Questions about influencer marketing?
Definition of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on individuals who have a large online audience. These ‘influencers’ serve as role models for their followers, allowing them to exert influence. Companies and organizations can utilize this social influence by collaborating with the influencer.
The combination of all marketing activities that companies carry out together with an influencer is called influencer marketing. In practice, this often involves sponsored content on the influencer’s platform. This content can come in all shapes and sizes. From an unboxing on TikTok to an extensive review on a blog.
Why influencer marketing?
You now know what influencer marketing is. But perhaps it’s not entirely clear why companies and organizations would want to work with an influencer. There are several reasons:
Efficiency
In a good influencer marketing campaign, you work with an influencer who is in close contact with your target audience. There’s an influencer to be found for every niche, no matter how small or obscure the target group is. If you work with the right influencers, you can be sure that you’re reaching the right people.
Compare that to traditional forms of marketing. There, you invest a lot of money in a campaign with the widest possible reach, while knowing that only a fraction of the people you reach belong to your target audience. With influencer marketing, you spend your marketing budget much more efficiently.
Effectiveness
Influencer marketing is not only more efficient than traditional marketing. If done right, it’s also more effective. Nowadays, people are inundated with an endless stream of marketing and advertising messages. Your target audience too. They become overstimulated and therefore less sensitive to traditional marketing techniques.
Although everyone knows that influencers also earn their money through marketing, they are not viewed the same as traditional marketing channels by people. Instead, followers see influencers as their friends, their role models, or experts in a certain field. They feel like they know the influencer personally.
As a result, they will more readily accept the message from an influencer than from an old school marketer. Whether that message is a clear sales pitch or a clever product placement doesn’t matter. The message is received as advice from a good friend or expert. No marketing campaign can compete with that.
The costs
There’s an influencer for every budget. The price of a campaign depends on various factors. How many posts are involved? How much freedom does the influencer get? On which platform are you trying to reach people? etc. etc.
But the biggest factor in the price of an influencer marketing campaign is the success of the influencer. And then we look at the number of followers and the amount of interaction with those followers. The price difference between micro- and macro-influencers can already be enormous. Fortunately, there’s always an influencer to be found that fits within your budget. Some don’t even ask for money!
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What can influencers do for me?
So with influencer marketing, you reach your target audience efficiently and effectively at an affordable price. But is influencer marketing right for you? The truth is that influencer marketing can always be something for you. But there are three factors that influence how much influencers can mean for you.
Target audience
First: the target audience you want to reach. Can you really reach them well with influencers? If your target audience lives in a nursing home or is not digitally savvy, probably not. Are you trying to reach young people? Then influencers can mean much more for you.
Influencers
Second: the influencers you work with. Are there suitable influencers in your niche that you can and want to work with? Here, it’s important that the match between brand and influencers is logical (which is different from predictable) and genuine. Followers easily see through a forced collaboration. The better the match, the more an influencer can mean for you.
Collaboration
Third: the way you collaborate with influencers. You need to keep the reins, but you must also give the influencers enough freedom. They know best what their followers want. A tech blog could, for example, write a review of your product. And a fashion Instagram influencer can simply wear your shirt in a post. An influencer can mean more for you if you find the right balance between control and freedom.
If you manage to think through these three factors well, influencers will provide you with exposure within the target group, good reviews (which influence the target group), traffic to the desired pages, and backlinks. An increase in conversions is then only a matter of time.
For which companies is influencer marketing?
You can see influencer marketing as the word-of-mouth advertising of the 21st century. And which company couldn’t use some extra word-of-mouth advertising? Yet we see mainly B2C companies benefiting from the advantages of influencer marketing. This is due to the exposure, engagement, and direct traffic that influencers can generate.
But the backlinks that influencer marketing provides are also interesting for B2B companies. And don’t forget that there are experts who act as influencers in every niche. You can find them on Twitter, blogs, and of course LinkedIn.
In essence, influencer marketing is suitable for any company that wants to be found. Do you want that too? Then take a look at Hulc and create a campaign without obligation. Influencers can make proposals, after which you choose which influencers you want to collaborate with!
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a relatively new form of marketing where influencers are the main channel. This form of marketing is applicable in almost every industry but is primarily interesting for companies that want to be found. Mainly the efficiency and reach make influencer marketing attractive to marketers.
How do you view influencer marketing? Have you already taken the step to use this as a marketing tool? Let us know in the comments below!