We all know that we’re constantly being bombarded with thousands of ads and commercials from companies trying to sell us their products and services. To avoid this we do what we can. For example, some of us put stickers on the mailbox saying “No ads please,” we install adblockers on the computer, and change the channel or pick up our smartphones during commercial breaks while watching TV. Naturally, this has become an ever increasing problem for companies - how can they ever reach out to consumers?
Influencer marketing might seem like a brand new concept that recently came to everyone's attention, but that’s not entirely true. Marketing with influential people is actually one of the oldest ways of marketing, the only difference is that the concept has been moved from sports arenas, theaters, and the front row of fashion shows to social media. Companies are always looking for ways to be seen where people are actually looking and right now that’s social media.
For every day that passes, social media takes up more space in our personal life. Even though we might change the media itself, we’re still stuck in the same behavior. Most of us check social media as soon as we wake up, on the way to work, during lunch, after lunch, during commercial breaks while watching TV, and in bed before we go to sleep. On average, people in Sweden spend between 7 and 9 hours a week actively looking through different social media. My point is that if you want your company to be seen you need to be active where your target group is, i.e. on social media!
By working with influencer marketing, you ensure your brand and company are associated with influential people that can help you grow. People that follow the profiles you work with look up to the people in charge; followers get inspired by the way the influencers live their lives, what they eat, how they dress, and the activities they are engaging in. Your goal should be to establish a relationship with influential people that have already gained the trust of their followers.
When influential people post pictures or write posts about your company, you reach out to a huge number of people directly. If you do it right, these people are a part of your target group and since they look up to the influencer, your company gains their trust right away.
If you want to work with influencer marketing we recommend that you remain active. By working with several profiles that regularly post your material you make sure that consumers are constantly seeing you, which creates a notion that everyone is interested in you. Obviously, this results in a hype around your products which will lead to an even bigger interest in your company.
Influencers have gotten to where they are by building trust and initiating engagement among their followers. You want to take advantage of the already established trust to further establish yourself as someone trustworthy. If people associate your brand with an influencer they trust, you will automatically get a bit of that trust. What’s cool is that this type of trust is more genuine than the trust people get from commercials on TV or ads in magazines. In fact, influencer trust is worth gold.
Today, you can buy ads on most social media. Facebook ads are an important part of many companies marketing strategies and the Instagrams ad-platform is steadily growing. These paid ads look different than regular posts and for consumers, they are easy to spot and filter out. But if you instead use an influencer, the ads will look like real and genuine, and more importantly, they will blend into the users feed. When the posts blend in, people don’t necessarily see it as marketing which makes it easier for you to get through to them. That being said, you need to leave a lot of the creative work to the influencer. They know what their followers want and expect, which is crucial to a successful campaign.
Many influencers are very good at both copy and images. Remember that you hire an influencer to help you create unique content for your company, not the other way around. If you had to do the work yourself, you would have to hire a model, a photographer, a styling-team, a copywriter, and then you would have to put it all together. When you hire an influencer, they will get all the work done for you.
Without getting into too many details, we want to mention that influencer marketing can help boost your SEO ranking. If a popular blogger with a lot of traffic talks about your company and links to your website, Google will boost your ranking. It’s called a backlink, and it’s based on the fact that Google knows how much trustworthiness is worth and they award websites for good backlinks.
Daniel Wellington and Uwheels are two companies that focused all of their efforts on influencer marketing and in record time established themselves as some of the hottest companies out there. If you’re looking to boost your growth, you should definitely look into influencer marketing. The benefits are many, the effect is incredible, and the only question is, what are you waiting for?
If you have any questions or want help with influencer marketing, you can reach us at team@beatly.com. We have years of experience in the industry and can help you with pairing the perfect influencer to your brand as well as bringing creative ideas to the table.
Photo by wendel moretti from Pexels