Have you ever scrolled through your Instagram feed only to come across a post of an influencer showcasing products or services of a brand? You’ve almost certainly seen come across a sponsored post. If you went ahead and bought the same products, consider the brand’s campaign paid off. These days, in order to create a buzz, brands look-out for creative ways to sell their products. 

The world of influencer marketing has mushroomed so quickly that keeping up with its exponential growth has proved to be quite challenging. It is booming during a time where the traditional methods of marketing are no longer as effective as it once was. Before businesses venture into influencer marketing, it’s necessary to ask the important questions – namely the why’s, how’s, when’s of its workings.

WHAT?

With attention spans at an all time low and constant white noise from advertisers, the way people consume content is rapidly changing. Brands are constantly on the lookout for new avenues to reach their customers. One of the booming trends that businesses have quickly jumped onto is influencer marketing. As a result of the growth of the industry in the past 2 years in India, brands are trying to understand the secret behind the new buzzword in marketing.Influencer marketing makes use of key influencers on social media to drive traffic to their brand campaign, spreading their message to a much larger target audience. In other words, instead of directly marketing products to users, brands pay or hire real influencers on social media to do the work. And surprisingly, its working (and how)!  With social media booming like never before, it only makes sense to tap into a market that has a huge, often very rapt following. It’s proven to not only become effective but also convenient for brands, wherein they allow content creators to take their product and make it their own – thereby giving users fresh content, everytime. term. 

WHY?

It’s imperative that brands take the route most travelled because, at the end of the day, when their message reaches more people, they get more responses and engagement, leading to greater brand awareness and eventually, sales. Influencer marketing has made a huge impact with over 80 percent of marketers banking on it for effective marketing of their brands. There are studies that have shown the decline in the efficacy of digital ads and traditional marketing  campaigns, which only goes to prove the success of influencer marketing. 

If brands are too time-strapped or not so acquainted with executing a full-fledged influencer marketing campaign, the ideal way forward would be to connect with agencies who are experts in the field. Influencer marketing agencies assists brands throughout the campaign process, right from finding the right influencers from their exclusive talent pool, creating personalized content from scratch to analyzing the success of the campaign through data-driven reporting. What’s more, their end-to-end management approach, every step of the way, is authenticity-driven, which means that they promise only quality content that drives engagement. Influencer marketing agencies can help brands engage their target audience by connecting them with real influencers who resonate well with the brand’s voice. The advantage is clear. And if brands were to directly reach out to influencers, they miss out on a lot of media value additions that comes by connecting with influencer marketing agencies. 

By making micro and macro influencers become brand ambassadors and promoters, brands can create a ripple effect in the digital market. But, it isn’t as straight forward. 

WHO?

Brands have to be extremely cognizant in choosing the influencers to promote their brand. One of the biggest risk factors brands face is influencer fraud, everyone’s an influencer these days, unlike celebrities. They might have a following worth a good impression, but fake followers can make a lot of difference. The task of a marketer is to find the ‘real influencer’ who has a legitimate following that not only appreciates a creator’s work, but will also actively seek out the products being promoted. The magnitude of fake following is tremendously high because users can now buy followers, which ends up as bots. This is why agencies like Word exist – to ensure that brand’s get genuine influencers to promote their products, along with the added benefit of having someone to manage relationships, strategize on content and execute on the same. Our database of Influencers have made a name for themselves by producing original content that they know best resonates with their audience and brands. 

 HOW?

At Word, we like to keep influencer marketing simple, cost and time-effective. We simply invite brands to  connect with us, share their objectives and we take care of the rest. This includes, finding the right influencer for their product(s), providing performance reports, providing social media representation and what not. It’s always better to hire a specialist than breaking their heads over something that’s not their cup of tea.

According to Mediakix’s 2019 Influencer Marketing Industry Benchmarks Report, “The top three most effective content formats are Instagram Posts (78%), Instagram Stories (73%) in a close second, and YouTube videos (56%).” In a nutshell, influencer marketing improves  the engagement of brands and influencers, increases purchases, promises brand loyalty, and most importantly, drives revenue to the brand. Customers love customization and personalization, and over time, brands are coming to realize that only real people with real experiences can build brand love.   

Over the past few years, brands have invested more on influencer marketing than digital ads. After all, influencer marketing campaigns create better brand awareness, reach new audiences, drives tangible sales, and helps create word-of-mouth advocacy. With influencer marketing, brands hand over the creative control to hand-picked influencers and make them their brand custodians, allowing influencers to be content creators for them. In the long-term, collaborating with an influencer works out way better than creating (and executing) a complete marketing plan themselves. 

The key to influencer marketing is trust. People trust social media influencers. And brands make use of that opportunity through influencer marketing. By leaping towards authentic communications, brands have emerged to embrace the idea of connecting people through people. Influencer marketing has grown to become the need of the hour. As the digital market has come to fruition, it’s important that brands find success in influencer marketing because its proven outcome speaks for itself. Now is the time to leverage the services that influencer marketing guarantees so that brands find out the unique ways in which influencers can help them grow in the digital ecosystem.