Why Use Influencer Marketing?

More and more brands, from the biggest ones like Nike and Chanel, to less famous companies, use influencer marketing as their regular activity to attract audiences. It won't take you long to guess the main reason — a huge impact the influencers have on their followers.

And yes, it does bring results.

Authenticity in marketing is like a smile of a child – you can't deny it and you just respond to automatically by smiling. Influencers are genuine because they are not afraid to show their true selves to the broad audience. They actually don't have a choice: they need to reveal their personality through their online activity: and this honesty wins the trust of potential customers. Who believes that the videos on TV are sincere? Who reads the slogans on billboards? You don't. Your friends do not either.

But all your friends as well as people you know from social networks, I am 100%, have 3-5 influencers they are "stalking" online. That is why influencer marketing rules. For someone, it's Cara Delevingne, while others will be interested in Elon Musks' success and will keep track of all his losses and gains.

Yet, the majority of modern internet users follow micro-influencers, those to whom they can relate personally. I think you can understand what I'm talking about: a friend on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn who knows a lot about what you are interested in. You read their posts regularly, you ask them for advice, and you use the tools they recommend.

Although influencer marketing is just a tool, influencers are real people from flesh and blood. And good influencers will advertise only those goods that resonate with them personally. So this trust will be applied to the brand. And that's what makes advertisement effective — influence plus sincerity.

This is a real competitive advantage of influencer marketing though it's not as obvious as the first one. Influencers will always, I mean always reach their target audience. They are literally unstoppable. Why is that?

While ads in Google can be blocked, a Facebook ad can get stuck in filters (especially after another change to the news feed) and you will wait for months before your SEO will generate leads, an influencer marketing campaign will work from basically the first day when it is launched.

Have you heard about banner blindness? Up to 97% of all ads online are unnoticed. In other words, people just don't see even the brightest and the most creative ads which are made by designers with all the love in their hearts.

It is not relevant to influencer marketing at all. Influencers interact with customers directly because customers are motivated more in this communication than influencers themselves. Do you feel the difference? Potential clients seek influencers, not vice versa.

And instead of turning off ads on TV and installing ad-block, customers look for influencers and wait to create a meaningful connection with them. When there is strong motivation from both sides, the level of engagement is impressive.

Speaking of engagement. The two first reasons were quite abstract, especially for a person who speaks on the language of marketing. But the impact of influencers on the engagement rate cannot be denied.

What is the engagement rate after all? It's the degree to which a customer interacts with the brand before or after the consumption of a product or a service. In other words, it's the degree of the client's mindshare or the time and attention he /she is ready to give to the product. Engagement is the basis of emotional connection with the brand and the guarantee that the clients will choose the very same product next time when they will have to choose.

it's quite easy to associate products with people who represent them because, as it was already mentioned, influencers choose products that resonate with them personally. That is why Kristen Stewart is the evangelist of Chanel, and each time someone somewhere chooses to buy a perfume of this brand he recalls the face of Kristen. This association becomes a subconscious trigger that serves as a real impetus for buying when someone sees the actress on the screen.

It may sound unexpected but the number of followers is not necessarily proportional to the level of engagement, I can tell you more, in many cases, micro-influencers have a higher level of engagement compared to celebrities with millions of followers.

Influencers provide a high level of engagement by interacting with their audience, asking them questions, reading and answering their comments. Social media influencers are more persuasive and more engaging than those influencers we see on TV: they are in contact with their audience 24/7.

But all this talk about the engagement was just a prelude. Customer engagement is important to marketers mostly because it's the basis of brand loyalty. In other words, the stronger emotional connection with a brand is built with the help of influencers, the better it is in terms of brand loyalty. And you know all you need to know about brand loyalty- it's the desire of customers to stick to the same product, recommend it to friends and family becoming a true brand evangelist and an advocate.

Well, of course, all these abstract ideas as trust, customer engagement, and brand loyalty are worthless if they cannot be proved statistically. Numbers speak more persuasively than any words — and that's another reason why use influencer marketing.

Here are several examples of studies that prove that an investment in influencer marketing is a smart solution:

• If you want to find the most effective social media influencers – check Facebook. This social network remains the most influential in the whole world. 19% of customers claim that they decided to buy something relying on the recommendations of Facebook.

• YouTube is regarded as the second most influential social media network. People tend to watch videos more and more often because it's the easiest way to consume information.

So answering the question: "What is influencer marketing?" I would advise you to regard it as the investment first of all. It's the investment in brand name building. Though most young companies think that brand name is self-regulated and, what is worse, positive by default, it is not so. In reality, it is necessary to shape it day after day and invest in it. Influencers are the most reliable and predictable means of investment in a good and bright brand.

Influencer marketing is built on trust between influencers and their audience, and this trust is underpinned by the attention and time people are ready to spend communicating with the influencers they follow on Instagram. More than that, influencer marketing is correlated with the high level of customer engagement: an active interplay of users with the brand, their communication with the company through influencers.