In influencer marketing, collaborations are leveraged to promote products or services. These influencers have a powerful voice among consumers because of their audience size and credibility. The number of influencers is growing every year as the influencer marketing trend grows in popularity. With businesses looking for new ways to increase brand awareness and generate leads, influencer marketing provides an opportunity for companies that are struggling with creating content due to a lack of resources or skillsets. This blog discusses how you can use influencer marketing for your business in 2022!   

What Is Influencer Marketing Exactly? 

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on using influential people to promote or sell a product or service. These people, known as influencers, can be anyone from celebrities to bloggers to regular people with a large social media following. Because influencer marketing relies on trusted relationships, it can be an effective way to reach more consumers and promote your brand more authentically, especially in today’s social media-driven world.

Influencer marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it’s no wonder why. With the rise of social media and the declining trust in traditional advertising, influencer marketing is a great way to connect with potential customers in an organic way. Moreover, studies have shown that influencer marketing can be up to 11 times more effective than traditional advertisements.  

History Of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is an influencer engagement strategy that involves having an influencer promote the brand on social media. This form of influencer marketing has been around since 2007 when brands began hiring influencers to promote their products and services. Still, it wasn’t until recently that this type of marketing took off in its popularity. Today, influencer marketing can be found across all types of industries from fashion, beauty, food & drink to home décor and everything in between!

Nowadays, there are many different ways marketers can choose to work with influencers for each campaign they run, including sponsored posts or YouTube videos/blogs, among others. However, one method mentioned above stands out as being particularly popular – micro-influencing, which includes Instagram stories and posts.

Micro-influencers are influencers who have a following of between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. Because they have a smaller following than macro-influencers (those with more followers than micro-influencers), micro-influencers tend to be more engaged with their audience, which leads to better results for brands when working with them. Additionally, they’re often more affordable than more prominent influencers, so this is another reason why marketers are turning to them more and more!

Let’s explore a breakdown of the history of influencer marketing below!

2007 – Brands begin hiring influencers to promote their products and services on social media

2012 – The use of influencers in marketing campaigns becomes more widespread

2014 – Companies begin to focus on working with micro-influencers

2017 – Instagram stories and posts become a popular way for influencers to promote brands

2018 – Influencer marketing becomes the most effective form of digital marketing

2021 – Influencer marketing is worth $13.8 billion

2025 – Estimated value of influencer marketing reaches $24 billion!

Now that we’ve explored the history of influencer marketing, let’s look at some of its benefits. 

Benefits Of Influencer Marketing 

There are many benefits of influencer marketing when incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy. However, suppose you don’t know how to incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy successfully. In that case, you may risk missing out on some of the benefits that influencer marketing can bring to your business. 

There are many benefits of influencer marketing. Some of these benefits include:

– Increased brand awareness: Influencers with a large audience can get your brand across to them and educate them about who you are and what services and products you are offering. This can increase brand awareness as their audience might be interested in learning more about your business. 

– Greater reach to potential customers: Of course, with their audience, giving influencers samples of your products or services can allow you to have more reach. When an influencer talks about your product or service on their social media accounts, then they are also informing their followers, which can range from the hundreds to even the thousands! Their audience can become more aware of your brand just because they follow the influencer.

– Increased sales and conversions: When an influencer’s audience sees that they also utilize your product or service, they might inherently have more trust with it than a business that doesn’t have anybody reviewing their products or services. Because of this developed trust, customers that you gain from your influencer marketing campaign might be more likely to make a purchase than someone who is only finding out about who you are through a traditional advertisement. 

– Better SEO results: With influencer marketing, you can bolster your SEO with some more natural backlinking as a result of working with them. When they talk about your company’s products or services, they likely will link to your website as a result, which means some more backlinking that improve your website’s search engine rankings.

– Improved customer loyalty and satisfaction: Adding upon the higher conversion rates, when working with influencers, their audience can convert and become loyal customers for your business. Since the influencer they follow likes your products and services, they are more inclined to believe that what you offer gives positive results. This increased satisfaction can lead to long-term customer retention down the road. 

– Reduced costs compared to traditional marketing methods: Compared to traditional marketing costs such as PPC ads or TV advertisements, influencer marketing can cost much less to utilize. For example, you can offer them a free package of your products in exchange for them leaving a review of it on a post and providing a link to your website on that post. In addition, because of their audience, you will likely have more reach, which can mean more website traffic to your website and, since that traffic is likely your influencer’s audience, more possibility of conversions. 

As you can see, there are many reasons why influencer marketing should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. These benefits can elevate your overall marketing strategy and drive the conversions you want to achieve. Now, let’s dive into utilizing influencer marketing for your marketing strategy properly. 

How To Utilize Influencer Marketing 

Like any other marketing tool, influencer marketing only works when you know how to utilize it properly. What does that mean? That means that you shouldn’t just reach out to an influencer and give them a sample of your product and expect that to drive conversions and generate brand awareness just like that. Instead, you need to develop a plan and follow the steps to get the best results for your marketing campaign. 

To get started with influencer marketing, you need to identify your target audience and find relevant influencers who have an audience that aligns with your target market. This means you have to spend the necessary time researching who your target audience is and what they like. You can’t just get a random influencer to market your items because they might not even be interested in what you’re offering, or their audience isn’t even your target audience. However, with the right research, you should be able to identify your target audience and reach out to the right influencers. 

Once you’ve identified your target audience and found these influencers, create a content strategy that aligns with their style and the goals of your campaign. Brainstorm ideas for original content that will capture your audience’s attention, such as blog posts, videos, or social media campaigns. Reach out to influencers and ask them to share your content with their followers. 

Finally, make sure to track the performance of your influencer marketing campaign so you can determine if it is worth investing in again in the future! You could retool your influencer marketing strategy if the first go at it didn’t bring the results you wanted. That is why it is essential to actively keep track of analytics to see if what you’re currently doing is working. 

Influencer Marketing For The Future

Influencer marketing is now a major tool that many businesses should look into adding to their marketing arsenal. Below are some reasons why. 

-The influencer marketing trend is on the rise, with businesses looking for new ways to increase brand awareness and generate leads.

-Influencer marketing provides an opportunity for companies struggling with creating content due to a lack of resources or skillsets.

-In influencer marketing, collaborations are leveraged to promote products or services.

-These influencers have a powerful voice among consumers because of their audience size and credibility.

-The number of influencers is growing every year as the influencer marketing trend continues to grow in popularity

With this information on influencer marketing on hand, you should know what it is and how to properly utilize it to ensure your next influencer marketing campaign is a success! With the right plan in hand, you can begin reaping the benefits of increased conversions on your website!  So what are you waiting for? Get started on your influencer marketing campaign today and see how much growth you can achieve in 2022!

We’re a storytelling agency here at WunderTRE, and we would be more than happy to help guide you through your storytelling journey. If you need help telling your story to your audience, then contact us here to get started!