Understanding the Use of Influencer Marketing for Business Strategies in 2017
Just when you thought 2016 was big on influencer marketing, think again, this upcoming 2017 is about to explode on fire. Nowadays, influencer marketing is widely used in all businesses, as consumer’s use and trust social media in their everyday lives. When popular celebrities such as Selena Gomez promote and post a favorite beauty product on their Instagram page; consumers are more inclined to buy the product versus seeing an advertisement from the brand. Influencer marketing is the future and is a great investment and use of strategy for your business.
Tuesday January 17, 2017,
3 min Read
Influencer Marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive their brand’s message to the larger market. With these influencers, whether they are bloggers, vloggers, celebrities or writers, they will be representing your products and overall brand in hopes for driving traffic and sales in return to your business. Influencer marketing usually contains social media components, whereby influencers are expected to spread the word through their personal social channels.
Authenticity and Long Term Partnerships is golden.
Before we get started, it’s important to recognize that influencer marketing is all about authenticity. Paying a big shot celebrity a ton of money to promote a specific product isn’t as genuine as if a brand chose particular influencers that fit their brand’s niche.
Once the influencers are chosen, building a trusting and long-term influencer and brand partnership is what works best and is most powerful. Consumers respond to continual brand mentions from those that they follow more so than regular traditional advertising.
The benefits.
There are many reasons a brand should consider the idea of influencer marketing as part of its marketing strategy, and here’s why:
Brand Awareness: Will allow your brand to reach a wider audience. Using influencer’s social media reach will allow you to promote a specific product indirectly.
Authenticity and Build Trust: It goes back to authenticity is the key to success. Consumers follow influencers for their authenticity, and as they endorse a favored product will help a brand to increase its human element on the wider marketing strategy.
Sales Leads: When an influencer posts on their social media channels about the specific product, the influencer’s followers may just turn into new customers for the brand.
It’s a win-win.
Influencer marketing doesn’t only benefit the brand but also the influencer as well. The brand gets the opportunity of getting the campaign message heard by an engaged audience while also reaching out to a new group of people. The influencer gains visibility and a new outlet for creativity. Influencer and brand partnerships can vary, whether it’s exchange from the form of money, a unique experience, products or credibility, the brand always offers something that will benefit the influencer’s experience in order to create high-quality content. With that, the brand should have clear and detailed directions for the influencer to take on with the exception of the influencer’s ability to express themselves and be creative in order to create compelling work to their audience.
Millions of consumers nowadays rely solely on social media to make everyday decisions. Because influencers build real relationships with their audience, influencer marketing creates an authentic, trusting and overall incredible marketing strategy to use for your business. Influencer marketing will only continue to grow at the fastest rate during 2017. If you have a well-planned out strategy and continue to build your influencer network, your business will be successful in no time.
