Asking a trusted friend, neighbor or coworker for recommendations and referrals is often the number one source for any business to gain a new customer or client. While this still remains true, our ability to learn more and share more through social media is expanding that referral reach and giving potential customers more sources for learning where to go, what to buy or who to use for specific services. The digital world we now live in gives us access to more insights from others, which provides greater influence on our buying decisions.
This expansion of reach and ability to share experiences through social media is responsible for the emergence of influencers. Influencers are anyone from celebrities to everyday people who have developed a significant group of dedicated followers on social media seeking their insights, expertise and opinions on everything from food, fashion, entertainment and parenting to travel, design, health and fitness. These influencers are often a highly trusted source of recommendations for consumers. If you’re wondering how utilizing influencers works, let’s go over 5 reasons businesses should be using influencer marketing.
1. Precise audience targeting
Successful influencers are successful because they know how to give their audience what it wants. They know what questions and needs their followers have and make a point to provide the best answers. Since it’s pretty difficult for a business to tailor custom messages to various types of potential customer (different target markets), utilizing influencers to share information about your products or services and why their followers need what you’re offering can be more efficient, cost-effective and impactful. Most influencers focus on specific business sectors (i.e. food and entertainment of health and fitness) and, as a result, they are viewed as experts who know the latest and greatest on what to buy or try – and their followers listen.
2. Content that lasts
Influencers often make a living (or enjoy free products and services) by creating unique, engaging content. Collaborating with influencers helps keep fresh content in front of a company’s followers without spending hours shooting, editing and scheduling. It also showcases your company’s products and services to a larger audience, which helps generate more engagement and attracts new followers to your pages. Moreover, influencer and user-generated content can be shared across all platforms. For example, an influencer might create and share a great video about your restaurant on TikTok. That video can now be shared with followers on Instagram and Facebook to engage with others.
3. Increased brand awareness and recall
Having an influencer with an abundance of followers post about a business, expands exposure and increases awareness. By utilizing the reach of multiple influencers and having those influencers repeatedly endorse a product or service, followers will take notice. When content about a local coffee shop comes across a potential customer’s feed a few times, it gets through the clutter of information and becomes top-of-mind. Next time that person wants to meet a friend or business associate for a cup of java, guess where they go. Followers also consider recommendations from influencers to be trustworthy and authentic. Many influencers pride themselves on only promoting things they actually like or believe in, even if they are getting paid or getting free goods to do it.
4. Trackable results
It might seem like social media is filled with promo codes, but businesses will provide special discounts to influencers’ followers to help track impact. These codes not only give a discount to the customers who use them, but they also provide an easy way for businesses to track stats like conversion rates. Since each influencer gets a unique promo code, it helps businesses keep track of which types of influencers work the best and provides deeper insights into target audiences. Other stats to track are increases in likes and engagements on a specific post, as well as increases in new followers.
5. Higher search engine ranking
Of course, having a well-written website is still the most important SEO practice, but social media also plays an important role. Search engines favor business names that occur more frequently across the internet, so when influencers and followers are constantly mentioning a business’s name on multiple social media platforms, the algorithm keeps track of that and places businesses with the most action toward the top of the page. This is why it’s also important to use a variety of influencers in an outreach strategy. While mega-influencers have a wide reach, micro-influencers have high engagement. High engagement results in more mentions and activity and a boost in SEO.
Influencer marketing is the new word-of-mouth. While people still value the opinions of their close connections, they also value the opinions of the people they follow on social media. This is why it’s important for B2C businesses to harness the power word-of-mouth has over consumers and scale it through influencers. If you would like to learn more about how influencer marketing could help your business, contact us to schedule a complimentary meeting.