Top 3 Reasons to Add Influencer Marketing to the Mix
Last updated on May 16, 2019
The annual Mediakix Influencer Marketing Survey revealed that 2019 will be a year of rapid growth and innovation for the influencer marketing industry. Nearly two-thirds of marketers are increasing their influencer marketing budgets this year. Seventeen percent of companies will spend more than half of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.
Marketers feel confident about influencer marketing, as a channel. In fact, 80 percent of marketers find influencer marketing effective. Eighty nine percent say return on investment (ROI) from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
Influencers come in all sizes including:
- Mega-influencers – The social mega stars, with more than one million followers.
- Macro-influencers – Have a following in the tens of thousands or millions. Often times, they’re famous or well known.
- Micro-influencers – Have a smaller sphere of influence, usually 1K to 100K followers. They already have built their reputation and list of relationships.
- Nano influencers – A recently coined term, are influencers with roughly less than 1K followers who have influence over a slim market.
An Influencer Marketing Hub infographic shows that there is a greater emphasis on micro-influencers and nano-influencers this year.
With this much opportunity, you should be adding influencer marketing to your marketing plan.
Here are the top three reasons why:
1. Improved credibility
Increasing credibility through influencers is like getting a celebrity endorsement for your brand or product, on a smaller scale. It’s basically no different than hiring someone to do a paid promotion or product review, where the influencer is leveraging their relationship with their audience.
Influencers can be bloggers, podcasters, youtubers or social media stars with engaged followers in a target market. Influencer marketing plays on the side of social proof, much like a third-party endorsement and embedded commands that suggest, “if I’m interested or using this, you should too!”
You can accomplish this by creating content about your products or services, while captivating your target audience in an interactive and emotionally charged way. This type of influencer content doesn’t seem pushy and is more credible, which is more likely to engage and encourage action. This works all day, every day.
2. Reaching Audiences Beyond Paid or Organic Range
Leveraging audiences through influencers is how you can increase your reach, without worrying about advertising and potential ad blockers. Since influencers will be promoting your brand, products or services, you’ll be reaching audiences that are beyond your paid and organic range, in addition to being hyper targeted. Seventy-one percent of marketers say that the quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing is better than other sources, according to the Mediakix survey.
Ensuring you are touching the right people, at the right time, with the right message will come down to doing your homework on the influencers in which you engage. Also, be sure that you know how their audience aligns with your target audience. One of the leading influencer marketing trends for 2019 is brands realizing that the most essential requirement for working with an influencer is that the people they influence match up to their target audience. Since the content they create to promote your brand or product lives on the Internet, you can increase your reach through search engine optimization.
Influencer marketing takes social media marketing one step further. In addition to using your own social media channels to spread the word, influencer marketing uses popular influencers to promote your brand to a larger audience. The more people that talk about you on social media, the more relevant your brand is to Google search results. The more links that point to your site from blogs, podcasts and social sites, the greater your ranking and search visibility will be. That’s the power of influencers!
Here’s how the five most strategically important social media channels ranked, in the Mediakix survey:
- Instagram: 89%
- YouTube: 70%
- Facebook: 45%
- Blogs: 44%
- Twitter: 33%
3. Increased sales
Like with any third-party endorsement, the goal of working with influencers isn’t just to increase credibility and reach, but ultimately to increase sales. Seeing the ROI for influencer marketing is going to be key to whether you continue to engage in it or not.
Most businesses and associations measure return based on the revenue and profit generated by their marketing efforts. For sales to happen, you’ll need to have a sales funnel or process for tracking how many clients and/or customers are coming from each influencer campaign.
Influencer marketing is word of mouth amplified. It’s another arrow in the public relations quiver. Comparable to traditional public relations tactics, including industry publication placements where there’s a third-party endorsement, influencer marketing works on a macro and micro level. Some of the many benefits to influencer marketing are that it’s quantifiable and easy to engage, which is why it’s a complement to any marketing mix.
Are you interested in learning more about adding an influencer marketing campaign to the mix? Contact us today, to begin the conversation.
Dan Beldowicz is the Director of Marketing Services at CMA, a full-service communications, marketing and association management firm, which has provided its clients with award-winning and proven results for more than 30 years.