Social media has become a staple in over half the global population’s daily lives. With platforms, niche communities and influencers gaining popularity across the internet, influencer marketing has become one of the most impactful marketing methods available to brands. Working with an influencer marketing agency can introduce you to the most popular and up-and-coming influencers within your target audiences’ passion points.
But why is influencer marketing such an exciting opportunity for brands?
Influencer marketing in 2022 offers brands the opportunity to be creative with their campaigns. While brands have ultimate sign-off on all creative concepts and ideas, influencers are still able to inject their own creativity into sponsored content. This means that while all content will follow brand and campaign guidelines, it will be diverse and hyper-relevant to an influencer’s audience, likely including current cultural references.
Influencer marketing is exciting because it helps humanise brands. Brands can join in on current social media trends, meaning marketers can be creative and quick to think of new ways they can remain culturally relevant.
Another reason influencer marketing is exciting is that it reaps so many rewards for brands.
With influencer marketing, brands can reach a larger audience. One of the biggest benefits of influencer marketing is that you can reach a much larger audience than you would through traditional marketing methods. Influencers have worked hard to build a loyal audience base of thousands (sometimes millions) of followers.
Influencer marketing can increase brand awareness and sales. Working with influencers can help increase brand awareness (through the influencer’s large audience) and drive sales as a result of a trusting relationship between influencer and audience. In addition, more social media platforms are offering social commerce capabilities, meaning audiences can shop directly from an influencer within an app.
Influencer marketing is a relatively cost-effective way to market your business or product. While there is an initial fee, influencer audiences are very responsive to sponsored content and the content remains live on an influencer’s profile long after the campaign or activity has ended.
Brands can use influencers to build trust and credibility. When done correctly and using relevant influencers, influencer marketing can help build trust and credibility for your brand. Influencers are viewed as experts within their chosen niches, meaning their opinions and recommendations are taken to heart by their audiences. Branded content is often distrusted by social media users, but influencer marketing helps brands bypass this wariness.
Influencer marketing allows brands to connect with their target audience directly and in a more authentic way. Influencers have gathered a group of people with similar interests into their own audiences. By working with influencers, brands can target audience members with passion points relevant to, but outside of their own industry. For example, beauty brands can work with lifestyle influencers to target a larger audience.
Influencers have made a living out of creating engaging content for their followers. Working with them helps to redefine your content strategy and gives it a new perspective. It acts as a breath of fresh air amidst the self-promotional content that you regularly post.
In addition, content that features influencers is often seen as more authentic—something that is vital in an overly-competitive social media landscape. If it resonates with your audience, they are likely to share it with their networks. This increases the visibility of your content and connects you to an audience that may have otherwise been inaccessible.
