According to Influencer Marketing Study done by Tomoson, each invested in influencer marketing campaign $1 generates $6.50 in revenue. Sounds like a great way to boost sales, right? By the way, influencer marketing has already left paid search and advertising behind.
In our guide, we’re explaining why the use of influencer marketing strategy is a good idea and reviewing a few success stories from popular brands. Let’s get started!
Why Influencer Marketing is That Important?
More and more brands start to actively cooperate with influencers and celebrities to promote their businesses. Why so, and what’s wrong with good old ways of advertising? Because customers pay more attention to recommendations given by people they trust more than to colorful ad banners.
Besides, if you already run a business, you should know that almost all your competitors have turned to influencers – once, twice, or on a constant basis. For instance, Julius platform surveyed some influencers and found out that 90% of them have been working with brands, and 70% are constantly doing it. So, in order to stay competitive in the ever-changing market and survive its tight competition, you should at least think of adopting an influencer marketing strategy.
Still not sure? Here are our top 5 reasons why influencer marketing may – and should – work for you:
1. Its effectiveness is real
Nothing drives as many sales as word-of-mouth does. According to Nielsen survey, 92% of customers said that they trust recommendations more than any other ads.
And that exactly shows us the importance of influencer marketing in today’s business. Especially compared to other channels that may be twice as expensive and not at all efficient. Influencer marketing works well for attracting customers and getting recommendations for your services. It allows brands to take advantage of this strategy and use it as social proof.
Influencer marketing effectiveness
2. It’s all about socializing
Even seen companies or brands that are enormously active on Twitter or Facebook? Sure you have. Nowadays it’s not enough to create a website and expect an avalanche of customers to appear right outside the door. Social networks are a pretty good option working as an additional marketing and lead generation channel. And the efficient presence on social networks increases brand awareness and drives customers’ loyalty.
By the way, customers also expect to reach brands on social media. And this makes influencers with thousands of subscribers even more valuable and business effective. By cooperating with the right people, you cover more target audience and drive sales.
Social media use in America
3. It’s something customers want
Through time, people switched from traditional media like TV or radio to digital sources. And so did marketing. Although the demand for TV ads is still high, digital marketing budgets continue to increase from year to year. Influencer marketing is a hugely popular and widely-used channel, especially if you’re aimed at young people.
American digital advertising spend
4. It makes your SEO master happy
Influencer marketing is mainly used for connecting brands and audience. But it’s not the one and only advantage of this approach. It also helps with SEO optimization, more specifically – rankings on search engines. Reasons: you get more inbound links and social reach, and Google loves it.
5. It’s ‘track your success’ time
Is there’s something you can’t track in marketings – you’re simply wasting time and money on it. Sure, it’s not that easy to track some aspects of influencer marketing, still, each and every campaign should be under control. Platforms understand that too, so tracking becomes easier and easier. For example, Instagram introduced tags for stories and shopping that can collect ROI and conversion rates quite accurately.
Examples of Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Finally, it’s time to find out how exactly brands benefit from influencer marketing. Of course, by studying real examples!
Glossier
This beauty startup based in Manhattan asked regular people instead of big influencers or celebrities to take part in its marketing campaign.
This way, customers can take photos of themselves tagging Glossier’s official page on Instagram. And the company’s team re-shares some of these photos and answers questions about the brand. Sure, this course worked out and showed others a good example of how to make consumers closer to the brand. Results? 90% of the company’s earnings come from their audience, not from paid ads or other sources.
Nikon
Nikon is another company that knows how important influencer marketing is firsthand. For instance, they cooperated with Warner Music to show what their cameras can do. And yes, it’s also a kind of influencer marketing.
Thus, Nikon sponsored Warner Music Group’s festival called SXSW, and their cameras were used for live performances recording. What’s more, visitors could use these very cameras and share photos on their Facebook pages.
To create a social buzz during the festival, Nikon launched a special hashtag. And it predictably became one of the most discussed topics on Twitter. This campaign collected more than 15k posts on social networks, and over 500k people viewed the live video.
Buick
Another interesting example and success story based on an influencer marketing campaign. Buick is a car brand that belongs to General Motors. The company decided to show their new model with the help of Pinterest influencers. So they involved influencers out of the automotive sphere and asked them to share their vision of upcoming car model design.
Those who took a part in this campaign created a board conveying their style and life passions. These examples encouraged others to gain a new vision of the brand. And the best board was used as an inspiration for an updated Encore model.
Why Pinterest? It’s hard to imagine a social network that fits better in terms of dealing with color, texture, and design. Results? More than 17m visitors across such platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
As you can see, influencer marketing is a winning strategy that brings profit to both companies and advertisers. However, good ads don’t always mean good products. So bear in mind that a top-rated marketing campaign should also be accompanied by high-quality products or services. And with these two things combined plus a CRM for ecommerce for maintaining relationships with customers, your business will surely turn out to be a great success.
About the author:
Sergey Lypchenko
Sergey Lypchenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It is a web and mobile app development company located in Eastern Europe. Their main goal is to develop first-rate and competitive software for our customers. His mission is to provide people with interesting material about innovations in the world of IT.