Guest post by Brian Mechem.
Marketing budget allocations are being shifted from traditional, offline marketing strategies to more innovative, digital channels. And influencer marketing is one such strategy that’s become increasingly popular. According to recent research, 79% of brands have dedicated budgets for influencer marketing in 2019. Clearly, brands have realized the potential the influencer marketing holds.
Here are four major benefits a brand may realize after successfully implementing an influencer marketing: strategy:
It Helps Expand Your Reach
Influencers help marketers and brands reach new audiences. Brands can get instant access to potential customers who trust and value the recommendations made by the influencer.
Most influencers have thousands of social media followers (or, for consumer brands, even millions) who are likely to see your messages. But even microinfluencers with smaller number of followers can be valuable if their audiences are highly specialized and passionate.
It Helps with SEO
You can ask an influencer to share their review about your services or products with links to your website on their blog. Such links can drive more visitors to your site and also improve your search engine rankings.
While SEO should never be the primary goal of outreach, it is an important side benefit. Influencers who have high-authority blogs can create a substantial impact. It’s good for your brand because the people generally trust organic search listings more highly than paid ads.
It Helps Improve Your Engagement Rate
Genuine and appealing content created by influencers helps brands attract their target audiences. Such content also encourages audiences to interact with it. And once audiences are engaged, brands can more easily convert them into customers.
On average, in 2017, influencer marketing campaigns generated an engagement rate of 8.20%. This was more than 4X the engagement rate generated in the previous year. You can use this influencer engagement rate calculator to evaluate any influencer on Instagram.
It Helps Increase Your ROI
Influencer marketing can produce great returns on your investment. 50% of companies use influencer marketing as a strategy to increase brand awareness. And another 35% use it to increase their sales.
According to a study by RhythmOne, brands have been found to generate huge returns in earned media value (EMV) by implementing influencer marketing. These values are derived from elements like sharing on social media and other forms of organic exposure. For a $1 investment in influencer marketing, brands have been found to receive $12.21 in EMV.
To learn more about the ROI of influencer marketing, check out this infographic by Grin.
Image courtesy: Grin.co