Recent case studies indicate Influencer Marketing campaigns help raise brand awareness within relevant communities and help garner consumer trust.
How many times have you opted out of receiving ads on the web, while visiting blog posts, or browsing social media?
If you’re like everyone else on the internet, you’ve probably done this more times than you can count. This raises an obvious issue for brands and advertisers — how do you deliver relevant, effective ads to your target audience if ads have such a bad rep?
The solution? It’s simple: work with influencers to amplify your digital marketing or social media marketing efforts.
Influencer Marketing utilizes well-respected public figures (not necessarily limited to celebrity endorsements) to draw attention to your brand and influence purchase behaviors of consumers within your target market. This can be achieved through content marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing, and inbound marketing.
Influencers work across multiple channels through various social media, blog posts, or digital marketing platforms and use an individual’s status, expertise, or relationship with their audience to share their personal recommendation in order to change consumer behavior.
Source: Medium.com
Here are a few ways to ensure your Influencer Marketing work helps to improve the sales process and marketing strategies of B2B and B2C companies alike.
Influencers Help Build Better Relationships with Your Target Audience
It’s 2018 — no one wants to scroll past a sea of ads for products they don’t have any interest in purchasing.
Instead of focusing on the sale, focus on building a mutually beneficial relationship with your target audience. Build relationships with your target market by cultivating a community in which your product or service helps to facilitates their own business growth, or adds value to their life. Your promotional efforts will not stand out as abrasive advertisements; rather, they will become a seamless facet of your target audience’s web or social media browsing experience.
Spark thought leadership-based conversations and communities among audience members who are your potential clients. Then use a social CRM tool like Nimble, or other marketing tools such as BuzzSumo, to listen and identify the influencers within those communities that are a good fit for your brand and are driving conversations around areas you wish to participate in. You can also tap into apps such as Kred to help with targeting influencers.
Influencers Create “Word of Mouth” Buzz
Your digital marketing efforts on social media should follow a customer-friendly approach. Your audience is undoubtedly turned off by overly aggressive advertisements that disrupt their experience. They are constantly on the lookout for thought leadership posts that engage and inform them, not just sell them an obscure solution they don’t even know if they need.
Connecting with your target market on social media can be deceptively difficult; traditional marketing strategies can lead indecisive customers turned off of your brand. Working with influencers can help tap into the organic following of well-respected public figures that are relevant to your brand in order to reach your audience with a more authentic approach.
People already know and trust these influencers; they see them as fellow consumers. By giving your audience a break from the regular advertising formats with the help of influencers, you give them the space to make buying decisions while still keeping your brand top of mind.
Influencers Help Garner Consumer Trust
According to recent case studies, Peer to peer recommendations generate twice the amount of sales as paid advertising. The reason behind this is because most consumers would prefer to be “let in” on a life hack from someone they trust and respect versus being fed obvious advertisements.
Influencers act as a friendly voice that wants to let their friends in on an amazing product that has provided some sort of benefit to their life or business. Through their blog posts, social media marketing efforts, and content marketing, influencers act as much more than a shallow celebrity endorsement.
They essentially document a dry-run of your target market’s customer experience of before, when, and after they make a purchasing decision. Content that people trust creates a loyal target audience that is more likely to keep you top of mind for whatever need your product or service fulfills.
Working With Influencers Cuts Out Annoying Ads
It’s time we face facts — the conventional digital marketing ad will not cut it in today’s advertising adverse landscape. In order to be heard over the noise of your competitors, you’re going to have to get creative.
Case studies indicate that 49% of consumers rely on the recommendations of public figures they follow on the internet. A key element that goes into these impressive statistics is the fact that people are actually seeing these ads; they don’t have ad blocking software set up to filter through an influencer’s sponsored content. The digital marketing efforts of the brands and influencers will blend seamlessly into their user experience.
Additionally, influencers are capable of driving social trends that people trust because they’re considered more trustworthy and genuine than a traditional advertiser. By leveraging influencers that are a good fit for your brand and marketing strategy, you can eliminate the stigma surrounding the word “advertising.”
Consider it this way: would you rather purchase a product or service based off of the recommendations of a person, or a billboard?
Influencer Marketing Campaigns Boost Your SEO Ranking
Influencer Marketing campaigns help generate more user-generated content for your brand; this puts you at a huge advantage from an SEO perspective, as user-generated content accounts for 25% of search results for some of the world’s most successful companies.
Working with influencers not only helps boost your visibility on social platforms and puts your brand in front of your target audience on a more meaningful level but also amps up your ranking within search engines. Working with influencers can spark more conversations within your target market and draw more eyes to your product or service.
Don’t let the conversation end after one interaction! Respond to people’s comments, feedback, or questions on social platforms to let them know you’re listening to their needs. Even if you receive negative feedback, it’s important to address it and possibly change someone’s mind about your brand. This proactive approach helps generate conversation surrounding your product or service, thus ensuring a bettering SEO ranking and a positive impression on potential customers.
Once a Brand Ambassador, Always a Brand Ambassador
Influencers are constantly bombarded by cold emails from brands who wish to work with them that typically end up being ignored or discarded to the junk pile. Influencers prefer to work with people with similar values who genuinely care about their well-being, aside from turning a profit.
In order to make the real Influencer Marketing magic happen, connect with influencers who are a good fit for your brand and genuinely like your product or service. These are the people who can best represent you while backing your brand promise effectively. If you build a strong relationship with this type of influencer, you will both reap the benefits for many campaigns to come.
You can build these relationships by engaging with influencers on their social media platforms. Begin sharing their content with strategic hashtags, or consistently comment on their posts with encouraging words.
Closing Thoughts
Influencer Marketing campaigns aren’t an exact science. They require some trial and error to figure out a good fit that truly resonates with your target audience; however, despite this learning curve, the return on investment from Influencer Marketing campaigns is undeniably worth it.
Work with influencers to spark your community’s interest in your brand and to gain their trust; this will translate to a steady stream of consistent customers for years to come. When brands and influencers strike a symbiotic relationship, everyone wins.
Content marketing that is generated by working with influencers can be leveraged as a means to garner consumer trust. Whether your brand primarily focuses on B2B or B2C, it will take you a lot of effort to differentiate yourself from your top competitors. When you enrich your digital marketing strategy by working with influencers, you will expose yourself to a whole new target audience.
