The value of influencer marketing to growing your business.
If you’re in the PR or marketing game it’ll come as no surprise to you that influencers aren’t going anywhere. They’ve only just begun. And Influencer Marketing – yes sir, it’s as relevant and important as ever.
While influencer marketing has reached a level of maturity and saturation since it first hit the professional PR scene back in 2006, social media influencers and their impact will continue to surge.
Given brands are still experiencing incredible momentum, substantial uptake in sales with minimal overheads on the back of influencers on Instagram we predict that influencer marketing will continue to have global impact well into the next decade.
It’s true that influencer status is no longer dominated by a cohort of 20 early-adopters in each major city; it has evolved into a highly specialised micro-influencer playing field from tiny towns across the globe.
The value of influencer marketing done well (we repeat, ‘done well’ is far from diminished). The best return is in re-usable niched content and the influencer’s ability to connect authentically with and educate their audience, eliciting influence in buyer awareness, perception and shopping behaviours.
While the emergence of micro influencers has most certainly diminished the celebrity status of mega-influencers and og’s of the naughties; however the value and impact is as great as ever. And we know that brand marketers and PR agencies are spending more of their budgets with influencer programs than ever before.
It’s not likes on posts (usually faked) that matter, or comments on posts (also a high percentage of which are fake); the biggest return is in the resulting content that has been produced for your brand at speed and scale in comparison to expensive, campaign and product shoots of old.
Not all influencers are created equal. And the art of influencer marketing done well is in thoughtful and legitimate brand alignment as well as in long-term partnerships.
I’m actually going to repeat that because it’s important – ‘long term value comes from long term partnerships’.
While the influencer marketing industry is fragmented and highly nuanced, the benefits of strategic influencer engagement are many.
- quality content at speed
- content production at scale
- increased trust in your business
- positive third-party endorsement
- well-positioned brand awareness
- more controllable outcomes than with traditional media
- quality and dynamic content
- live in-market feedback
- instant access to an existing captured target audience
- brand validation via momentum and positive word-of-mouth
- content unique to your brand in a competitive landscape
- able to adopt a story telling approach to content
- variety of execution options i.e. video, long-form text, Gram Grid posts, live Stories
I’ll hang my hat on the prediction that one day we’ll all shake our heads at this absurd time in human communications history, however for now influencer marketing and the democratising of media coverage and self-publishing remains a relevant and important PR strategy in building brand recognition.
For those of you on a mission to broaden the channels your brand is reaching (even if metrics can be a shade of ‘uncertain’), best you don’t over-look the value of influencer marketing in 2020.
Words by Jade Roberts
raraPR Founder and Director
raraPR is above all the sum of people who together help build brands and share stories. We are present in our determination to make a positive difference to the world by representing individuals and businesses that are doing good. We are an extension of the personal stories within us, those that we exist for and those within you that need to be heard.
