Influencer marketing and brand partnerships - the secret to fuelling business growth

For any business, regardless of its nature, growth is necessary. If a brand’s growth trajectory is stagnant, it automatically becomes redundant. Particularly, in today’s fast-paced world, with ever-evolving technology, continuous growth is essential for brands to stay afloat in the highly competitive market. Fuelling business growth is an aspect that needs smart, carefully planned work, and for this, promoting your business is crucial.

Years ago, word of mouth was the primary source of promoting a business. Today, with technology advancing at a breakneck pace, brands have shifted to fuelling business growth through digital approaches. Some of the most popular are influencer marketing and brand partnerships.

The days when companies approached celebrities to promote their brands are long gone. Today, influencer marketing and brand partnerships are becoming a part of mainstream business promotions. Although, despite influencer marketing gaining traction in several segments, a large number of brands are still tentative when approaching influencers, as is the case with any new approach.

One of the key benefits of taking the partnership and influencer marketing ways is that they can facilitate quick growth of your brand and boost its standing in the market in several ways. To understand this better, let us delve deeper.

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What is influencer marketing?

Before we go into the nuances of how influencer marketing and brand partnerships can help brands grow, we need to understand what is meant by them. A buzzword in recent times, it entails a business partnership with influential individuals, to help expand a brand’s marketing outreach.

As of 2019, it was estimated that India’s influencer market stands between $75-150 million and is growing rapidly. An influencer is one who possesses the authority, knowledge, and position, and enjoys a trusted bond with his/her followers, and frequently engages with them through creative content.

However, despite influencers having the power to fuel a brand’s growth, efforts can go in vain if an influencer’s domain and expertise aren’t thoroughly researched by a brand before approaching them.

Additionally, it is also necessary for brands to set defined KPIs to measure the success of the influencer’s campaigns, without which, the entire process goes in vain.

Boosting brand growth: How influencer marketing helps

There are various levels in which influencers can help build your brand and boost growth and this largely depends on the kind of relationship you have with the influencers you approach and how well they understand your product/service. Some of the most common and preferred ways that influencers can assist you include the following:

• Creating text-based content such as articles or blog posts or video-based content to let their followers know your product/service
• Promoting your brand by sharing your content on their social media pages and publicising it
• Providing you with access to their site to be a guest author/content creator  
• Vouching for your product by posting pictures or sharing videos on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube of them using your product/service

While the aforementioned will certainly increase your brand’s visibility amongst the audience and encourage them to try your product/service, you cannot expect an influencer to be unequivocal about your brand or products. For them to maintain their meticulously built follower-base, it is important to have an authentic relationship with them and not shower your brand with praise simply because they collaborate with you.

As mentioned earlier, measuring the success rate of the influencer’s campaigns and posts about your products is vital. If done in the right manner, an influencer’s campaign can help your business by increasing the number of visitors on your website that can be calculated through tools such as GoogleAnalytics, boost your brand’s social media follower count, enhance brand visibility for new, targeted audiences through increased mentions of your brand on social listening software, and boosting product sales by a considerable percentage.

For this, considering certain factors, including the influencer’s level of expertise, their domain, their target audience, and their engagement and relationship with followers is crucial to ensure a successful marketing campaign. Yet another approach to take is to partner with other relevant brands to boost your reach with the audience.

Brand partnerships: Accelerating growth strategically

When we consider brand partnerships, several brands are now forging strategic partnerships to gain access and connect with new audiences in innovative and engaging ways to help build their brands. One of the key reasons for the success of several notable global brands is the partnerships they have formed and strengthened over the years.

Relevant partnerships that are meaningfully formed and not simply for the sake of tying up with another brand can work wonders in boosting a company’s overall progress.

However, while partnering with another brand, it is important to bear in mind that the partnership shouldn’t merely be strategic but also reflect the brand’s values, beliefs, and purpose to ensure utmost authenticity. Today, brands from across categories – be it education, technology, financial, etc., are forging savvy partnerships to not only boost their outreach but also to benefit consumers in ways previously unimaginable.

The marketing landscape is constantly evolving and brands who adopt new, unconventional, and more engaging ways by embracing technology to reach out to consumers and engage with them are undoubtedly set to become the winners by fast-tracking their business growth.