“It is not what you know, but who you know that’s important”. What this old saying means is that human relationships are a key element for success. Trends may come and go, but it is personal trust that has the potential to take you further.
In the world of digital marketing, the term ‘Influencer marketing’ is most trending on the web.
So what is influencer marketing?
In simple words, it refers to the idea of promoting, marketing, and selling a brand by investing in people who can influence the target audience and hence enhance your brand awareness.
It involves continuous research in identifying and supporting the influencers for effective marketing of your products and services.
How influencers can help your business:
Influencers are hired on the basis of their experience and outreach to the buyers. It involves using the influencer’s connections for the benefit of any business.
Influencer marketing can help your business to achieve the following objectives :
- Generating Leads
- Changing perception of your business
- Brand awareness
Have you ever bought a shampoo just because your favorite actor endorsed it? You can say the actor in the ad is the influencer. Influencer marketing has been supporting the business for decades and is not a new concept at all.
Now that every single person has the equal sources to reach out to a large audience using social media, anybody can become an influencer. Youngsters with a large number of followers have been ruling the marketing game for some time now.
Influencer marketing comes with its own set of cons. You should know that to hire an influencer, a lot of investment is required.
Do you think influencer marketing will be beneficial for your business? Here are some factors that you need to keep in mind before going for any influencer.
- 1) Different content for different influencers
You need to invest a lot of time in looking for the right influencer for your products/services. Once you discover the right person, you need to pitch your company details to him. Keep in mind that the content will be different for different influencers. Would you hire a footballer to promote a hockey stick? Absolutely not. - 2) Take it slow and steady : After you market your products/services using an influencer, it could take weeks or even months to yield the desired results. Brand awareness is always time-consuming and requires a decent amount of time to connect with the target audience.If you want instant results for your business, you better try out some other marketing strategies.
- 3) Tracking progress can be tricky :If you have a website and you hire an SEO specialist to promote it, there are certain tools to measure your progress and identify the audience searching for your website. This is not the case with influencer marketing. Each and everything will be in the influencer’s hands. The only thing you can do is blindly trust your guy and keep him motivated. It might be frustrating initially but will surely yield results with time.
- 4) High risk involved :The darker side of being a celebrity is that every word he speaks is a sword’s thrust. One slip of the tongue and it can turn the world against you.Hence hiring an influencer for your business is equally risky because it can either make your brand or completely destroy it. A single mistake from your influencer can bring your brand to ground zero.
- If you are planning to make it big and survive in the long run, influencer marketing might be a good option for you. Even though it is risky, it is worth it because if you choose the right influencer, your business can reach a new level of success.
