Before we go into more detail about this topic, I thought I’d share some influencer marketing statistics to show how powerful it really is for brands. It’s easy to preach about how good something is, but nothing speaks as clearly as statistics.
- Influencer marketing content delivers 11X higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing. (TapInfluence study with Nielsen Catalina Solutions, 2016)
- 49% of people say they rely on recommendations from influencers when making purchase decisions. (Twitter and Annalect, 2016)
- 40% of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram
After reading these facts, it is not hard to understand why many brands are increasing their influencer marketing budgets.
When reading these statistics, you can understand how effective influencer marketing is in theory, but there’s always the risk that it becomes too abstract. So let’s start by saying this: billions of people are using social media, and they are spending more time than ever on the platforms. The people they look up to and follow are not only friends and peers, but also influencers – industry-leaders and experts within a particular area. These individuals have built a large fan and audience base on social media, which means they can reach and communicate with their followers within a matter of seconds.
And because they are considered industry experts, people look up to them and turn to them for advice and recommendations. With that in mind, you can expect it to generate great marketing results when an influencer recommends your company. And that is what a lot of brands have learned how to leverage in today’s marketing landscape. And they continue to use it because it proves to be effective.
Influencer marketing has a huge potential
There’s no denying that influencer marketing has a huge potential. The sad part is however that few brands are taking full advantage of it properly.
Influencer marketing has the potential to completely and fundamentally change the way brands and consumers are communicating but that time is not here just yet.
The transition of marketing sources
(Image: Neil Patel)
The marketing landscape is evolving very quickly and influencer marketing is evidence of that.
The traditional display ads such as billboard marketing and TV ads are slowly losing impact and reach.
Firstly, traditional ads are barely targeted at all. They offer limited ability to target only the people who are relevant to your company, and thus you will have to pay to reach people who don’t matter to your brand.
If you are putting an ad on television, the reality is that only a small percentage of the total amount of people who will watch it are within your target audience and would actually buy what you have to offer.
This means that a big part of what you have to pay to display your ad on TV is invested money that does zero good for your business. To make a long story short, display ads offer poor targeting, and as a result, they don’t generate a very high ROI.
This is where the new ways of marketing are kicking in the door and revolutionizing the market of how companies spread awareness. Influencer marketing is one of them.
When you are watching ads on television, most often, you see commercials from large corporates with a huge marketing budget. But why is it that large corporates are the ones that most often use these traditional advertising channels?
Well, firstly, often, the people in charge of the marketing have been working there for a long time and doing the same thing over and over, generating average marketing results. The large corporates also tend to be quite traditional in the way they are being managed, and thus large changes take a long time to implement. People are always skeptical about the new things, and since traditional advertising has been used for a long time already, then that’s what they will continue to use. Even though the costs are rising and the results are decreasing. Large corporations just aren’t agile and cannot embrace changes fast because there’s so much bureaucracy.
First off, it’s important that you as a company is seen as modern and attractive. But the most important part is naturally that you are using marketing methods that generate great results and give you a high ROI.
And as a matter of fact, having in mind the results influencer marketing is able to generate, why would you ignore it?
The power of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is generating incredible results. The statistics are very evident. And if you compare it next to display advertising, you’d be shocked at how different the ROI is. The main reason is of course that influencer marketing is targeted, whereas the traditional are not… And a bunch of other reasons, of course.
I let the statistics speak for itself because they are real-life evidence measured on real businesses like yours.
Now, if you aren’t a large corporation that can spend millions of dollars on ads, you have to use your budget more wisely and work to get the best ROI possible from your marketing budget. The good news is that no matter how big or small your budget is, you can use influencer marketing. And that is a huge deal for companies, because for many of the traditional marketing methods, the cost is so high, which only makes it accessible to the big fish.
But with influencer marketing, you decide how much you will spend by choosing which influencers you will work with.
There’s a reason why there are many examples of companies that don’t advertise traditionally, yet still grow explosively to millions of dollars in revenue in just a year because they have learnt how to get the most bang for their marketing buck.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a marketing source that generate an ROI that is hard to beat. A lot of brands aren’t cherishing influencer marketing as they should, based on the results it’s generating but worst of all – many don’t even know about it.
If influencer marketing isn’t a part of your marketing strategy, you should implement it as soon as possible. If not, there’s a big risk that you’ll evolve slower than your competitors, and ultimately go out of business. Your goal in marketing is to get the most bang for your buck – the highest ROI possible, and this is why it is crucial that you evaluate the marketing you are doing right now, and then comparing it to influencer marketing.
If you are using traditional marketing sources such as display ads, there’s a big risk you’re wasting a ton of money, simply because you are paying to reach people who just are not relevant to your company.
