You see, influencer marketing continues to be one of the important marketing strategies to stick to in 2018. Today, about 67% of marketers promote content with the help of influencers. Why? Have you ever wondered?

The percentage of people who rely on influencer recommendation is 49%, that’s nearly half of all potential customers – which is why influencer marketing becomes important more than ever.

Keeping audiences entertained as well as informed at the same time is the task that every marketer contests to master. With influencer marketing, achieving this target becomes quite easy.

Ensuring to double up results with substantial investment in 2018, influencer marketing is all set to rule the digital world with its new opportunities.

Having a better understanding of social media and influencer marketing can help keep the focus on important aspects to cover this year.

Know Why Influencer Marketing Is Important:

What Is Influencer Marketing?

As per Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising report, “Recommendations from friends or family” is always the number one trusted source of information, closely followed by company websites, consumer reviews, and editorial articles when it comes to making a purchase.

Whenever a person makes a decision to spend money on something, they tend to seek some kind of assurance regarding the quality and experience. This is when they turn to someone they can trust – friends and family.

Another way to influence the decisions of potential customers is by presenting the product or service through someone they can rely on. Industry influencers play a vital role in influencing the decisions made by the consumers. Recommendations by industry experts help attract customers and retain them.

In simple words, Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key industry leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Under this marketing, you hire and pay influencers to promote a certain message to build your brand’s credibility.

Influencer marketing is a great way to build relationships with people who are influential in your niche. Always remember, your potential customers online belong to the same niche. Then why not leverage this relationship and have influencers promote your product or service to your followers?

Do not confuse influencer marketing with celebrity endorsement. In celebrity endorsement, you can expect to persuade celebrity fans to purchase your product. There may or may not be any particular connection between the fans and the product. On the other hand, Influencer marketing is recommendations made by influential industry experts through the word of mouth. People who are experts in particular niches may or may not be the famous personalities to all. They are simply the people who have gained trust and a huge following on the basis of their work and success in a particular domain. A celebrity may be an influencer, but an influencer may not be a celebrity.

True influence drives action, not just awareness. – Jay Baer

They can help you with marketing tasks for your business such as:

• Writing an article/blog post
• Sharing your brand/product/service information on their social media
• Write a guest post on influencer’s website

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

A majority of marketers believe that influencers are essential to their strategies. Any industry influencer has a larger audience than you. Their followers value everything that their influencer says or endorses. Hence, in order to reach out to the larger set of people, join hands with your industry experts. By doing this you will be able to build up much higher engagement with wider potential reach.

Understanding Why Influencer Marketing Is An Essential Component Of Your Strategy

Influencer marketing is on the rise more than ever.

It is quite crucial for you as a business to realize the power of influencer marketing and build relationships with social media influencers.

Usually, influencer marketing is considered to be inseparable with two different types of marketing namely, content marketing and social media marketing. Planning influencer campaigns for social media is one way to attract more and more traffic to your website. When influencers spread the word on their social channels, their dedicated traffic gets diverted towards your website. Another way to leverage influencer power is by carrying out content campaigns in which you provide your original content to the influencers to promote or they create the content themselves promoting your brand.

It goes without saying, the more your brand is mentioned on social media and influencer website, the more popular and relevant you’ll become to Google.

In order to ensure you get authentic brand credibility, traffic, sales boost and long-term source of influence, you need to include powerful influencers in your core digital marketing strategy. Moreover, it is shareable, trackable and targetable.

Selection of the right influencer is the trick that not every brand excels. With in-depth research of your niche and industry leaders, you will have a curated list of the influencers that match your marketing goals. Learning about the experts isn’t just enough, you need to check all other details about the influencers you ought to connect to like how they are connected to their audience, on what influencer marketing platforms, when do they interact most and more. Resort to the ones that suit your brand the best.

Beware of the fact that influencers may also generate a biased opinion on their social media space. You need to prevent this from happening in your case as this may tarnish the image of the expert as an impartial judge of the product or the service. Hence, ensuring optimum level of integrity of the influencer and the strategy is a must.

6 Steps For A Successful Influencer Marketing

1. Outline your influencer marketing campaign goals
2. Research & learn all about your audience
3. Identify potential influencers of your niche
4. Initiate a relationship with influencers and engage them
5. Work with influencers to publish and amplify
6. Track your results

In The End 

It’s not too late if you haven’t invested efforts in influencer marketing for your business yet. Get on board today and influence potential consumers how useful and valuable your brand is.

Including industry’s top influencers in your marketing strategy engages consumers and motivates their purchase decisions.

With the increasingly predominant use of social media in so many consumer lives, you can definitely achieve your business goals with well-planned influencer marketing strategy all in place.

Always remember, the more popularity you get on social media as a brand, the more relevant you will become to Google. And how is this going to happen? The answer to this question is simple – by making people talk about your brand. Influencer marketing not only improves brand awareness but also helps you gain popularity on search engines.

Is there anything we missed out? Feel free to share your suggestions in the comment section below.

Want to read the latest posts on social media? Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn!