With the rise of social media, brands have discovered a new way of reaching their target audience – the influencer. As people with massive followings, an influencer’s endorsement or partnership could mean newfound success. But is influencer marketing right for every business?

What Is Influencer Marketing?

First and foremost, what is influencer marketing? Using the influential power of social media, businesses rely on users with large followings to successfully promote their products or services. This increases the brand’s authentic content engagement and increases its credibility by relying on the already built trust between the influencer and their community.

How Is It Helpful?

There are many ways in which influencer marketing can benefit a business, their brand, and their products or services. This marketing strategy offers solutions to challenges like…

Consumer Disconnect: Some brands can struggle to connect with their audience due to information saturation in the digital world. By working with an influencer, they can better connect to their target audience.

Low or Stagnant Brand Awareness: Sometimes, building awareness can be an uphill battle. With influencer marketing, brands can reach a higher level of visibility on social media which increases their awareness.

Breaking Into a New Market: Breaking into a new market comes with many challenges, including having to build a new consumer base. Influencer marketing makes this lift easier, connecting businesses to an already engaged and trusting target audience.

Influencer marketing is relatively new in the general world of marketing. However, businesses that find themselves stagnating or facing other digital marketing challenges could benefit from this strategy.

Is Influencer Marketing the Right Choice? How to Decide

Influencer marketing has proven itself as a useful and powerful tool in the digital world. Yet, it may not be the answer to success for every business. Here are some key factors to keep in mind when determining if influencer marketing is worth it or not.

Look at the Business Goals

One of the first things businesses should do is assess their overarching goals for marketing. For example, is the aim to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or foster customer loyalty?

Knowing these goals will help determine if influencer marketing is the right strategy for the business.

Analyze the Industry

Understanding the industry is just as important as understanding goals. By analyzing industry trends and consumer needs, businesses can determine if influencers are a profitable marketing strategy.

Analyzing the industry can also help businesses determine which influencers are resonating more with their target audience, helping them to pick the most ideal collaboration.

Examine the Current Marketing Strategy

Every business and brand should have an existing marketing strategy in place. It’s important to analyze this strategy to see where and how an influencer can help.

If there is no gap for an influencer to fill or there is a more effective solution to the challenge, then a business may want to explore other options.

Know the Budget

Last but not least, businesses need to evaluate their marketing budget. Influencers do not work for free, and the budget needs to reflect the expense for this. These numbers will determine if a brand should try for celebrity-status influencers or smaller niche ones.

Influencers can be an untapped source of potential success. But that doesn’t mean they fit every brand’s marketing strategy. Businesses should do extensive analytics and research to determine the personal benefits of this marketing strategy if there are any.

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Marketing has changed significantly, especially since entering the digital space. This means that companies need to ebb and flow with the changes to ensure they are marketing in suitable spaces. One such change has been the rise of influencer marketing, which involves advertising through online individuals who have a massive following.

According to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 75% of companies used influencer marketing in 2018, which has continued to rise in the years since. This can be an incredible marketing strategy for businesses to boost sales and become more known. Here’s what you need to know about influencer marketing and using it properly.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Let’s take a more in-depth look into what influencer marketing means. An influencer has a significant following on social media and content platforms, whether YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or otherwise.

The followers of these individuals look up to them, and there is some level of trust. Therefore, this makes the audience more likely to purchase products or services they recommend, hence the influence definition. Businesses can leverage this situation by working with influencers to promote and advertise their product or services.

Of course, there will typically be a contractual agreement with the influencer to ensure both parties benefit from the arrangement.

The Massive Advantage of Marketing with Influencers

Realistically, influencer marketing has one of the best potential ROIs in today’s market. According to a poll, businesses make $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. They also said “that marketers rate influencer marketing as their fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel, outpacing organic search and email marketing.”

These impressive numbers have also led to more businesses increasing their influencer marketing budget. Thus, 59% of those surveyed plan to increase this portion of their budget over the next 12 months.

How to Engage in Influencer Marketing

Before jumping right into influencer marketing, it is important to establish some goals for the strategy.

The first goal should primarily be to reach new customers rather than expecting sales immediately. While driving sales is a goal of this strategy, it should start as a secondary or tertiary goal. Along with reaching new customers, other focuses should include increasing brand awareness and product consideration. Ideally, the strategy will begin to drive increased sales; however, the initial benefits are introducing the influencer’s audience to the brand and products.

Another essential factor is for the business to decide who they are trying to reach. Influencer marketing can be wasted if you partner with influencers with the wrong type of audience. Businesses should develop an audience persona to help understand who they are trying to reach, whether it be a current audience or one they would like to branch into.

The Rules of Influencer Marketing

As influencer marketing has increased in popularity and effectiveness, the FTC has stepped in to provide regulations and legislation. A primary rule to know is that it is required for influencers to identify when a post or content is sponsored.

For video reviews, influencers must provide written and verbal disclosures of the partnership. For posts, they have to include a written indication of the partnership, whether this be in the caption or a hashtag like #ad or #sponsored.

WCD Can Help Your Business Reach New Heights

If you are looking to implement influencer marketing or improve your overall web content, Web Content Development is here to help. Our decades of experience in the marketing field allow us to craft an individual strategy for your business to boost your outreach.

Whether you are looking to get your business out there for the first time or want to improve your current strategy, we are confident we can help. If you have any questions, you can call us at 1 (866) 352-5570 or email us at info@webcontentdevelopment.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

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