10 Benefits of Influencer Marketing

As influencer campaign budgets increase this year, it is worth noting just how consistently the influencer market is helping brands reach their best possible audience.  It’s one of the most popular marketing strategies today and is projected to be the leading form of digital media advertising. Research has shown that 84% of marketers will launch one or more influencer marketing campaigns within the next year and Google Trends shows a huge increase in “influencer marketing” and a decrease in “print advertising” searches in the past five years.

If you’re still unsure about including social media influencers in your marketing strategy, below are 10 benefits of influencer marketing that should change your mind.

1. Influencer’s Build Brand Credibility and Impact Purchase Behavior

One of the biggest benefits of influencer marketing is that influencers are real, and the best influencers are honest, know and respect their audience, and don’t lie about products. They can deliver real value for both brands and the audience of friends and followers they’ve accumulated over the years.

When trusted influencers promote your offerings, it shows their trust in you and lays the foundation for the creation of a brand, and when customers believe and resonate with your brand, they become loyal to your company and subsequently become influencers for your product or service by telling and promoting it to their friends and family.

Numerous studies show that influencers have the power to impact the purchase decisions of consumers of all ages. In a joint survey conducted by Twitter and Annalect, 40% of respondents reported that they’ve purchased an item online after seeing a social media influencer use it. In an analysis of the effects of online video on purchase behavior, more than 50% of shoppers claim online video has helped them decide which brand or product to buy, with more than 90% saying they discover new brands or products on YouTube specifically.

The results of these studies indicate that influencer marketing is a successful tool for attracting consumers with high purchase intent, and thus, is an effective method for driving sales.

2. Increases Brand Awareness and Reach

Influencer marketing is a great way of reaching new audiences for your brand. And when your partner with the right influencers who niche and audiences aligns with your products, you can reach an already engaged audience.

As discussed, people usually convert into your customers when they begin to recognize and see your brand being endorsed by trustworthy friends and family and those conversations will expand your reach and increase people’s awareness and ultimately your bottom line.

3. Tap into Relevant Audiences That Match Your Brand’s Target

When you work with an influencer whose niche aligns with your products, you convey your message to a relevant audience. In fact, the #1 reason why influencer marketing can generate high ROI is due to the relevance.

When utilizing an influencer marketing agency, they can search for influencers based on different categories like: Beauty, Entertainment, Family, Fashion, Health & Fitness, and Travel just to name a few. Additionally, they can search by Age Range, Price Range, Location (are they US based?), Gender, and the platforms the influencer uses: Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or YouTube for example.

Once you have selected a candidate you can see what their audience demographic is made up of.  For instance, is their audience primarily US based, Male or Female, skew younger or older, married or single, and what potential brand affinities they have such as: Starbucks, Instagram, Nike, and Netflix. More importantly you can also drill down to their number of followers, engagement rate percentage, posts per week, and average number of posts “likes”. These metrics are an indicator of how well your campaign will perform with this influencer, as well as, the expected results your brand should experience with this influencer.

4. Ability to Leveraging Influencer Generated Content (IGC)

Influencer Generated Content “IGC” is organically created and shared by your brand influencers, and when you collaborate with these influencers, they will come up with quality content assets for your brand at a fraction of the price of a creative agency.

IGC makes it possible to engage your audience in a more profound, more meaningful way, and that’s a connection that you should take advantage of. Research shows that roughly half of the surveyed marketers said that influencer content performed better than brand-produced content, typically in terms of generating positive engagement from brand customers.

Do you wonder why user-generated content builds a deeper emotional connection with your audience?

• It comes from sources that consumers trust and follow
• It comes across as authentic and original
• It provides your audience with a feeling of being a part of a community with shared interests
• It is usually more memorable and entertaining

 5. Generate Authentic, Creditable Messaging

Authenticity is the essence of a successful influencer marketing campaign and the more an influencer can be vulnerable and give their audience an unfiltered look into their lives, the more they feel authentic.

Authentic influencers don’t just talk about products or services because they have been paid to do so. In fact, they might have spoken about the product or service even before the brand even approached them for a partnership. And they might continue to talk about it even after the campaign is over and they are no longer being paid.

It is because of this that authentic influencers have been able to maintain their authenticity even after they become highly popular. Their audience also looks up to them for useful advice and honest opinions about products they have tested.

6. Ability to “SmartBoost” Your Content

With paid media amplification, it becomes much easier to measure, scale, and even optimize your campaigns. You get high-quality content that feels native. In addition to this, you get to target the right audience and then measure the campaign results.

The best way to do this is to use a smart solution to tap into premium influencer-derived audiences, construct lookalike audiences, and run hyper-targeted social ads natively through influencer accounts all the while optimizing for brand awareness and media spend.

But how is this done?  Through machine learning of course!  Let ShopHer Media Help!

 7. Helps Drive Quicker Customer Acquisition

As mentioned above If you wish to have an effective customer acquisition strategy, you must find an influencer who is relevant to your industry. This is crucial to the success of your campaign and cannot be neglected.

Since the audience you can reach with influencer marketing is essentially your target audience, they convert quicker. This is because they are already interested in your niche so not only can you gain customers quicker but also drive more activations and engagements.

8. Boosts Your SEO Footprint

The quality of your link profile has a significant impact on your search engine ranking and is a critical component of any SEO strategy. According to a study conducted by Moz, the quality and authority of sites that link to you are among the top search engine ranking factors. This means you’ll need to earn links from high-authority domains relevant to your brand’s site and influencer marketing can help you get those links and boost your SEO efforts.

9. Suitable for All Businesses Regardless of Size or Industry

One of the best qualities of influencer marketing is that it is suitable for any business regardless of its size or industry. As long as there is someone influential in your industry, you can always leverage them for your marketing efforts.

10. Able to License Influencer Content

Depending on the terms of the agreement between the brand and the influencer, sponsored content from influencer marketing campaigns can be licensed and reused on the brands pages and social media channels to further a brand’s marketing goals.

Final Thoughts

Influencer marketing continues to increase in popularity, which will continue into 2020. If you have not made it an integral part of your 2019/2020 marketing, perhaps you should re-evaluate your strategy.

Be sure to reach out to ShopHer Media for any influencer marketing inquiries.