What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a way brands can promote their products through endorsements or recommendations from influencers and content creators on the internet. Social media and blogs are home to the majority of influencers, although other creators like podcast hosts can fit the bill, too. Many times, influencer marketing is a part of brand awareness campaigns, but it can also result in plenty of conversions and sales.
While influencer marketing began back in 2006, it has changed a lot over the past 15 years. Facebook and Twitter were just getting started, but Instagram wouldn’t join the social media landscape until 2010. When influencers began, they were primarily bloggers who shared stories about their lives and promoted products they used each day.
It’s kind of a paradox, but while influencer marketing hasn’t changed that much, it’s vastly different in several ways. Influencers are still sharing stories about their lives and promoting products they use each day. Now, though, there are many people who are career influencers, earning a living through brand sponsorships. When it began, any money a blogger made through a partnership was nice side cash, but certainly not enough to be considered full-time income.
Influencers today also have so many more options than the original influencers did. There are countless social media platforms to choose from, and there are so many kinds of content they can create. For those who like video platforms, YouTube or TikTok are excellent options. Those who want to share long-form written posts can benefit from traditional blogging or even Facebook. Influencers who want a little of everything can turn to Instagram. While Clubhouse is still a new platform, it probably won’t be long until influencers find a way to turn that into a spot for their promotions, too.
Influencer Marketing By The Numbers
Influencer marketing is an incredibly popular marketing tool right now, and for good reason:
Nine out of 10 brands are using some form of influencer marketing.
Unless you want your company to be left behind, it’s time to start exploring your options for influencer marketing. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s sure to be at least one influencer who fits your needs. And don’t be worried if you can only find smaller influencers in your niche, because:
Generate an equivalent earned media value of $18 per $1 spent.
If you’re looking to grow your brand awareness, increase sales, or really get your brand’s name out into the world in any way possible, you need to be taking advantage of influencer marketing. You don’t see a media value like this with other marketing tactics. The most important thing, though, is to approach influencer marketing strategically, so you do it correctly. Generating this kind of earned media equivalence only happens if you’re working with the right influencers in the right niche.
4 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Grow
Influencer marketing is popular now, but it’s not just a trend that’s going to fade away. In fact, it’s nowhere near done growing. It will continue to become more and more popular over the coming years, so now is the best time to learn about it and prepare to incorporate it into your own strategies.
1. More people are becoming influencers.
While it might feel like there are too many influencers out there, that’s actually not the case. As social media platforms continue to grow, there are more opportunities for new people to become influencers.
Some will certainly do this intentionally, while others will simply be sharing about their life and happen to strike up a brand deal with a company they love. Either way, there will be more people growing audiences in specific niches. This means you have a better chance of finding someone talking to your specific ideal audience that’s perfect for your ecommerce store.
2. Influencer marketing agencies are growing in popularity.
As with any business strategy or tactic, influencer marketing is becoming standardized. There are now agencies that represent influencers and agencies designed to help brands find the best influencers for their strategy. As business surrounding influencer marketing continues to grow, the marketing itself will also keep expanding.
For ecommerce brands that don’t want to dedicate the time or resources to keeping up with influencer marketing trends, these kinds of agencies are a great option. You can still take advantage of the incredible success that often comes with influencer marketing without learning everything yourself.
3. There are more content options.
Influencers began with creating written blog posts talking about their favorite products. Then, social media became more popular and the kinds of content influencers were creating changed. Nowadays, video is perhaps the most popular kind of content for influencers to make when it comes to promoting products. Instagram and Facebook Live, IGTV, YouTube, and TikTok have all shown the incredible power of video.
However, with the growing popularity of podcasts and the advent of audio-only apps like Clubhouse, it makes you wonder what the next big trend in influencer marketing will be. While we might not know that answer, we do know it will continue to evolve. Ecommerce brands can be prepared to take advantage of new, innovative platforms and content by joining these new platforms as they arise. If you are already building a following on a particular platform, influencers will be more likely to want to work with you.
4. Influencers are showing more of their reality.
In many ways, influencers are going back to their roots. In recent years, people have become far more interested in seeing posts that aren’t overly edited. They don’t want to listen to, learn from, or take advice from someone whose life seems entirely unattainable. Instead, they want to see reality. They want to see influencers make mistakes and have bad days and pick themselves back up again and keep going.
Because of this open transparency, even more people are trusting and following influencers, which means that there are more people to see and buy from sponsored content. Ecommerce brands can now reach even more people when they work with influencers, especially if they’re not caught up in showing only the perfect, highly-filtered sides of their life.
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