With most people using social media on a daily basis, influencer marketing is a powerful strategy for businesses in 2019. Read about its potential here.
If you’re one of the 2 billion people using Facebook or Instagram on a daily basis or an avid watcher of YouTube personalities, you have undoubtedly seen influencer marketing in action. Influencer marketing is a relatively recent phenomenon that involves a partnership between a business and a selected person with a dedicated online following. Brands are frequently working with these influencers to promote their message through personable and trusted means. With almost everyone, and particularly the younger generation, consuming online content every single day, it is a powerful way for brands to connect with customers and to tell their stories.
How does it work?
Brands collaborate with individual influencers to promote their products through their social media accounts. Usually, these paid sponsorships will contractually require an influencer to creatively share information about the brand in the specified medium. This can be done through Instagram or Facebook posts, Stories or even YouTube videos. Businesses select influencers based on how well their audience fits their target demographic, their level of engagement and their budget range.
Major Brands Utilise Popular Social Media Influencers to Push their Products
From massive brands to smaller start-up companies, businesses across the world have used social media influencers to draw in consumers online. Businesses such as Samsung, Fiji Water, and Nike are all using these strategies to connect with consumers and showcase products, usually in a recommendation. Because influencers have established relationships with their follower community, their audience is usually very engaged in the topics they choose to speak about.
It is now commonplace for major brands to work with well-known influencers when introducing a new product or service. With the ability to create a hype amongst target audiences, influencers have played a huge role in some of the biggest international campaigns.
Influencer Marketing Can Have a High Return-on-Investment
Given the trust that many place in their favourite influencers marketing in this form has proven to have a very high return-on-investment, if done correctly. Users with high engagement and fan bases can potentially reach millions of people and with an effective campaign, can convert many of these impressions to customers simply by sharing an opinion.
Take, for example, Iyia Liu’s campaign with Kylie Jenner for Waist Trainer – a $300,000 investment for a single photo posted on Instagram that led to $3.5 million in sales. This venture, albeit significantly on the high-end of influencer marketing, demonstrates the power that influencers have to trigger interest.
Influencer Marketing has had its Share of Controversies
Representing a brand and promoting it to a group of people that value your opinion is a powerful position to be in. While you have the potential to guide followers towards brands you love or products that you use, it can also go wrong if deals are made with those that don’t have desirable intentions. This was shown in the disastrous Fyre Festival, an event promoted by some of the biggest influencers in the world and an event that was drastically mismanaged. The fallout from this situation included criticisms of the influencers that promoted it, significantly damaging their reputations.
Many countries are now recognising the power that influencers have and it is now standard to see advertisements made abundantly clear. With this move to transparency, it is expected that users will be able to decipher between genuine posts and paid ones.
Influencer Marketing is Building Businesses
While partnering with well-known personalities to promote products and services isn’t anything new, influencer marketing takes personable endorsement to a new level. With likeable influencers sharing snippets of their lives embellished with their, sometimes seamlessly integrated promotions, brand partnerships have extremely high potential to reach and sway groups of people. Though collaboration and campaign choices must be made carefully, influencer marketing is proven to be a powerful marketing tool for both new and seasoned businesses.