Not so long ago, influencer marketing was a small niche only inhabited by well-known celebrities and a few successful bloggers. Today, the online world is oversaturated with influencers of all kinds, and they help brands from different industries maximize sales. Influencer marketing made many digital marketers reconsider their strategies because it can offer some unique advantages compared to other tactics.

Many people use social media all the time. They trust their favorite influencers. In fact, 49% of social media users note that they trust product recommendations from influencers so people trust influencers almost as much as their friends. Money Brighter is a website that can help you manage your finances. Besides, many other approaches have proven to become less effective than they used to be. While the cost of paid advertising grows, its ability to drive conversions declines. Besides, influencer marketing has 11 times higher ROI. While this article guides you on incorporating influencer marketing into your digital initiatives, if you're operating an LLC, it's crucial to ensure all promotional collaborations align with the legal standards of your business structure.

What Influencer Marketing Is?

Simply put, influencer marketing is an approach based on product mentions and endorsements from social media influencers and bloggers. These people are often perceived as experts in their area and they have a dedicated audience that listens to their recommendations. The main reason why influencer marketing works is that influencers have trustful relationships with their audiences. Influencer marketing can help brands increase reach while acting as social proof for potential customers.

One of the most popular platforms for influencer marketing is Instagram. Using Instagram for influencer marketing is a very popular strategy, but there are also other platforms, such as YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. Every platform has its own unique features, influences, and demographics. The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach $15 billion by 2022, and its role in digital marketing will continue to get more and more important.

Why Influencer Marketing Is Beneficial for Your Business?

Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing type of marketing, and it brings better results than paid search, affiliate marketing, and display. According to research, businesses generate $6.50 in revenue for each dollar invested on average. 13% of businesses make $20 or more, and 70% of businesses make $2 or more. 22% of marketers say that influencer marketing is their most effective customer acquisition channel.

Another advantage of influencer marketing is that it has a great reach. Many influencers have audiences of millions of followers so working with these influencers can help you deliver your message to millions of potential customers. As the connection between your brand and the influencer gets stronger, your network will also grow, along with your reach and recognition.

Influencer marketing offers amazing targeting opportunities. There’s too much content on the internet. Brands, influencers, and regular users produce tons of content all the time so it becomes more and more difficult for businesses to reach the right audience. Influencers can help you find your target audience, and you can adjust the precision of your targeting by collaborating with different types of influencers. While macro-influencers can help brands reach wide audiences of 500,000 and more followers, micro and nano-influencers enable you to deliver your message to perfectly targeted niche audiences.

Along with these obvious benefits, influencer marketing also offers some unique advantages. We’ve already mentioned that influencers and their followers have relationships based on trust. Influencers are one of the most popular sources of information for people who want to learn about new products in a certain industry, whether it be fashion, beauty, fitness, tech, etc.

Influencers are often idolized by their followers and they set trends. They also often have an opportunity to test new products before anyone else. Therefore, businesses can use influencers to build their campaigns around reviews of new products they have exclusive access. Brands can place their products in the spotlight of a hot trend.

Although influencer marketing has a great ROI and enables you to reach a large well-targeted audience, it’s not just about metrics. Influencer marketing enables you to build relationships. Your collaborations with influencers shouldn’t necessarily be one-time partnerships. You can build long-term partnerships that will continue to benefit both your brand and the influencer in the future. According to statistics, 37% of influencers work with brands for long periods of time instead of participating in one-off campaigns.

Influencer marketing is also a great tool for improving your brand reputation. No matter whether you’re starting a conversation or hopping on the already existing discussion, you can make people talk about your brand. You may focus on positive or negative sentiments, and in both cases, you need social media presence. When your brand has an active social listening plan, you can monitor conversations about your brand and see where these conversations take place. You should make sure to join such conversations not passively, as just an observer, but as an active member of the community, and influencer marketing enables you to do it.

If you see that people are spreading misinformation about your brand, you can use this opportunity to share your perspective. Influencers can help you address the issue in a professional yet authentic way while having full control over your brand image and brand voice. When consumers talk positively about your brand, you can also show your appreciation both personally and publicly. Besides, influencer marketing allows you to build a whole pool of brand ambassadors that will make a significant contribution to your online presence.

How To Integrate Influencers Into Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

1. Incorporate influencers into social media marketing

Even though it’s one of the most obvious ways to start working with influencers, this way is also often misunderstood. Many brands think that influencers are a solution to all of their problems. They expect that influencers will immediately boost their sales, retention rates, brand awareness, and media following. Influencers indeed can help you achieve these goals if you have the right strategy, but it rarely happens all at once.

Before you launch your influencer marketing campaign, you should set clear objectives. You need to understand exactly what you’re going to do: increase sales or brand awareness, boost social media following, etc. In each case, you will need a different strategy. It’s also important to research your target audience and understand how they talk about your brand. This way, you will be able to choose the right influencers to communicate your message.

2. Use guest posting

Guest posting is a great solution if you want influencers to not only mention your brand but also speak about it in the most informative manner. Blog posts are longer than social media posts so they enable influencers to get into detail and share well-elaborated opinions that can be appreciated by your audience.

You can also drive more visitors to your website by asking influencers to share blog posts on their social media. You can also link to influencers’ blogs, which can be very beneficial in the SEO context. This way, the audience of people who google their names will eventually come across posts dedicated to your brand.

3. Let influencers participate in creating content for your website

Influencers are more than just a channel that enables you to deliver your message on social media. They are also content creators. They are photographers, videographers, and writers. They are creative personalities that are always up to date about the latest trends in their niche.

When you need help with content creation, you can always find freelance writers on paper writing service reviews websites. However, influencers are familiar not only with the specifics of your product but also with the content that is popular among your target audience. Influencers can incorporate the right elements into your content, whether it be a meme or another cultural reference.

4. Use affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing gives you a great opportunity to engage influencers with your product and to motivate them to promote your products to their audiences. Usually, affiliate programs are quite cheap and you don’t need to make any upfront investments in a promotion. Influencers will simply receive a commission for promoting your products, and therefore they will be interested in driving conversions.

Affiliate marketing is an approach that perfectly combines with influencer marketing. It enables you to avoid upfront costs and many other risks while also providing a clear incentive for influencers so that they will want to push your product. The affiliate commission can be a little higher than the influencers’ original fee, and it will be enough to motivate them to work for you. Besides, you can collect valuable data on what products perform best.

Wrapping Up

Influencer marketing is so popular for its effectiveness and the numerous unique benefits that it offers to businesses. Influencer marketing made many brands reconsider their digital marketing strategies, and if you’re not collaborating with influencers yet, you should start doing it. Your competitors may already invest in influencer marketing, strengthening their online presence and driving conversions.

No matter what your niche is, you can boost your sales by working with celebrities or micro-influencers. Influencers can help you reach a wider audience and increase your revenue. The main thing is to clearly define your goals and to find influencers who have the right audience. Now that you know why influencer marketing is so effective, you can start planning your strategy. No matter what your objectives are, the chances are that you will be impressed with the results.

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