Influencer Marketing: What it is and why it matters

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy where a brand collaborates with social media influencers with the goal of reaching a larger audience for their products or services. Influencers have large social followings online with engaged niche audiences that seek their expertise. An influencer’s endorsement or product mention can drive exposure of the brand to its intended target market audience. An influencer’s audience trusts what they are being sold because of their established loyalty and emotional connection with the influencer. Sound familiar? It’s the new updated version of celebrity endorsement. 

What is a social media influencer?  

They are users on social media channels who have developed a large following based on their niche lifestyle or expertise. They engage consistently with their audiences by creating content posted on their preferred social media channel. Their curated content and viewership 'influence' their followers, who in return like, share, comment, and engage with their content or posts. 

There are three different types of influencers: 

Mega: Celebrities, athletes, politicians, musicians, etc., generally only large corporations would even touch a marketing campaign with a mega influencer. Think Matthew McConaughey & Lincoln Continental.

Macro: Those who range from 40,000 to 1 million followers and are more accessible than your mega influencer. They tend to have a high profile and are generally marketing savvy with lots of reach. They understand the biz and have a clear understanding of the process—a professional influencer for short. 

Micro: These are your everyday users with a following anywhere between 1,000 and 40,000 followers. They are keen on the followers and the reputation they have built with them. They will tend to be picky with the brands they work with; some might even be happy to get a discount. It varies from one spectrum to the other in this category; however, they are the most common. Aligning with a particular niche is the target when looking for an influencer to represent your brand.  

Why does influencer marketing matter? 

To quote Gretta van Riel in Later.com’s Influencer Marketing video, "Influencers are becoming increasingly important as consumers trust bands less, tune out and block out direct advertising more and have shorter and shorter attention spans." Meanwhile, the average attention span has gone down from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2017, indicating that "consumers’ attention spans are now shorter than that of a goldfish." Some statistics suggest that over 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people (they don't even know) over brands. A proven way to build brand equity with consumers is through influencer marketing. Consumer trust is vital for any brand or business and may take years to grow and develop. The power of influencers is their followers’ trust, an almost magic bullet train to get your brand from invisible to vetted. 

What are the benefits of influencer marketing? 

Emotional marketing is the key component to why influencers have so much pull on their audiences. They humanize the brand and identify with their target audience. Brands need to care about their audiences and likewise be cared about.

There are four 'basic' emotions: happy, sad, afraid, and angry. Courtney Seiter's collective research indicates that the science behind emotional marketing can be found within these four emotional states, how our brain interprets them and why they motivate us to take action. States of Happy make us want to share the most. It's hardwired since birth, for one of our first reactions as a baby is to smile. Joy, then, can drive our actions and make us want to share with others. Sadness can produce cortisol or, more commonly, 'the stress hormone' and oxytocin, directly linked to our empathy. These states of being can have us act out of sympathy or charity. No wonder we are drawn to donate or act on an advertising campaign containing 'sad' imagery.

Fear can be found in a tiny part of the brain called the amygdala, one of our brain's most critical responses from our human history as hunters and gatherers hiding from wild animals. 

Like its counterpart happiness, we are inclined to share in our experience of how we felt when we were scared—leading us to act on our responses to fear. Bonding with others in the shared experience. Anger: the part of the brain that signals anger also is responsible for hunger, thirst, and our pain responses. Aggression is the most common acknowledgment of anger; however, online, there tends to be a negative emotional response or stubborn behaviors.

"In an analysis of the IPA dataBANK, which contains 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns, campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content (and did a little better than those that mixed emotional and rational content)" The Science and Emotion in Marketing.

Creating a positive association with your audience through your marketing strategy is key here. 

Does influencer marketing really work? 

The stats are in. On average, businesses that invest in influencer marketing are making $5.20 for every $1 spent. Some companies fail to generate any revenue, but often they have invested in the wrong influencer for their brand, who does not speak to or reach the brand's niche audience. Suppose you choose to invest in influencer marketing. In that case, your marketing budget needs to be examined to reflect your brand's ideal outcome. Some first steps to consider would be to research, set a budget, determine goals, find your influencers, and track analytics. 

The main takeaway? Influencers effectively humanize your brand through a pre-earned trust from their followers, creating an authentic connection with your brand and their audience. If you would like to know more about putting together a marketing strategy to grow your business, let's chat! Healthy Dash of Social can help. From influencer marketing to content creation to social media management and so much more, we can take care of all your marketing needs.  Click here to view our services and schedule your free 30-minute call.