Influence Marketing

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire / hire / pay influencers to get out the word for you.

Influencer marketing often goes hand-in-hand with two other forms of marketing: social-media marketing and content marketing. Most influencer campaigns have some sort of social-media component, whereby influencers are expected to spread the word through their personal social channels. Many influencer campaigns also carry a content element in which either you create content for the influencers, or they create the content themselves. Though social-media and content marketing often fit inside influencer campaigns, they are not synonymous with influencer marketing.

What’s the Difference Between Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Influencer Marketing?

Although some people use word-of-mouth marketing and influencer marketing interchangeably, there’s a real difference between the two disciplines. Whereas influencer marketing is the concept of engaging key individuals to leverage their influence among friends and family, word-of-mouth marketing is the actual avenue by which this communication takes place. So, almost all influencer marketing includes word-of-mouth marketing activities by its nature, but not all word-of-mouth marketing is driven by influencer campaigns.

Is Advocate Marketing the Same as Influencer Marketing?

Advocate marketing isn’t influencer marketing, either. The best way to understand the difference is that advocate marketing focuses on encouraging or incentivizing already-loyal customers to share their love of your brand or product. The sharing might happen by way of product reviews and customer references.

With influencer marketing, you’re more focused on finding influencers—not necessarily current customers—to spread your message. Another distinguishing factor between influencer marketing and advocate marketing is that influencers are almost always paid in some way, either with money or free products. Advocate marketing focuses less on payment, more on driving brand loyalty, which in turn multiples the number of vocal advocates.

Why is influencer marketing important??

The influence economy has changed the way we buy things—forever. Roughly 67 percent of marketers report that they are engaged in some form of influencer marketing, a number that’s likely to grow as social media influencers gain more mainstream exposure. With demand on the rise, the influencer economy is shifting toward more streamlined solutions, embracing tools like influencer networks, match-making platforms services and even programmatic to help brands tap influencers more easily. Brands who aren’t part of it are losing control. Consumers now control the buyer’s journey, and they are getting harder to reach with digital advertising:

• 90% of Americans ignore digital ads – Harris Interactive, 2015
• 40% of ad revenue lost to ad block by sites that target millennials – President of IAB
• $7.2B estimated global losses to bot fraud in 2016 – White Ops/ANA, 2016
• 56% of paid-for digital ad impressions are never seen -Google, 2015
• 62% of consumers trust brands less -DoubleClick, 2015

Conventional digital marketing no longer works. A huge 66 percent of customers are overwhelmed by too many online marketing messages, and 20 percent of consumers would boycott a brand because of excessive ads. Marketers should care about influencer content because it provides the perfect cure for “ad fatigue” and, unlike traditional ad campaigns, delivers authenticity.

Smart brands are combating this by using influencer marketing to create an ongoing conversation with consumers, recognizing that they are influenced by different people, at different times, in different ways. Instead of diminishing returns from digital advertising, brand social and content marketing, the influencer marketing goes past reach and clicks to continuous engagement and conversations that drive commerce, giving you metrics that matter and align with your business goals, such as:

• Attracting new customers
• Increasing repeat purchases
• Driving customer loyalty
• Maximizing customer lifetime revenue

Consumers want authentic voices, not faceless sales executives who use the same old tricks. Marketers can’t ignore influencer marketing any longer: content creators have the power to drive business growth and deliver authenticity that engages with audiences. Imagine—thousands of voices having authentic conversations about your brand that hold sway in a way your voice alone never could. That’s the power of influencer marketing.

How does influencer marketing work?

If you’re a marketer and you’re feeling the pressure to deliver more revenue while having less control over messaging, you’re not alone. The landscape of marketing has changed significantly and consumers determine the messaging they want to see. Brands no longer have center stage, consumers do. If you want to be a part of consumer conversations, you have to play by their rules. Social media is where consumers are having conversations today, and one of the most impactful byproducts to emerge is that of influencer marketing. So how does influencer marketing work?

At a high level, it is a form of branded engagement where marketers connect with those who boast prominent social footprints. The goal is to plug into new communities and connect the brand/product to new audiences through the voice and trusted relationships of said influencer.

Authentic content creates trust. People gravitate toward digital influencers because they value the content that they create. Developing strategic relationships with these influencers allows brands to incorporate their messaging into that content, and share it with consumers through a trusted source. To make the most of this opportunity, brands must allow influencers the ability to stay true to themselves when working on sponsored content. Insincere or irrelevant content will rapidly erode an influencer’s power by reducing their followers’ trust in them.

If brands want to be relevant to consumers, they must approach media as a way to attract, engage, and convert prospects. That means meeting consumers with content they care about and trust. Working with influencers is an effective way to fuel a conversation about a brand using trustworthy content. Since influencer marketing results in engagement, it also results in earned media. Influencers are experts at generating discussions online, so the content they create on behalf of a brand is talked about, shared, and reposted. That is earned media. The value of earned media is that it is trusted more by consumers. When influencers write about their own experiences and share compelling content about a brand, it can have a dramatic effect on their audience.

Online activity is a core part of the decision making process. In today’s digital world, people can access information about products long before they reach a brand site. They turn to their peers online for recommendations about products, they look for information through search engines, and they read product reviews. Therefore, it makes sense for brands to partner with social media influencers. They have the ability to share product and brand information that shapes purchase decisions.

People are already talking online…be part of the conversation. Social media has changed the way brands interact with consumers by fostering an environment where consumers have immediate access to information. Through social media, people gather input about brands and products and then make purchase decisions based on what they discover. Successful brands leverage social media to stay connected with consumers by actively participating in this online dialogue. However, advertising is not the same as being part of the conversation. Instead, ads distract from it, pulling people’s focus away from what’s important to them. Working with influencers allows brands to add to the conversation rather than derailing.