Influencer Marketing: How Brands Can Grow With It?
5 min read 19 Jul 2022, 06:32 PM ISTInfluencer marketing is the utilization of this trust to shape consumers' perceptions of a brand and its offerings. The process is tedious, time-consuming, requires multiple task synchronization and varies for different businesses
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Marketing and Innovation have been the two pillars of success for any organisation. While innovation is an organisation centric affair, marketing is a customer centric affair. Marketing of the organisation and its products and services are the key deciding factors of an organisation’s success. The failure of a marketing initiative essentially means the failure of an entire organisation. That is how crucial marketing has been to any organisation. Many popular leaders and business personalities have provided their opinions on ways to improve the entire process of marketing. However, the crux of the entire matter is that marketing is the most important activity of any organisation.
There are people who would disagree by saying that product innovation and quality is more important. There are people who would justify it by saying a good product doesn’t need marketing, it would sell anyway. But the fact of the matter is that anything and everything needs marketing. Even the most brilliant and experienced candidate going for an interview requires a good resume to market himself/herself. The marketing effort gains more importance in this era of technological innovation and information overload where one has to stand out from the clutter of information. Not just to showcase the positives and values of something or someone, marketing is also needed to just be heard, seen, and felt among the entire clutter.
Seth Godin once said, "People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic". Influencer marketing operates on a similar principle. People are social consumers with the constant need to engage with like-minded individuals. This prompts them to form communities around confident opinion leaders. Opinion leaders enjoy a mutual relationship of trust with their audience owing to their expertise on specific subjects. Influencer marketing is the utilization of this trust to shape consumers' perceptions of a brand and its offerings. The process is tedious, time-consuming, requires multiple task synchronization and varies for different businesses. However, with the help of a leading influencer marketing platform, marketers can capitalize on the emerging trends, verified influencers, fluctuating social media algorithms, shifting consumer behaviour, impactful content creation and more.
Seth Godin has more to say, "The secret to marketing success is no secret at all, Word of mouth is all that matters". Enhancing brand image is one of the many applications of influencer marketing which is made possible by the power of word of mouth. As we progress through this article, we will attain more clarity on the concept of influencer marketing.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing provides, marketers the ability to reach new audiences,embed with targeted consumers via an opinion leader’s authenticity in a specific niche-community. It helps them to capitalize on the trust, reach & content of the industry-based authority. Hence, we can say that, Influencer marketingis a correlation between a brand, an influencer,& their mutual content consumers, where the influencer promotes the brand's products or services through different media outlets such as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitch, and SnapChat. In return, influencers get paid –with free products or money.
Why do you need to engage in Influencer Marketing?
Social Media or any other popular media of communication, these days, are big evolving platforms. These media are also quite dynamic in their use and applications. A particular strategy that works on a particular media today might not work tomorrow. However, influencer marketing using the popular Social Influencers and celebrities would not go in vain in any changing scenario.
Influencers are trusted figures within a niche-community and retain a loyal following. They have the power to influence the perception of others or gets them to change the purchase decisions in a brand’s favour. Because, they typically possess knowledge or experience about what they are advertising – as they are most close to the actual pain points of consumers via interactions.
The influencers operating on the social media platform have another added advantage. The customers can be accessed regularly through these social influencers one to one. Added to this, the messages communicated by the social influencers are far more credible and trusted by the customers.
They help convince their following to buy from you. Thus, brands must integrate influencer marketing as part of a cohesive marketing plan to get incredible results.
Key elements of influencer marketing:
- It’s affordable - It’s prodigious, economic and modern way to reach niche audiences. According to Twitter, more than 50 percent of consumers rely on influencers to make purchasing decisions, largely because they’re seeking testimonials from real humans. They need an authenticity that conventional advertising just doesn’t deliver, while being expensive too.
- Help brands reach the younger generation and ad blockers - Younger audiences don’t appreciate or trust traditional advertising from celebrities.Moreover, 763 million devices (Business insider) now use ad-blockers, making it impossible to even reach theoperators through ads.
- It’s actionable – 80 out of 100 (New Epsilon Research) consumers say they’re more probable to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. When their favourite influencers convince them how much they need that product, they’re likely to take abrupt action. For example, Sahil Khan, a popular Indian fitness influencer with extensive knowledge in weight training and proper nutrition may be asked to do advertising for sportswear or a supplement company.
- While these results can only be achieved, if you identify and collaborate the right-relevant influencer recognized, by the top influencer marketing agency. Influencers must have a combination of four key factors: reach, relevance, contextual credibility and salesmanship. The higher these four influences, the higher the power potential of an individual.
How can you engage in Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a tricky task. However, engaging a professional Influencer Marketing Agency such as Grynow can help you manage the tricky task easily while reaping effective results. Grynow is a popular influencer marketing agency. It provides the best platform where your organisation and your efficient marketers can make the best use of Grynow’s growing team of influencers, bloggers, content creators, and professional artists to market your product, service, idea, and your brand as a whole. Grynow has successfully managed a client base of more than 200 organisations from various segments and business verticals including companies like Amazon, PayTm, and more. Connect with Grynow to leverage their expertise and get the best marketing results.
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