A decade ago, the influencer marketing arena was limited only to celebrities and a few dedicated bloggers. Now, it seems like we’ve seen social media influencers rise, saturate the market even to alarming possibly fraudulent proportions.
Influencer marketing is a strategy where a brand partners with a person who has a large social media following and a built-in audience that fits the brand’s target demographic. The status of these influencers depends on their total influence. An influencer may be limited to a single social media platform or have a presence across several different channels which definitely increases the influencer’s status and value.
The crucial factor in the influencer equation is that the individual must have first acquired influence or earned the trust of a particular kind of audience grouping that will be beneficial to the brand which the brand in turn seeks to use in building the equity, value or image of their brand.
At a fundamental level, influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers – individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers that the brand will deliver on its promise to the customers/audience.
According to Hubspot Influencer marketing is the process of engaging leading, niche content creators to improve brand awareness, increase traffic, and drive your brand’s message to your target audience. These content creators already cultivate, market or engage with your ideal audience across different channels. Collaborating with them allows you the room to expand your reach across your buyer personas by reaching out to these same people that they have cultivated and are actively engaging with.
Influencer marketing has become a very successful marketing strategy because of its word-of-mouth and social proof approach to marketing. Customers over time have come to trust their peers, friends, and people they admire more than the companies selling the products and services they buy and use, and as such will readily agree and accept the testimonials and word of mouth advert of such individuals as opposed to the advertising and marketing claims of the organisations selling those products and services. Influencer marketing like every other marketing tool is an investment that must be deployed appropriately to derive the benefit from it. Time has to be painstakingly devoted to the process of trying to ensure the right influencer to promote the right content that appeals to your target audience is obtained, especially as there are different types of influencers and not all types of influencers are appropriate for all groups, target audience and brands. A lot of money and/or resources are used in rewarding the influencer and to run various campaigns with the influencer(s), the more reason why deliberate efforts have to be made in choosing influencers that are in sync with your specific marketing goals and brand’s objectives. According to Influencer marketing hub.com, the influencer marketing industry grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.7 billion in 2020. In 2021, it soared to $13.8 billion, and is projected to expand to a whopping $16.4 billion industry in 2022. It has also gradually grown into a mainline marketing strategy where about 93 percent of marketers regularly use it in their marketing and advertising campaigns.
In 2019, 17 percent of surveyed businesses committed over 50 percent of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing. Almost nine out of 10 marketers see influencer marketing ROI as comparable or superior to that of other marketing channels which in real terms was an average of $6.50 on every dollar spent on influencer marketing in 2018.
Research has also shown that 49 percent of customers rely on influencers’ advice, while marketing managers point to influencer marketing as the “fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method”. 94 percent of marketers deem influencer marketing campaigns as very successful.
Instagram, which saw a slight decrease in use in 2020, is still the most preferred platform for influencer marketing. Its popularity increased in 2021, with the majority of brands choosing Instagram as their preferred channel for their influencer marketing campaigns, despite having less monthly active users (1.3 billion) than Facebook, with (2.89 billion) monthly active users.
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