Have you ever scrolled Instagram or TikTok for hours on end? I bet you have! And surely you’ve come across influencer posts promoting various products, more than once, I dare say!
Currently, 1 out of 4 marketers, is using Influencer Marketing in their campaigns. Social media influencers have a huge impact on the audience’s consumer behaviors, making it a great strategy for promoting your products or brand. Investing in an Influencer Marketing campaign may help your company grow faster.
The key impacts that Influencer Marketing can have on your company’s growth include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Established high engagement rates
- Increased sales
- Targeted reach to specific audiences
- Budget and cost savings
Through the years, Influencer Marketing and its trends have completely changed. The very first Influencer Marketing actions, which I deliberately refrain from calling “campaigns”, were mostly barter exchange activities made of product-focused pictures. At that point, Influencer Marketing was considered to be a part of the Public Relations sector and it was often mistaken to be one of the PR-related activities. However, over the years, Influencer Marketing has become a separate part of marketing.
The global Influencer Marketing market has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, as both small and large brands have decided to give it a try. Its peak occurred during the pandemic in 2020 when we all were forced to stay at home and focus on online platforms to stay informed and updated. Influencers gained their popularity as social media and online shopping became an integral part of our everyday lives. The scale of its growth from 2016 to the current year of 2023 (in billions of USD) can be seen below.
There are several popular platforms that influencers can use to promote your brand or product. Depending on the product, budget, target group, and concept, we may choose one or combine multiple of them to create a diverse and effective campaign. While Instagram remains the most respected one for Influencer Marketing campaigns in 2023, it is not the only platform that marketers use.
Contrary to common beliefs, even X (formerly known as Twitter) and Snapchat are popular platforms for Influencer Marketing activities. The fact that these platforms bring together different groups of users does not mean that influencer campaigns there would be not effective.
One of the platforms that is rapidly growing is TikTok. The content published on the app is evolving at a remarkable pace and its users are getting older. It is not only a Gen Z platform anymore. The older groups are now, in fact, a majority of TikTok’s users.
Increasing brand awareness
Influencer Marketing campaigns’ strategies may vary a lot, depending on the product, service, or the brand itself. The differences are visible to the naked eye in the publication format, content ideas, and campaign duration.
In 2024, content is essential and should never be forgotten. As Influencer Marketing may have a huge impact on brand awareness, the strategy must align with the product that we want to promote. Opportunities and limitations will always exist, but success can be easily achieved by partnering with well-selected influencers.
Nevertheless, we need to remember that influencers are, in the end, associated with our brand’s image, so choosing them carefully should be a priority. Also, considering their ideas and engaging them in discussions, when necessary, is important as failures tend to happen quite often.
One of the most memorable failures involved Macademian Girl, a Polish influencer, who shared a picture of herself lying and reading a book next to the Lenor fabric softener. The whole concept was ridiculous and the outcome of the collaboration was very negative.
Building a high engagement rate
The number of influencers’ followers or even the number of likes or comments that we see under their posts are not the things that should be the main focus. One of the most essential statistics is the Influencer Engagement Rate (ER). This metric indicates how many of the viewers actually engage with the published content, whether through likes, comments, profile visits, saving the post, or sharing it further, depending on the platform.
Choosing influencers that have higher ER is simply a better option, as it reflects how attractive and appealing their posts are to the audience. When the audience reacts to the post, it signifies their understanding of the content and the product being presented.
In general, micro-influencers tend to have a higher Engagement Rate compared to celebrities or larger profiles. This is an important aspect to consider when doing the research.
Increasing sales
One of the key advantages of Influencer Marketing is the ability that influencers have to drive sales. When hiring social media creators, it’s not just about increasing brand awareness, but also about leveraging their influence to effectively sell our products. The effectiveness of the sales depends on many factors, such as the price of the product, its usability, and accessibility, as well as the influencer promoting it.
The quality of the content plays a crucial role in driving sales. This is why it’s so important to hire influencers who will truly love the product and feel attached to it — the new generations will not accept any lies or dishonesty. There are many examples of publications that were copied and pasted by influencers without double-checking their accuracy. But the Internet doesn’t forget.
One of the influencers who has made this mistake is Karolina Szostak, a Polish journalist and social media influencer, who clearly forgot to check what she was putting out in her publication. Instead of writing it in her own words, she copied an agency’s suggestion together with the message an agency’s employee had written to her. The description begins with “Karola, please add the post on Instagram if you can”.
A similar situation has happened to a popular Polish actor and influencer — Borys Szyc. He was hired to promote Alpro, a popular brand that sells vegan milk. However, Borys mistakenly copied the entire set of instructions for his initial post and subsequent actions.
Internet users reacted very negatively to these blunders. The comments mainly concerned the lack of the authenticity of Polish influencers.
These mistakes show that meticulous influencer research, the right idea, and verifications are needed in any Influencer Marketing campaign so that a similar mistake does not occur.
Reaching specific audiences
Choosing a campaign with influencers will let you reach a specific target audience. Each influencer has their own group of followers, whom they engage with through their content. Influencer Marketing tools provide valuable insights into the followers of a particular Social Media influencer, including their demographics such as gender, location, age, and main interests. Some of the most popular examples of these tools are Modash, Social Blade, and influTool.
Saving your budget
Influencer Marketing can also be a cost-effective solution for your budget. Of course, collaboration with influencers is not as cheap as it used to be, but it is still more affordable compared to TV commercials or other marketing campaigns you might have considered.
Throughout the years, we could see how Influencer Marketing trends and Social Media platforms themselves have been changing. Who would have thought that Instagram influencers would predominantly use reel videos instead of traditional picture posts? Or that TikTok would become a great hub for creators and brands to collaborate?
As the audience’s preference shifts towards shorter videos rather than longer content or scattered articles, Influencer Marketing will continue to flourish. The short form of the videos is currently way more popular than longer YouTube videos or classic Instagram posts. Reels and TikTok videos took over social media, including Influencer Marketing campaigns, as illustrated in the chart below.
What’s important — the campaigns are no longer product-focused, but it is more about an idea and storytelling. Simple publications or collaborations with influencers associated with the theme or brand no longer attract people.
Hiring influencers to promote your brand may be a brilliant idea. Just remember to conduct thorough research, have control over your audience, and focus on the campaign’s core idea.
Follow my LinkedIn profile to find more similar articles and news regarding Influencer Marketing and Digital Marketing.
