS team ended up partnering with 60 influencers in niches ranging from parenting to home verticals to publish unique content and recipes using the GOODFOODS product line.
By the end of the campaign, influencers produced more than 2,000 pieces of original content spanning photographs, blog stories, videos, and social posts.
MVMT Watches
MVMT Influencer Campaign: #jointhemvmt
Another example of innovative influencer marketing can be seen in the MVMT Watches’ #jointhemvmt campaign.
From well-known influencers to micro-influencers, MVMT Watches teamed up with some of the most distinguished Instagram accounts in the fashion and lifestyle space. The #jointhemvmt hashtag was used in the caption and each follower was provided with a unique discount code for them to make their purchase.
Following the launch of this social media marketing campaign, the brand said that 60% of its traffic came from mobile.
Wrapping Up
If you want to add more gusto to your marketing efforts, the benefits of influencer marketing can’t be overlooked.
Whether you’re looking to increase revenue or make more meaningful connections with your audience, this form of marketing has proven to grow a company’s reach exponentially.
Now that you have a clear understanding of how to use influencers for marketing, you can accelerate your online goals and commit to launching your first campaign and seeing the results for yourself.
Happy marketing!
