According to Nielsen’s study, 83% of consumers trust their friends and families’ recommendations more than brands.
Today, overly promotional marketing tactics don’t work anymore. Your customers expect to receive honest, raw, and relevant user experiences.
This is exactly where influencer marketing can help.
For the most part, an influencer is like a mutual friend that connects brands and customers and helps them get to know each other.
Here is how influencer marketing may benefit your business.
Helping You Build a Diverse Backlink Portfolio
Influencer marketing can serve as a powerful link earning tactic. Namely, the idea is to connect with an authoritative person in your niche and encourage them to link back to your content.
However, remember that influencers have poured their hearts and souls into delivering value to their users and building their online authority. Therefore, they will choose to promote only those brands that are relevant to them and that may be valuable to their audiences.
Simply put, to earn a backlink from their website or social networks, you need to offer something valuable and authentic.
For example, you could conduct a comprehensive research study, write an innovative ebook, or create an ultimate guide and ask an influencer to link back to it as a valuable source of information.
You could also interview a reputable industry player or cite their article/book/quote in your article and ask them whether they’re interested in sharing it.
Finally, why not send them your products and ask them to share their thoughts on it in their blog post, video content, or on social media?
As backlinks are still one of Google’s most significant ranking factors, gaining a link from a highly authoritative site in your niche will help you increase your rankings in the SERPs, as well as your domain authority.
Increasing Reach and Brand Awareness
Did you know that the 50 top Instagram influencer accounts boast more than 2.5 billion followers? As of August 2019, Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed individual on Instagram with 179 million followers, followed by Ariana Grande (161 million followers), Selena Gomez (154 million followers), Dwayne Johnson (153 million followers), and Kim Kardashian (145 million followers).
What can we conclude from these stats? Influencers already have an established audience on these channels. Therefore, by being mentioned by a relevant influencer on their website or their social networks, you’re actually putting yourself in front of their audiences.
For starters, increased brand reach results in greater brand awareness. By being endorsed by big players in your niche, you will grab their audiences’ attention and get them to remember your brand. Above all, this is an amazing opportunity for you to increase your organic website traffic, generate more leads and, ultimately, increase your conversion rates.
Sure, to target the right audiences using influencer marketing, you first need to connect with the right influencer. Search for the people that specialize in the same or related industry. For example, if you are a healthcare brand, connecting with a makeup artist doesn’t make sense, given that you don’t target the same audience segments.
This is where you need to improve your influencer prospecting tactics:
- Conduct a simple Google search by using advanced search operators like inurl, intitle, intext, site:, etc. to narrow your search.
- Search for the trending topics in your niche. This is where tools like BuzzSumo can help, as it not only displays a list of the most popular content around a certain keyword, but it also tells you who shared it.
- Move your research to social networks. Leverage hashtag research tools like Hashtagify to identify the most relevant hashtags and see who already used them. You should also use media monitoring tools that will help you set relevant keywords to track and notify you when someone mentions them on these channels.
Boosting Brand Reputation
When building your online presence, you need to keep in mind that you’re not the only one out there. There is a bunch of brands similar to you. And, to stay competitive, you will need to get yourself noticed by the right audiences and build trust with them.
This is exactly where influencer marketing shines.
First, influencer marketing is highly customizable. Based on your budget, marketing goals, and audiences, every aspect of your influencer marketing campaign, from creating the right type of content to tracking relevant KPIs, can be tailored to your brand’s specific needs. This will certainly lead to greater brand consistency and a more recognizable brand personality.
Second, no matter what industry they are in, influencers strive to increase their credibility. They care about the reliability and quality of the content and brands they promote. And, their audience is aware of that. This is why every mention on social network or backlink from their website will build trust with their audiences and create a perception of your brand as an industry leader. As a result, they will trust you more and be willing to buy from you.
Building Buzz around your Products and Improving Sales
Influencers are perceived as trendsetters. No matter if they’re in the tech, marketing, fashion, beauty, or fitness industry, their goal is to share the hottest news with their audiences and review the latest brands and products. Just like I mentioned above when I talked about link building, many brands send their hottest products for influencers before they become available to the general public.
What does this mean for you?
By providing influencers with exclusive access to your new products and asking them to review them, you will get your products noticed by wider audiences, create buzz around them before the launch and, ultimately increase sales.
Namely, never forget that online consumers idolize influencers’ opinions and rely on them when making buying decisions. Recent statistics back me up on that. Namely, 22% of consumers claim that their purchasing decisions are shaped by online influencers’ endorsements. Moreover, 82% of customers would follow a recommendation by a micro-influencer.
Generating Greater ROI
According to the 2019 State of Influencer Marketing, by the end of 2019, 65% of influencer marketing budgets will grow. The reason for that is simple – influencer marketing is far more affordable than some traditional means of advertising, such as TV commercials or printed materials.
Influencer marketing campaigns are highly flexible. They can be customized according to your business’ specific marketing goals and budgets. According to the above mentioned State of Influencer Marketing study, 15% of businesses invest $1,000 or less into influencer marketing. Moreover, 19% of marketers spend between $1,000 and $10,000 yearly on influencer marketing, while 18% of them are even eager to allocate up to $500,000 per year.
These figures suggest that influencer marketing can be applied by different organizations, from small businesses to global conglomerates.
Unsurprisingly, the return on investment is impressive. The same survey suggests that 90% of marketers claim that the ROI from influencer marketing is better than the one from other online channels. For every $1 spent on influencer marketing, your company may earn $5.20 in earned media value.
Conclusion
When implemented strategically, influencer marketing is one of the most powerful online marketing tactics. It will help you increase your brand reach and awareness, boost your backlink profile, and position yourself as an authority in your niche. Above all, you will save money and generate a greater ROI.