Understanding Influencer Marketing and Why It Is So Significant and So Booming

 Influencer marketing is not a new concept within the Marketing industry, it has become more popular in the mainstream over the past few years. Unlike the Marketing of days gone by were brand ambassadors and influencers was the domain of celebrities’, modern-day marketing is driven by content that consumers find entertaining and relevant to their personal circumstances.

As the world around us is embracing technological advancements, influencer marketing is making its way to the forefront and companies are devoting more resources and attention to the tactic than ever before. Brands are shifting more of their focus to influencer marketing to propel their brand through social media.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a predetermined relationship between a brand and an influencer. The influencer is given the mandate to promote the brand’s products or services through various media channels such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Some confuse influencer marketing with celebrity endorsements, this is highly inaccurate as influencer marketing does more than just attach a well-known celebrity to a brand. Influencers have to be trusted figures within a niche demography and have a loyal following. Furthermore, they possess in-depth knowledge or experience about what they are advertising.

For instance, a popular motoring video blogger (vlogger) on YouTube with extensive knowledge of the motoring industry may be asked to do an automobile review on a new vehicle. This review will be focused on a certain target market and will highlight the strengths of the vehicle and why a consumer should put it on their consideration radar.in some circumstances, an influencer may not have the relevant experience pertaining to the product they are advertising. In such a situation, they rely on the trust and loyalty they have built with their followers. Influencers operate independently, by creating their own content and integrating a company’s advertising requirements and expectations.

The influencer has total control of the brand’s message, and chooses how they will portray it. This promotes a sense of authenticity and will help to reach a specific target audience

The advantage of Influencer Marketing

Scheduled television, radio, magazines and print signage were virtually the only mass media outlets consumers had access to and were the main platforms marketers used to advertise to the masses. This has changed because, with the proliferation of internet and the growing popularity of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, consumers have unlimited access to the content of their choice. This creates a big problem for brands due to the fact no single customer fits into a box where they can expose them to their advertising campaigns, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach their target audiences.

The advantage with influencer marketing is, with just over 53% of the global population engaged in some form of social media outlet, they are likely to follow influencers who put out content relevant to their interests. This makes it easier to reach them, 65% of brands now run influencer marketing campaigns and up to 92% of consumers trust recommendations made by other people even if they don’t know them in their personal capacity —over promotional content that comes from a brands marketing campaign. A consumer is more likely to buy a product if it’s recommended by a friend than when pushed by an advert. Influencer marketing presents numerous opportunities for brands to flight their content, connect with consumers at a deeper level whilst building relationships more organically in real-time.

Why Influencer Marketing is Booming

 Successful marketing often comes down to one simple concept: getting your ideas to spread to the relevant target audience. Consumers are now spoiled for choice in relation on what to spend their money on. There are so many options and deals available such that for a brand to attract the right consumer, their approach to reaching the consumer has to be highly targeted and efficient. With consumers having little time to consume content and engage with adverts this has created a need to be dynamic because most advertising is just ignored.

Influencers have proved beneficial to businesses because they have created a bridge between consumers and brands and have provided platforms that offer more meaningful engagement than traditional advertising. Influencers when deemed authentic, have been accepted as very trusted voices. They are real people that have a persona that is thought to be unbiased; a traditional advert or a post directly from a brand will often be treated with suspicion.

But an endorsement from an influencer is similar to that of your friend, brother, sister or parent having your best interest at heart and telling you about something you need to check out. Influencers come across has as a mutual friend connecting a brand with its target consumer.

An endorsement from an influencer has the power to drive traffic to a site, amplify the message across social media platforms, and even directly sell their products through their recommendation.

When Apple launched the iPhone 12 on the 13^th of October 2020, the first people they talked to were those who wanted to listen. The people who actively opt-in to hear Apple’s message. When Tim Cook got up on stage at the ‘Big iPhone 12 event’, he was not talking to the mass market; he was talking to innovators and early adopters in the hope that what he says will inspire them enough to pass the information on to their audience.

Amongst this demography, were key influencers who are renowned in their respective fields’.  Within minutes of Tim Cook going on stage, the hashtag #AppleEvent was trending worldwide. One of the biggest aspects of note about this event was Apple would stop including wall chargers in boxes of all future Apple products, Apple knew this controversial decision might face some push back from consumers and some key tech influencers spun it in a different way, “it’s funny, but I’m willing to bet almost all companies will start following Apple and ditching chargers in boxes by 2022” said one verified influencer on Twitter.

Such is the power of influencers that within minutes of that tweet, most of the influencers’ followers started sharing his tweet to a much larger audience.