Nowadays, you either need to hire an influencer to promote your business, or be so good that you can be the influencer to promote your business. While everyone is running in the game of fame and name, why won’t you? In short, let’s break down who’s an influencer, how can you join the community of Influencer marketing, and stand out with tips and strategy in this 2-minute blog.
Definition of Influencer Marketing
An influencer is a person who spreads their personality to the mass and gets acknowledged by their fans or we can say, supporters. And, when an influencer uses his reach of audience to guide about some products or brands to their supporters, that is what – Influencer Marketing is.
Seth Godin, who is a big player in the world of Marketing says, “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.”
If we give his words a thought, then it really is. Usually, people don’t bash about their product, they tell how it can change your life, how it can create magic in your life. Moreover, magically, customers get attached to it and buy it. This is where influencer marketing steps in.
Influencers are great connectors. The right business influencer can connect the brands or products with relations, stories, and magic- Just like Seth Godin says.
The Market for Influencer Marketing
Do you know that Instagram Influencer Marketing alone is said to set the industry that worths $10 Billion by 2020? According to research by Adweek, the influencer marketing industry is turning into a giant marketplace for both Influencers and brands.
Adweek in a different article also mentions that, on a research, 40% of people buy products, because they see their favorite influencer using the product.
There are tons of cases where you can see how Influencer Marketing is booming up rapidly. One closest example could be your favorite Instagrammers or even your favorite YouTuber. What do you think about your favorite football player or singer? They are all doing influencer marketing.
Source: Kylie Jenner’s Instagram
Here’s Kylie Promoting her own brand. As said earlier, either you have to hire an influencer marketer or you have to be so good that you can be the influencer. We can see a bunch of cases where different influencers are promoting different brands.
Why is influencer important in Marketing?
The honest and simple answer is to reach a bigger audience. Even the big brands like Apple, need influencers to reach to a bigger audience, to establish the relation with brands, and get more leads.
While Influencers are getting paid for promoting brands, brands will be getting more sales or lead through the influencers. The marketing industry benefits both sides. The companies will also grow their social media followings, make a digital presence, and increase their chances to beat the market.
Types of Influencer Marketing
To begin with types of Influencer Marketing, we must know that there are different types of Influencers. Well, that’s a different scenario and we will discuss it later. Influencer marketing is about connecting a certain brand with a mass audience. And there are several ways to nail the influencer marketing game for a brand.
Some types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns that a brand can run are:
- Discount Codes and Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Contents
- Competition and Giveaways
- Long term ambassadors
- ‘TakeOvers’ in your platform
Discount Codes and Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is growing among influencers as it is easy, profitable, and free. To join an affiliate marketing campaign any influencers can join up the affiliate program by signing up a digital contract. The influencers then will receive a unique code, where they can redirect their audience to the product’s page.
Affiliate Marketing is common among tech enthusiasts and bloggers. While most of the marketers choose to review products, others simply provide discount codes for the customers.
Sponsored Contents
Not that blog post where you will do paid advertising on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
Sponsored Contents are just paying an influencer to post about their products. Now it’s better to leave the creativity to the Influencer themselves. And they will come up with something amazing that can help you connect to a larger audience themselves.
Long term Ambassadors
On a big scale, Influencer Marketer becomes the Ambassadors for a certain period of time ranging from 5 years to – lifetime depending upon the company and the influencers. This is a signed contract and usually, the company looks for people who have a huge reach to the audience.
‘TakeOvers’ in your platform
Now, this might be a new thing for both influencers and companies. So, let me clear you about that topic right here. Have you ever come across an Instagram story or post where you see an update from a different person for the whole day or week?
TakeOvers – when a company tells an influencer to takeover. They are simply allowing the influencer to publish their story of a day on the company’s social media handles.
Conclusion
The companies, the influencer marketers, the users are increasing rapidly. And social media and marketing go hand in hand. Many companies are increasing their digital presence rather than their physical presence and Covid-19 played a really well game on that as well.
To stand out in the competition, and to grow digitally, only brands cannot do that alone. So they need a hand, and who’s better than a person having thousands or millions of followers on social media. Both influencer marketers and companies need each other support to grow and survive the digital era.