Reasons to use influencer marketing

Nowadays, with so much noise and advertisements on the Internet, it is becoming increasingly difficult for brands online to gain attention on the Internet. Especially since the online space has become extremely saturated, meaning there is a lot of noise to parse through. This has also made a lot of consumers extremely sceptical and distrusting of brands and indulge in a lot of self-promotion. Since brands can inherently be biased towards their own products and services. As such, the quest for an alternative method of promoting themselves has risen in the form of influencer marketing. In fact, it is now becoming a favourite among a lot of digital marketers and business owners, with companies using a full service digital marketing agency to connect them with relevant influencers.

If you are still wondering why brands and businesses should start working with digital influencers, we have listed and explained a few reasons why below. Let’s take a look at the concept in greater detail in this article.

What is influencer marketing?

So, what even is influencer marketing? As its name suggests, influencer marketing mainly involves brands working with certain niche content creators to help increase traffic and drive the brand’s message to its target audience. Influencer marketing is becoming more popular nowadays because traditional advertising is becoming less effective. In essence, influencer marketing works because it uses tactics such as word-of-mouth marketing and social proof, which are critical to any digital marketing strategy. Unsurprisingly, customers are more likely to trust their peers, friends, or people they admire when they are thinking about making a purchase.

What differentiates influencers from most traditional celebrities is that influencers mainly form strong connections ad rapport with their fan communities. Therefore, they can harness the power of social media to help establish personal connections and use that to gain the trust of their followers. They are also real-life consumers who have in-depth knowledge about a certain niche. This means they can use that as leverage to motivate their followers to take certain desired actions.

How can it benefit your brand?

While working with a partner can have its own ups and downs, influencer marketing is still a fantastic way to help drive brand awareness and growth. Here are a few more benefits that we have listed below for your perusal:

Builds credibility and trust

Even before engaging with your brand, an influencer will have already worked incredibly hard to create a highly loyal and engaged audience that enjoys following them closely. This also includes taking note of the brands they use or wear. By promoting your business through their social media platforms, they can help your brand build credibility and trust. After all, the logical reasoning is that if they use it, then of course it must be good! As traditional advertising is no longer trusted by a large number of people, brands that are instead mentioned authentically can help businesses to sidestep this distrust. In the long run, this will be instrumental if you wish to develop an army of loyal brand advocates.

Improves brand awareness

The great thing about most influencers is that they have a massive following and reach of people, which means more power for brands to increase their brand exposure and awareness. For instance, when an influencer recommends or uses products or services from your brand, their followers are likely going to notice, on account of how loyal they are.

In addition, if a particular influencer is very trusted in a certain community, then recommendations are often considered authentic. As such, collaborating with influencers can cut through all the noise and advertisements online, in addition to convincing your followers to convert to purchasing customers. It can also give you increased visibility as more people talk about your brand online.

In fact, according to a previous study, 37% of respondents said that they used influencer marketing to help increase their brand awareness.

Increases audience engagement

As most people can attest, it can be extremely difficult to increase the comments and likes on social media posts. So, even if you have millions of followers, if you do not have good engagement levels on your social media posts, then it will not yield any results for you. Fortunately, this is where influencer marketing can come in and help you.

Firstly, influencers can help improve the quality and types of content that you are publishing, mainly by making it user-centric. User-centric content is a lot more likely to gain traction with your target audience. Additionally, once an influencer shares a brand’s content on their social media, their audience will also engage with this. If their audience likes the content, they can spread its message by tagging other people, or through word-of-mouth marketing, thus further increasing its reach.

Create more content

The main goal of influencers is to make a living out of mainly creating content for their audience. As such, when a brand chooses to collaborate with them, it can give your content strategy a new fresh perspective. Influencer marketing can also act as a breath of fresh air amidst all of the self-promotions that a brand may regularly do.

Content that is seen by influencers is often viewed as more authentic and relevant, meaning that it is more likely to be shared in the community. This helps to increase its visibility and better connects a brand to its audience that may be inaccessible if it just did self-promotion.

Increase conversions

The ultimate goal of most businesses is to convert their audiences into paying customers, in order to drive sales and improve their bottom line. However, it is very difficult to woo potential customers, while also not driving them off with too many promotions.

As stated above, consumers are becoming increasingly wary of brands that keep tooting their own horns and will often spend hours doing research about a brand online before committing to making a purchase.

Luckily, influencers have the power to drive more people towards your brand. This is because most people trust the recommendations of their favourite influencers, as a result of parasocial interaction. Brands can use this to help influence purchasing decisions to their advantage. According to a study, 33% of respondents agreed that influencers are their most trusted source when it comes to making shopping suggestions. In fact, the ROI of influencer marketing can be as high as 650%.