Can Businesses Thrive Without Influencer Marketing?
Khalil Arouni
Entrepreneur, Author, Keynote Speaker, Growth Catalyst, International Media Consultant, Helping companies increase profit and get a better Marketing ROI, Business Owner
“Why are my business’s sales not increasing?” “Why am I not getting sufficient traction with the current marketing campaigns?” If questions like these keep troubling you, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your marketing strategies.
In this era of technology, where technology is only a click away, old-school marketing strategies with over-the-top advertisements will rarely impress your audiences. Instead, today’s intelligent consumers assess the product’s authenticity and search for a reliable source before buying something.
Influencer marketing is social media marketing, where brands collaborate with an online influencer to promote their product or service. Nevertheless, some influencer marketing collaborations are less tangible than that – brands work with influencers to increase brand recognition.
Unlike celebrities, influencers can be anywhere, and they can be anyone. What adds to their influence is their massive following on social media and the web. For example, an influencer can be a famous makeup artist on Instagram, a well-read financial advisor on Twitter, or a renowned HR personality on LinkedIn.
There can be multiple influencers in a particular industry – brands need to find them. Some influencers will have followers in the hundreds, thousands, or even millions. However, a lot of them will seem just like regular people. They might only have 10,000 followers or, in some cases, less than that. Yet, they will have established a reputation for being experts in their niche.
These influencers are the go-to people who answer people’s queries and address their concerns. Depending on their area of expertise, they are the individuals who make the most creative and engaging content within their niche. They make the most captivating videos, share the best pictures, and have the most informative online discussions.
You can use influencer marketing either as a standalone tool or as a means to enhance other marketing campaigns.
Can Businesses Thrive without Influencer Marketing?
Before considering whether businesses can be profitable without influencer marketing, let’s consider its importance. For instance, in 2016, the market was estimated at $1.7 billion, but by 2020, it had gone up to $9.7 billion. In 2021, it reached $13.8 billion and expanded to a whopping $16.4 billion industry in 2022.
Moreover, according to a survey of marketing experts conducted by Tomoson, businesses can make $6.50 for each $1 they spend on influencer marketing. The poll even indicated that marketers rank influencer marketing as their fastest-growing channel for customer acquisition, surpassing email marketing and organic search.
These statistics strongly indicate the overall importance of influencer marketing for businesses. However, if you’re still not convinced, let’s look at some reasons highlighting the significance of influencer marketing.
Enhanced Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is one of the key reasons why marketers use influencer marketing. Owing to the enormous following of influencers, they have tremendous power to enhance brand exposure by reaching many people in just a single post. Suppose they have legitimate followers along with a high engagement rate. In that case, their followers will likely consider the products they post about and the recommendations they share.
When brands work with influencers, it allows them to stand out and attract new followers, resulting in higher visibility and the chance to get more traction. According to a recent study by Influencer Marketing Hub, almost 40 per cent of the respondents use influencer marketing to boost brand awareness, making it the most common goal. Growing your customer database with a new demographic, diversifying your target audience, or simply using influencers to talk about your brand are all excellent reasons to incorporate influencer marketing into your marketing strategy.
Accurate Targeting
Identifying and targeting the right audience is imperative to all marketing strategies. However, it’s usually a challenging process for brands and requires a comprehensive understanding of prospective customers.
You can skip this step through influencer marketing as the difficult task has already been performed by influencers. Brands must ensure that the influencer is related to their niche and that their public person aligns with the brand’s image.
For instance, if you have a clothing brand that sells fashionable and affordable clothing for millennials, you can partner with bloggers and fashion models to reach out to their audience.
Increased Trust and Credibility
Influencers are experts in their field, so their followers trust them. They have invested many years in building an inspiring and respectful relationship with their followers. Thus, when they recommend your product to their followers, it won’t feel like an advertising campaign anymore, and people will be more willing to accept your brand. This will strengthen your brand’s reputation and boost your credibility.
All in all, partnering with influencers allows you to gain your audience’s trust. This is instrumental in creating an army of loyal brand advocates in the long term. In addition, it boosts brand awareness and ultimately allows you to earn higher revenue.
Higher Audience Engagement
Boosting the number of comments and likes on your content is a challenging task. Acquiring millions of social media followers without high engagement levels will not bring good results. This is where influencer marketing can be a great idea.
Firstly, partnering with influencers enhances your content’s quality and makes it more user-oriented. As a result, this content has a higher probability of getting traction among your target audience.
Secondly, when an influencer posts about your products on their social media accounts, their followers can access the content. If they like the content, they might tag their friends and share it on their performance, increasing its reach.
Improved Conversion Rates
Brands, particularly new ones, often need help persuading customers to try their products and services. However, influencers can drive more people to your products and services as they’ve already gained their follower’s trust. In addition, if they’re seen marketing your products, their audience will likely try it out.
According to data published by a consumer intelligence research platform, CivicScience, almost one-fifth of American consumers have purchased something because of a blogger or influencer compared to 10 per cent who have bought something because of a celebrity. Moreover, an article by the Digital Marketing Institute revealed that 49 per cent of consumers depend on influencer recommendations.
These statistics show that influencer marketing is an excellent tool for customer acquisition. It allows you to acquire more prospects for your business and, ultimately, increase your revenue.
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Better Search Engine Rankings
If you’re still wondering whether businesses can thrive without influencer marketing, there’s one more thing you need to know. Working with influencers can enhance the other types of digital marketing you use. It can improve your website’s search engine rankings and increase your reach even more.
Influencer marketing improves brand awareness, consequently driving more web traffic. Additionally, when people share your content, you get many authentic and high-quality backlinks.
Your content quality can even get better when you work with influencers. All these factors can boost your search engine rankings and lead to business growth.
The Verdict
All in all, influencers substantially impact their followers, so brands need to capitalise on and leverage these effects. Working with social media influencers can create an online buzz about your brand. Additionally, it can solidify your brand’s reputation, enhance audience engagement, boost conversions, and much more.
Thus, it’s high time business owners and marketers recognise the importance of influencer marketing and start using it to their benefit. In fact, rather than asking about the importance of influencer marketing, marketers need to focus on how to use it effectively. This is precisely what we will look at in the next section.
How to Make the Most of Influencer Marketing?
Now that you know the importance of influencer marketing, you can start with it right away.
Like other marketing types, getting the most out of influencer marketing means strategising, planning, measuring, and monitoring. Here are some tips to get the most out of it.
Set Clear Goals
Before creating a roadmap to success, you must first define what that looks like for your brand. Setting your campaign goals is crucial as it keeps you focused and efficiently utilises your resources, efforts, and time. Campaigns can typically have the following purposes:
Just to let you know, these goals are not set in stone. Thus, certain brands have different plans than the ones you see above. This might include building a good reputation, driving web traffic, etc.
Find the Right Influencers
The influencers you work with can impact your engagement and conversions. However, finding the right influencers to collaborate with is easier said than done. Here are two ways to find the right match:
Google Search
Search for the “top lifestyle influencers,” and you will get a complete list of lifestyle influencers. Then, change the industry and add a social media platform depending on your niche. For instance, to find travel influencers on Instagram, do a quick Google search on “top travel influencers on Instagram.”
Social Media
You can search for potential influencers using competitors’ hashtags. This will help you determine if your competitors are presently conducting any influencer marketing campaigns. Typically, brands ask influencers to incorporate branded hashtags in their content. Thus, it’s a great place to start searching and discover more branded hashtags.
Collaborate with Micro-Influencers
Please make sure to assign your marketing budget carefully. Working with micro-influencers with a following between 10,000 and 50,000 instead of pseudo-celebrities might get you better results. However, the top influencers in your niche will always be in high demand. Thus, approaching them can end up being more troublesome than rewarding.
Micro-influencers are regular consumers with considerable social media followings. Even though their reach might be limited compared to macro-influencers (with 500,000 to 1 million followers), they generally have higher engagement and engagement rates.
Moreover, micro-influencers are also usually easier to work with. After all, they don’t get approached much as influencers and consequently don’t have any unreasonable expectations.
Collaborate – Don’t Dictate
Influencers are inherently creative people with defined styles, and it’s this style that helps them attract their audience. So when you work with these influencers, you must respect this style and give them creative freedom.
Trying to control what they do and what they say about your brand can damage your relationship and significantly lower the chance that they will work with you again. But, apart from that, they know what attracts their audience and what they will like.
Remember, a relationship built on mutual trust will be successful.
Finally
Influencer marketing is a powerful tool in today’s incredibly competitive marketing world. Brands need to use it alongside other digital marketing tools to earn profits. Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to influencer marketing. Instead, you must try out new things and see what works and what doesn’t in your niche.