Do You Know What is the Essence of Marketing Strategy?
It’s not just selling goods and services but selling them through stories, relations and emotions that connect and engages the audience. That’s the magic of every marketing technique.
Right from scratch- drafting content, creating a strategy and implementation part, everything needs to be unique, perfect and customer engagement for marketing tactics. With the inception of the digital world, things have become much easier, cheaper, and more reachable.
But every coin has two sides. To increase traffic and sales, people started shifting towards paid marketing campaigns, advertisements, paid promotions and everything apart from organic. The results were spontaneous but short-lived!
The netizens started opting for ad-blockers and other advertisement-free options. Now, they understand the difference between paid and organic marketing. So, there was an urgent need for a new strategy to upkeep the brands within the digital landscape.
This led to the birth of Influencer Marketing!
Influencer marketing is the smartest way to garner the attention of the audience. Approaching social media influencers is an ironclad way as they are the ones who already have the audience ears, love and trust.
In a nutshell, we all need an Influencer to make the brand stand above the rest.
Have a look at the Google Trends report for the search term “Influencer Marketing” over a period of past 12 months. The score was near 50 and now it has hit an all-time 100. A score of 100 on a Google scale means extremely popular.
Social Media Influencer – A Synonym of Digital Trust
As per new findings by Forbes, only 1% of the millennials trust advertisements for their purchases. Blog reviews still lead the race by 33%.
Influencer marketing company Mediakix states that 17% of the brands spend half of their marketing budget on influencers. 89% of marketers believe that ROI from influencers is much better than other marketing channels.
So, things are clear that influencer marketing is the new magic that every brand needs. Let’s move further and understand how a social media influencer can become a game-changer for a brand.
Influencer Marketing in Simple Terms
The term is new but not the concept. You must have seen Movie stars often making cameo appearances in TV shows for promoting their upcoming movies. Why?
Television Industry has a broader reach and a much bigger audience. Above all, people have blind trust in the television fraternity!
I hope you got the point.
Influencer marketing is utilizing the reach and power of a social media influencer who has a huge following and strong brand reputation. The influencer will leverage the business by bringing brand awareness through his social media channels. Thus, skyrocketing the ROI.
Read Also: 10 First Steps to Rank on Google with your Online Businesses
Who Need Influencers?
The best answer to this question is- Everyone. Every brand- new or old, small or medium needs help from influencers to solidify its presence on digital mediums. Here are some leading industries with most influencer engagement.
Apparel and Fashion top the chart by 36%, closely followed by food and beverage by 25%, beauty by 23%. Some other industries in line are fitness, health, medicine, travel, hospitality, finance and technology.
How Influencers Promote Brands?
The social Influencers and the brands jointly tailor compelling content which has a touch of personalization and authenticity. The content for products and services is curated in such a manner that it depicts a genuine reason to use that product/service.
People have a deep faith and trust in social media celebrities. This helps the influencers to persuade the audience to buy the products and services from the brands promoted by them.
Here are some common ways used by social influencers:
1. Product Promotion
Here the influencers share a photo or video related to the product or services. It includes the advantages, usage or information about the product.
2. Hashtagging
Hashtags are basically some short words or phrases used on social media platforms and are preceded by the “#” symbol. They help the users to search specific content relevant to hashtags. Influencers know how to mine the power of hashtags effectively.
3. Affiliate Marketing and Discounts
Here the influencers design custom URLs and lure the followers to click those URLs for some discount code. The URLs redirects users to the brand’s website which is being promoted by them. The users get their code and the influencers get their commission for affiliate marketing.
4. Competitions and Giveaways
Giveaways, contests and competitions are some of the best strategies that always work providing desired engagement, exposure and popularity to the brand.
The brands can easily plan out some budget for monthly giveaways to the winners of the competition or whatever that falls in the budget. But the brands should make sure that these gift hampers or freebies are exciting enough to drive the audience.
The main aim of every giveaway or competition is maximum engagement which can be set as the prime requirement for winning the contest such as liking, sharing and tagging friends.
Do I Really Need an Influencer?
Your competitors are already using influencer marketing. If you don’t, be ready to face the worst consequences. Going for influencer Marketing is the call for survival in the digital landscape.
More and more brands are turning towards the influencers to leverage their content in an authentic way, drive engagement, combat ad blocking scenarios, etc. Running paid ads is not going to work in today’s scenario, especially in the case of millennials and generation Z netizens. The audiences today trust, follow and believe social media celebrities which in turn make them the strongest social influencers.
Apart from building a brand’s credibility, Influencer marketing helps to drive maximum organic traffic and boost user engagement. This gives a massive kick to SEO rankings and finally, the ROI.
So, to keep the digital ball rolling, you need influencers to make the best out of your marketing funnel.
How to Reach the Influencers?
Most of the influencers directly respond to your emails or a DM (direct message). A positive response from their side means they are interested in your proposal too.
Be very careful about the way you approach the influencers. They should be dealt with exactly the same way you deal with your clients- with courtesy and professionalism.
You can also Google some local social media agencies that work with influencers. If you want to create a viral campaign, it’s always better to go for a social media pro.
Final Thoughts
Influencer marketing is that bite of cherry which helps the brands to connect with their customers/ buyers on a personal level. You need to conduct thorough research to find the best influencer for your brand as there is nothing like the one-size-fits-all concept.
Have you tried this new and tending form of digital marketing? Feel free to share your experiences with us.