What is influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is the kind that markets products and services using the social likability or reliability of a particular individual on social media such as Facebook and Instagram. This kind of marketing involves hiring social media influencers to promote products or services.
Influencer marketing is a convenient method of marketing that goes well with social media marketing as well as content marketing.
The influencers who are responsible for this kind of marketing are expected to claim an affinity towards the product and deliver content around the product or service they are endorsing.
Nowadays, word-of-mouth marketing is being confused with influencer marketing, but there is a major distinction between the two.
Influencer marketing and campaigns involve capitalizing on the reputation of key individuals and making use of their reputation whereas word of mouth is an organic process where people who like the product convey it to others without the presence of any economic or social benefit to doing so.
The biggest difference between the two aforementioned methods is that the former is an inorganic process (not always but more often than not) whereas the latter is an organic process that is a testimonial of the quality of the product.
It is an undeniable fact that the influencer marketing game has altered the consumer market and the way we buy products.
Conventional digital marketing is also no longer as effective as it used to be and is losing ground in the landscape. Given that most people are overwhelmed by the amount of blatant digital advertising they are subjected to it is safe to say that the potency of such digital campaigns are reducing drastically. The current trend and style of marketing that is producing effective results in influencer marketing.
Most brands use a combination of both influencer as well as traditional marketing in order to market their products.
Influencer marketing accelerates:
- Attracting new customers
- Increasing the rate of repeat customers
- Driving and increasing customer loyalty
- Enhancing the customer lifetime revenue
All consumers are in need of authentic voices which influencers manage to deliver. They engage tens and thousands of consumers simultaneously with effective communication. By putting out content that promotes products they sway individuals opinions and views of their general audience. This is the power and reach of influencer marketing.
How exactly does influencer marketing work?
Influencer marketing is a form of orchestrated and branded engagement. The aim with these influencers and this sort of marketing is to impregnate new target markets and communities. This helps the brand’s visibility through the reputation of a particular influencer. Most influencers on social media make use of instagram trends to further their reach and impact Even though the content revolves around sponsored brands the audience tends to gravitate towards authentic content that consist of genuine views as well as testimonials. This is a requirement for building strategic brand building while also maintaining a good and trustable relationship with the audience.
When brands want to be perceived in a certain way they align themselves with influencers who also portray themselves in a similar way and are active in the relevant space (for example, beauty brands will only align themselves with influencers in the same space).
The influencer space is getting incredibly crowded and they are growing in numbers, but a relevant fact that cannot be ignored is that the size of the audience is also growing rapidly. This increase in both content creators as well as consumers helps keep the whole show running. Social media marketing is undeniably the most effective kind of marketing in today’s world.
Online activity is an important factor that the whole Instagram marketing or social media marketing is hinged on, keeping in mind how digital the world is and how much time people spend online and on the internet it only makes sense to capitalize on this attention.
Social media (Instagram, Facebook, twitter, tumblr, and many more) have dramatically and irreversibly changed the way consumers interact with brands and products. Social media has made sure that their consumers have easy and more importantly immediate access to relevant information and updates.
Moreover it has also established a two way communication between the brands and consumers enabling instant feedback along with instant updates. Most successful brands have a social media presence that is spearheaded by influencers and other content creators.
On a concluding note we would just like to mention that influencer marketing is definitely not limited to celebrities and actors who have influence and clout in the traditional sense but can also be done by anyone willing to do so and having the ability to produce engaging content.
That is the thing about social media, it has eliminated the gatekeepers of media and allowed anyone and everyone by virtue of freedom of speech to make a name for themselves out there.
