Influencer Marketing 101

Marketing is constantly evolving. It can be hard to keep up with the most effective ways to market you and your products to current and potential customers. One new aspect of marketing is becoming more popular and it looks like it’s here to stay: Influencer Marketing.

What is Influencer marketing?

Ten years ago, everyone looked to their favorite celebrities for recommendations on the best products to use and tips for their everyday ailments. Those recommendations are slowly becoming less necessary, and instead, people are looking to their favorite bloggers across social media for these recommendations. Why? Because it’s more authentic. As much as we’d like to believe that celebrities are “just like us”, they simply aren’t. Their lives are so different, and often the products that they would promote were astronomically out of the price range of the average consumer. But if a blogger casually mentions their new favorite products in an Instagram post or blog post, it seems much more authentic and consumers can see these items fitting into their everyday lives.

Why Influencer marketing works

Consumers care about authenticity. They hate being advertised to in a blatant fashion. Word of mouth has always been the most effective form of marketing, and influencer marketing takes word of mouth advertising to the next level. Normally, word of mouth marketing would work when a satisfied customer recommended you and your products to a few of their friends. A small percentage of these people would come to you off of this recommendation. But what if one of your satisfied customers could tell 150,000 of their friends about you and your services? That’s the idea behind influencer marketing. It’s word of mouth marketing, but on a much larger scale.

Different Influencer marketing strategies

A common misconception when it comes to influencer marketing is that influencers will work for in-kind compensation, or rather, they’ll work for just free product or services. Most influencers use their blog and social channels as their way of making money, and therefore don’t accept “free” projects. Although it may not seem like something you want to invest your money in, remember that word of mouth marketing is by far the most effective kind of marketing. You can see by looking at their profile that most of their 50,000 followers will see your product. That’s a better guarantee than hoping that many people walk by your advertisement at the bus stop. It’s well worth the investment, and most companies see an almost immediate return on their investment.