Benefits of Social Media Influencer Marketing

Every minute, 174,000 people are browsing Instagram, 481,000 tweets, and 973,000 Facebook logins. This means that there is more content than ever just floating around on the Internet. Bigger brands have historically spent millions of dollars on traditional marketing such as placing ads, billboards, commercials, etc. Now there is a new form of social media marketing rapidly picking up pace, influencer marketing. 

The social media influencer marketing space is expected to reach $22 Billion by 2022, up from $6 Billion in 2019. Businesses are spending 25% of their total marketing budgets on influencer marketing. ‘Business Insider’ claims that this type of marketing will grow exponentially (@40% p.a.) over the next 5 years.

As Ad-blocking software remains trending and consumers shifting away from traditional marketing, influencer marketing campaigns will always be on the rise. After all, people care about what the influencers say rather than brands.

Katie Paulson, VP, Influencer marketing at RhythmOne, said that in 2018, they observed that more of their advertisers activated multi-month and even year-long campaigns in an effort to deepen brand ambassador partnership. And form on-going relationships with experts, who were key to their campaign’s success.

You can identify social media influencers from your industry niche and connect with them using TrackMyHashtag. It is an amazing tool that can help you in tracking Twitter conversations and identifying the most influential users. Click here to start your free 5-day free trial.

Let us understand the reasons that have allowed social media influencers to grow by leaps and bounds.

In older days, the whole family would flock to a television-set and consume content along with advertisements. Gone are those days. The target audience today is distributed among so many platforms that it is impossible to reach them. This has made it considerably harder for brands to target their right audience. This problem has largely been solved by influencer marketing campaigns.

Let’s take the case of a phone manufacturer. Influencer marketing campaigns and word of mouth approach has worked wonders on social media platforms. Leveraging influencers for marketing provides the assurance of targeting the right audience as all the followers of the said influencer would also be interested in mobile phones.

The key here is to make sure that the influencer’s views align with the goals of your brand. Have there been previous posts from the influencer which does not relate to your brand identity? Or is there a chance that the influencer will post such posts in the future?

These points should be carefully examined before diving into social media influencer marketing campaigns.

It has been seen that people trust more in the words of the influencers they follow rather than what brands say about themselves. This is because the influencers have built their trust over time. You can leverage this trust and use it as a medium for encouraging consumers to buy ‘Your’ product.

Most Influencers have their lives centered around the niche they operate in, and this is why people with the same interests, look up to them. The social media influencers have built up their following because the audience deems them to be a reliable source of information in their respective domain. And you have to use this trust as the means to send your product out in the audience’s hands.

The primary concern of brands nowadays is fake followers. Some influencers have been gaming the system by purchasing fake or bot followers. You can use tools such as  FollowerAudit to check the authenticity of influencers before you make any investments in them.

Social media influencer marketing campaigns can help you in increasing the conversion rate for your brand. Researches have shown that 7 out of 10 people purchased products based on peer reviews rather than celebrity endorsements. If a social media influencer specializing in your industry recommends your product, you can be sure that this recommendation will go a long way in driving your sales.

Let’s take the example of a YouTuber, Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD. Currently, he has over 3.7M followers on Twitter, and he primarily reviews tech products. He has garnered his subscriber base by creating mind-blowing content and providing genuine advice.

Let’s say he is reviewing two devices and recommends one over the other. Which device do you think his audience will buy?

Social media influencers can go a long way in dramatically increasing your conversion rates.

89% of marketers say these marketing campaign ROI is as good or better than other marketing channels, and 65% of marketers plan to up their influencer marketing campaign budgets in 2020. The considerable value this marketing carries nowadays is simply unmatched.

According to Inc.com, these marketing campaigns deliver 11x ROI over all other forms of digital media. Compare this to the $2 that brands make when they invest $1. This metric alone proves the tremendous ROI that social media f marketing provides.

Whether your brand is new or decades old, you cannot overlook the impact of influencer marketing. I strongly believe that social media influencer marketing is the future of advertising, and it will remain so in the years to come.