The Growth of Influencer Marketing

With online marketing, businesses can find different ways to build and demonstrate expertise, establish relationships effectively, reach larger audiences, and target specific niches. One of the ways businesses can achieve all the advantages that come with online marketing tool is through influencer marketing. 

Here, micro and macro-influencers with a large audience can share sponsored content to drive traffic to the brand. It’s a highly influential space to look into as a business since any niche can explore the idea even if it involves promoting an audience to bet on March Madness odds. Let’s have a look at how influencer marketing is growing. 

Marketing 101

Marketing is a broad business function that’s made of several components allowing for businesses to thrive on certain strategies based on their niche and specialty. Since the world has shifted to engaging and connecting using virtual platforms, more and more businesses are seeing the opportunity that surfaces from having an online presence. This gives rise to online marketing. 

Even though influencer marketing is a rather new and unfamiliar term, businesses can learn more about it since there’s a lot of published content online that discusses and explains the intricacies that are involved in influencer marketing and additional types of marketing. 

Influencer Marketing in Detail

Influencer marketing is a mixture of marketing tools that date way back and extend into the world of today. Here, an influential person with a large following receives sponsorships and presents them to their audience using modern-day content that’s supported by the marketing campaign at hand. 

Back in the day, this kind of marketing was done using a celebrity who’d receive an endorsement. Today, micro and macro-influencers are collaborated with to support a certain campaign. It’s important to note that influencer marketing doesn’t just revolve around celebrities and macro-influencers. Some brands also find an opportunity in investing in micro-influencers and upcoming individuals who don’t necessarily consider themselves as famous when they’re in an offline setting. 

What’s key is the overall quality audience the influencer has and this would be defined by:

• The power the person has to influence purchase power based on his or her relationship, position, authority, and knowledge with their audience
• The niche being followed and who the influencer is engaging with

In cases like these, the follower size of the influencer doesn’t necessarily matter depending on the niche that’s being looked at. As a business, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your marketing team knows the difference between online influencers and celebrities, so the business knows which angle to capitalize on for the best results. 

Unlike celebrity following, online influencers tend to be more engaged with their audiences with a systemic way of operating that keeps their followers enthusiastic and keen to want more. Notice that people tend to follow influencers rather than brands, meaning that audiences enjoy opinion, engagement, and interaction. They want to feel connected to what they see, touch and listen to. 

Partnering with Influencers

Since influencer marketing is built on engagement and interaction, businesses need to trust the modern-day language and technique the influencer will use to put the content out to the public. By foisting rules and confining them to operate within a business context, the business could risk having an unsuccessful campaign. It’s important to remember that the audience belongs to the influencer, and they know what language and style to use with their audience to get them interested and ready to purchase the product. 

Also, Read to Keep Prospects Hooked with Compelling Mid-Funnel Marketing

Advantages of Influencer Marketing as a Business

As a social strategy, businesses can benefit from influencer marketing through the following:

• Trust: As an influencer grows, they gradually build trust between themselves and their audience. Anything they put out on their social platforms will automatically receive attention and engagement.
• Brand Awareness: Because the influencer is exposed to a large audience, collaborating with influencers will increase business brand awareness.
• Enriched content strategy: Collaborating with an influencer can help businesses find creative ways to enrich their content. 
• Target audiences: Finding niche-driven influencers means that businesses can spread brand awareness within a specific niche.
• Value: Inbound marketing has always been about solving problems, inspiring audiences, and educating others. Influencer marketing is always open to this concept allowing for easier leveraging to occur between businesses and influencers in spreading valuable content.
• Partnerships: Businesses can build long-term relationships with influencers.