WHY BUSINESSES SHOULD UTILIZE INFLUENCERS
Influencers or digital content creators, as I like to refer to myself, are sweeping the nation. Brands are now allocating marketing budgets specifically geared toward influencers advertising for them, whether that be for a specific product, experience, hotel stay, event, you name it.
WHY you ask?
Influencers have a loyal following and fan base that TRUSTS them. For example, when I see a commercial on TV I rarely pay attention. I don’t go much further with the brand BUT if one of my favorite influencers recommends a product or goes to a fancy hotel or restaurant I’ll be WAY more likely to purchase the product or actually GO TO the place they recommended. 84% of consumers make a purchase after reading about a product or service on a blog/social platform. That is about 9 out of 10 people!! Additionally, they have a fresh perspective so they can put a new flair on your marketing strategy and uncover a fresh angle, which is priceless.
Influencers are excellent at communicating
Influencers live and breath in the digital world. As they’ve built their empire in the social space, they’ve developed a knack for digital communication. Therefore, making them excellent at communicating a brand's vision and message in a way that their followers will engage and connect. This is extremely important because influencers are able to communicate your brand in ways you’ve probably never even thought of. Additionally, influencers build relationships between their followers and your brand or business. Without that mutual connection, or middle man, it's a lot harder to start building that relationship with customers.
Influencers are more AFFORDABLE and create AWESOME content!
How much does it take you to set up a shoot for products? How much is it to hire a model, photographer, and rent a space for a couple of hours?? A WHOLE HECK of a lot more than it takes to pay an influencer. Typically, they’ll create better content too because they are the creative. Influencers are the queens of content creation. They’re constantly pumping out quality and engaging content. This is great for brands because they’re more affordable and user generated content typically performs better for brands. When brands publish UGC on their pages, they get better responses. As a brand, remember that you don’t own the content when you work with influencers and cannot use, share, edit, or publish without permission and approval.
For example, I worked with a perfume company and created this post.
The post generated 2625 impressions, 847 likes, 122 saves, and 51 comments on Instagram.
I was recently invited to stay at a hotel in Tulsa and posted on my Instagram, Facebook, and wrote an entire blog post about my experience. See the blog post here.
The post below wasn’t promoting any item and had $12 put behind it for marketing a specific target audience.
The post generated 49,449 impressions, 1,562 likes, 67 saves, and 53 comments on Instagram. Many brands are now requesting access to influencer’s Facebook ad accounts to run ads for the influencer. The ads are all under the influencer’s accounts but the brands are the ones paying to promote it.
Utilize the BILLIONS on social
Think about this tidbit, Instagram has 1 billion users. Let’s not forget about Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn. There are 291 million users on Pinterest, 2.45 billion on Facebook, 330 million on Twitter, 500 million on TikTok, and 660 million on LinkedIn.
That’s 5,231,000,000+ ways to reach people.
That’s one heck of a number isn’t it? This doesn’t even account for google ads, etc.
They Improve your SEO
This is extremely important! Just as influencers drive traffic to your website, store, and social media channels, they also help to improve your SEO and backlinks. Blog links pointing to your website are extremely beneficial for your ranking and this is why you always want to find influencers who have websites as well as social media platforms.
REAL people and GENUINE thoughts
Have you ever been watching an ad on TV and felt like you could never relate to that model or actress they hired to promote the product? Well, that’s something that a lot of people feel and why influencers are great to use. They are REAL people with REAL opinions whether they’re being paid or not. For me, I pride myself on honesty and integrity which is why I started my blog and why I ALWAYS share my honest opinions online. I do it in the most tactful way and of course, contact the brand first if I’m working with them and don’t think their product works for me. This is why it’s very important to make sure you’re working with the right influencer who views their profile as a business and truly cares about the community they’ve built. They’re also authentic when it comes to working with specific brands and are known to decline opportunities that are not the right fit. This means you'll be working with influencers that really support your vision, if you do your research and vetting correctly. More on that below.
How do you find the influencers that will work best with you?
Finding the influencer’s who are going to work best for your brand can be a little tricky. You want influencer’s who are going to best portray your brand. Here are a couple of tips to help you out:
Look at your brand’s TAGGED photos.
Find the influencer’s who already love your brand and are creating quality content for free! Reach out to those individuals because they already love your brand and will work hard to produce amazing quality content when their working on a paid campaign with one of their favorite brands.
Look at the brand’s HASHTAGS.
Again, this is where you can find individuals who already love your brand and want to be noticed.
Look up popular tagged LOCATIONS.
This is a great way to find new talent. I’ve been reached out to multiple times by brands because they found a photo of me on a specific tagged location such as, Disney World or Houston, Texas. Additionally, if you’re looking for influencers in a specific city you can look up that specific location OR the hashtags for that city like, #HoustonBlogger.
Work with influencer’s that are ENGAGED.
The number of engaged followers is much more important than the total number of followers because it shows how many individuals are ACTUALLY interacting with the influencer when they talk about the brand. This is a better indicator of reach and impressions.
Understanding the VALUE of an influencer
Influencers generate sales, hands down. This is why so many businesses and brands are jumping on the opportunity to work with influencers. Once the influencer talks about your product, service, etc. sale generations begin. Depending on the influencer’s platform, length of the campaign, sales will be generated immediately, in bursts or over a number of weeks. This is where brands fail to be patient and invest more into their influencer campaigns. When compared to traditional advertising and PR, collaborating with influencers generates outstanding value for money when your aim is to connect with a target market. Influencers have a pretty good idea of who their audience is and who your collaboration will reach. Whether that be fashion focused women, creative businesswomen, travel gurus, the influencer will have a great insight into their followers and how to best engage with them during the campaign.
Working with an influencer more than once increases your ROI
The amount of emails that I get from brands wanting to do a one off partnership is endless. Seriously, I get at least 5 every single day. But hey, maybe they just don’t understand. This is why I’m here to educate and share my knowledge. The more often your brand appears on an influencer’s feed the better. It’s all about focusing on brand awareness. This helps their audience 1. see it more often and 2. build trust for the product. If a product is on an influencer’s feed one time and they’ve never talked about it before, then I’m probably going to be a little skeptical. This is why it’s great for brands to reach out to influencer’s who’ve made a point to tag them in their Instagram stories or posts. While influencers generate leads and sales as well, the brand awareness they build is unrivaled in traditional PR strategies such as press releases.
Brand awareness and exposure are extremely important in today’s saturated retail space, so the more brand awareness you can acquire the better. Still not convinced brand awareness is an important part?? Driving traffic to your website, online store and social media channels is VERY important because it demonstrates consumers moving through the sales funnel and engaging with your brand. Think about it this way, you brand and the influencers you work with are a team. Influencer collaborations drive more traffic to your website so that you can convert more leads.
Too good to be true? Are you wanting some data to back up these claims?
I decided to ask my followers on my blog IG account and my personal IG account a couple of questions to see how they feel about influencers. I think you’re going to be pretty surprised by the responses.
Questions & Responses
Why do you think brands and business should be utilizing influencers?
ANSWER: “It’s a more effective advertising method that could reach a whole new group of people.”
ANSWER: “Brand awareness and for well known brands: spikes in sales with discounts.”
ANSWER: ““Insta scam culture”, users can trust an influencer more than a new random brand page.”
ANSWER: “Influencers are viewed as a trusted source, like a friend sharing/recommending a product.”
ANSWER: “Millennials/Gen Z respond more to user generated content than traditional marketing.”
ANSWER: “It shows personal trust in a product if an actual person is talking about it rather than a generated ad.”
ANSWER: “Cross marketing and promoting.”
ANSWER: “People using the items/products in real life makes it more personable so sales increase.”
ANSWER: “Cheaper than ad agencies.”
Are you more likely to buy a product from seeing it on a commercial or ad OR from your favorite Influencer recommending it to you?
6 people voted for “commercial or ad” AND 102 people voted for “influencer”
Are you more likely to click on an ad from a brand promoting their new product OR click on a post from an influencer talking about the same product?
20 people voted for “the brand” AND 84 people voted for “influencer”
Who do you TRUST more?
18 people voted for “the brand” AND 92 people voted for “influencer”
If an influencer goes on a trip and talks about where they stayed, where they went, what they did, etc. are you more likely to research that place yourself and potentially go there because your favorite influencer went there?
28 people voted “nah” AND 87 people voted “yes”
Do you feel like a part of some of your favorite influencers family? Do you feel like you’re friends with them on social media?
29 people voted “nah” AND 80 people voted “omg yes”
Do you believe all influencers you follow are honest about how they feel about the brands they promote?
74 people voted “hah no” AND 46 people voted “yes!”
Do you still trust an influencer when they have #ad or #sponsored on their post and they’re talking about a product?
27 people voted “nope” AND 72 voted for “yes”
Do you have questions on what it’s like to work with an influencer? Let me know in the comments.
Are you an influencer wanting to work with more brands? Be sure to check out my social media guides here.
Feel free to share this article to help businesses understand the value influencers bring to brand awareness and increasing revenue.
Love always,
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