Influencers are a modern phenomenon! With thousands or even millions of impressionable followers, the sales and promotional opportunities from building influencer relationships are endless.
Here Push Promotions aims to provide an insight into why you should use social media influencers.
What Is An Influencer?
First things first, what actually is an influencer? Influencers are social media personalities with a large following, who, as the title suggests, have the power to influence their audience.
There are many different types of influencer who work across various social media platforms and particular niches. For example, make-up, video games, or books. These influencers can be anyone from industry professionals, world-famous celebrities, political activists, or simply enthusiastic consumers.
An older equivalent of the modern social-media influencer is the iconic Avon lady. Through her door-to-door promotions and product demonstrations, she used her personality and relationship with clients to influence them into purchasing Avon cosmetics! The difference with influencers is that they do their marketing through social media posts and live streams. Rather than speaking to people 1 on 1 on their doorsteps, influencers can communicate with thousands of people at once!
The Power Of Influencers
Social media users follow influencers because they like them personally, care about their choices, and often trust their judgment. I know that personally, I have seen influencers showing off their latest shopping hauls on various social media sites (with links included to the product webpages), and from their encouragement, have ordered those exact items for myself!
The Digital Marketing Institute published a number of influencer marketing statistics which highlight the power of influencers:
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70% of teenagers trust influencers more than traditional celebrities! More traditional marketing campaigns led by the latest Oscar winner are therefore not a sure-win with upcoming generations.
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86% of women use social media for advice before making a purchase.
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Over 50% of women have made a purchase due to an influencer post.
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On average, influencer marketing campaigns earn approximately $5.78 for every $1 spent. Therefore you do not have to be an economist to see the huge economic potential in influencer marketing.
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The influencer marketing industry as a whole is expected to be worth $13.8 billion (£10.21 billion) by the end of 2022!
Examples Of Influencer-Business Relationships
In the past few years, one of the most talked-about influencers are ITV2’s ‘Love Island’ contestants turned social-media influencers:
Dr. Alex George
Dr. Alex George, for example, has used his platform as a television personality and medical professional to promote brands such as Colgate UK and LifeBuoy UK. He has also served as the UK Youth Mental Health Ambassador within the Government’s Department of Education.
Molly-Mae Hague
Another successful Love Island example is Molly-Mae Hague. Already a micro-influencer before Love Island, her platform grew near exponentially after the show. She initially began working with UK-based fashion retailer PrettyLittleThing as an influencer as there was a large overlap between her followers and PrettyLittleThing’s target audience. She is now the Creative Director of the company, regularly posting behind-the-scenes content online of the business and products.
As well as using more mainstream influencers like Molly-Mae, PrettyLittleThing also uses much smaller micro-influencers to promote their clothing. These influencers each have their own followers around the country, and often promote PrettyLittleThing for free in exchange for PrettyLittleThing’s publicity; a sort of influencer equivalent of trickle down economics.
How Can Your Business Use Influencers?
Building an effective business relationship with influencers takes time, research, and unsurprisingly money!
The Disney-star turned pop star and actress Selena Gomez has 180 million Instagram followers, and reportedly charges up to a whopping £625,000 per post. However, smaller influencers will charge much less in exchange for a social media post, or even post in exchange for a free sample/product or publicity. This could therefore be a cheaper digital marketing strategy for small businesses to consider.
Although it is no mean feat to gain such a number of followers, so-called micro-influencers have followers of around 10,000-50,000. Due to this ‘smaller’ following, they are usually more approachable and affordable when promoting your brand. They often have a very tight-knit relationship with their audience and therefore have high post engagement and conversion rates. They are generally seen as more relatable to their followers, influencing for fun and a genuine passion for their niche rather than money-grabbing. This therefore makes their advertising appear more authentic.
The public is also becoming increasingly ethical when shopping for products or services, so making sure that you collaborate with reputable influencers is a must! Many companies have received backlash for collaborating with influencers deemed controversial.
There are therefore lots of things to consider when using influencer and social media marketing. For example, does the influencer fit your target audience, do they have a significant following, is your influencer likely to generate any backlash? But what is certain is that influencer marketing is growing rapidly, and there is serious money to be made!
