Your Influencers Marketing Strategy MUST Be A Priority For Your Business!
In this article, we’re going to highlight the perks of using Influencers Marketing, this recent distinct marketing shift that adds a whole new perspective to the digital advertising strategies, with numbers that confirm our claims!
If you’re using social media, you would be highly familiar with the term “Influencers.” Whether or not you know the term, Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that takes advantage of the mass number of people who follow influencers to promote, drive traffic, and conversions to various products or services. Consider it as the extension of celebrity branding or celebrity endorsement where brands feature T.V or Cinema performers in their Ads. Because in a world where social media and digitized broadcasts take place, brands would more likely rely on influencer marketing more than traditional media stars. This isn’t something we would guess; it’s what the numbers confirm!
Influencer Marketing Beats Traditional Advertising “According to Nielsen, 92% of Consumers Trust Influencers Over Traditional Advertising.”
The figure might be shocking at first, but if you think about it you will find it very reasonable, because who are you going to trust more, your T.V star whom you know nothing about in a T.V ad convincing you to buy or try a specific product, or a niche influencer whom you know and see every day in your stories and feed? The answer is obvious: people might adore actors and singers, but they will trust and follow what their favorite influencer advises them.
Ironically, you will find the traditional media stars who announced 7 years ago that they have no accounts on social media and are not socially active, the same ones who pop up on your newsfeed trying to drive traffic and gain people’s trust on their accounts in 2021. Why? Because in 2016, the industry was worth $1.7 billion, and now it’s $13.8 billion worth globally. This means that social media wins and influencers are the new celebrities.
90% of Marketers Use Influencer Marketing
More than 90% of marketers believe that Influencer Marketing is efficient in spreading the word, increasing awareness about their brands, and connecting with their followers through someone who can present their niche image. Advertisers in all categories use the influencers approach, starting with the luxuries brands like Rolex, the top well-known brands globally such as Nike, Adidas, and Coca-Cola, to the local brands in your neighborhood.
More proof? Maybe the importance of Influencer Marketing was born from the fact that 30% of all internet users use ad blockers to remove distracting/annoying display ads while surfing online apps and services. So, instead of pushing your ads in a vast amount, allow the customers to come to you through the influencers’ channels, bear in mind that their customers are highly interested because their favorite blogger recommended your product/service.
How Can Influencer Marketing Help Your Start-up?
Originally, a start-up in the digital does not only means a brand that is totally new to the market, but it could also mean a brand that already has/ had a strong presence on the ground but zero online presence such as many local brands that we knew as children but growing up forgetting about them because they don’t have pages or websites. So if your brand used to be popular, but with e-commerce taking over the market, your sales are dropping, and you want to open new doors to improve your ROI, your perfect come-back would be a powerful influencers campaign with a nostalgic yet modern renewed theme. Here are some of the perks of using influencers in promoting your brand.
1- captivate New Audience “41% of Customers Discover New Products Through Influencers Weekly.”
When you collaborate with an influencer, your goal is to convince your target group to buy or try your product/service. Thus, this partnership could attract a new niche to your list of audiences because figures confirm that 41% of customers discover new products through influencers weekly, but always remember to investigate, dig, and conduct good research before implementing any influencers campaign because you don’t want to work with irrelevant influencers or bloggers who have bad reputations since numbers don’t always tell the truth in the world of social media. We can list hundreds of stories where brands got scammed; numbers show that 67% of brands are concerned about influencer fraud.
2- The best in Native Ads “92% of Consumers Trust Online Word-Of-Mouth Recommendations.”
If the goal of your campaigns is to drive sales directly, influencers are the best in making that possible; their ways are remarkable. Sometimes, you won’t know the placement of an ad or a collaboration with a specific brand; you would think that the influencer dug and came up with an authentic place to have dinner at or a piece of cloth or lifestyle gadget, and they just want to help you to feel the same confidence wearing the same piece of course!
Statistics show that:
- 86% of women turn to social media for buying advice while
- 130 million Instagram users explore shopping posts to find product information monthly.
- 80% of consumers have purchased something based on an influencer recommendation.
3- Motivate The Purchasing Decisions “3 in 4 Consumers Spend up to $629 on Influencer-Inspired Purchases.”
Maybe your awareness campaign was huge and achieved its goal, but your customers still need a little push. Collaborating with influencers would be your hook to push the customers to make the purchase by displaying the effects -reviews- of your product or highlighting the features of your service by the influencers in front of their followers and your potential customers. Your competitors are already using content creators in their marketing strategy and according to Google Trends, searches for the term “influencer marketing” grow by 5000% each month.
3 Tips To Nail Your Social Media Influencer Marketing
1- It’s Okay to Open Up the Campaign
Marketing is all about testing, and determining your ongoing group of influencers requires examining their reach results on a small scale first, then deciding whether you’re going to the whole package or not; you can collaborate with a mega-influencer but get minor traffic. That’s why we recommend -according to your budget- setting a comprehensive campaign with at least 10 content creators in a different chronological order to effectively measure the outcome of each. Then, at the end of the campaign, you will have a clear vision of the best influencer to work with, not just that but their most efficient platforms to focus on.
2- Not Every Mega Deliver Giga
Statistics confirm that Micro-Influencers (1K to 100K followers) deliver 60% better engagement and 22% higher conversion rates than mega ones, Which means that you need to work with the most relevant accounts that meet your niche to achieve the best-focused results, the best thing about micro-influencers is that they don’t have dozens of brands waiting and asking them to promote their business which allows these content creators to deliver authentic content for your brand to use in your further ad campaigns + 36% of brands still offer their influencers free product samples (or even just discounts on more expensive products) instead of paying cash to their influencers.
3- Give Your Influencers Something Extra
Like the sales representatives, the influencers need extra incentives to drive high conversions to your website or social media accounts. The best part of incentives is to offer them a decisive affiliate program. This way, they will aggressively motivate their followers to take action to earn a good commission. Incentives could take many forms, such as a free trip to Europe covered by the brand, or to attend fancy events in Dubai. Etc.
Conclusion
The best marketing practice calls for a mix of tools and strategies. And influencers marketing is one of the prominent approaches that is expected to reach $15 billion by 2022. In AFFSQUARE we believe that the industry will exceed this number in the upcoming year because of its humanized nature that makes it easier to connect/engage with the customers in all the categories.
Contact us if you need experts to help you scale up your e-commerce sales and revenue.