In the era of social media, the role of influencer marketing is becoming the trending marketing tool for Brand awareness.
However, brand building is another trend that is going on nowadays and one of the favorite tools for the marketing of brands is influencers which allows them to reach the maximum number of audiences that add valuable addition to the brand image, and awareness.
Despite the usual methods for brand awareness like advertising, it takes a long time to spread brand awareness and grab the attention of a bigger audience after running so many marketing campaigns whereas influencer marketing is a quick attention seeker.
And therefore its market size is growing exponentially, “the size of the global influencer market was estimated at USD 10.39 billion in 2021 and is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.4% from USD 13.86 billion in 2022 to USD 139 billion by 2030, according to the reports.
As a result, this number shows the importance of influencer marketing in brand building and customer acquisition.
In this article, we are going to discuss the rise of influencer marketing. As a brand, why should you use influencer marketing? And how can you leverage the influencer brand awareness? This blog will provide you with some tips and advice on how to use influencer marketing techniques effectively.
So let’s get started…
The Rise of Influencer Marketing: A Shift in Brand Storytelling
It is no hidden fact that social media is one of the major marketing tools nowadays with millions of users scrolling and spending time to find entertainment, inspirational, and product-related content.
And this is yet another opportunity for influencers to create their content to cater to a large audience and fulfill their content needs as well as earn money from content creation.
As per the report, on average a macro-influencer with millions of followers charges around $5000-$10,000 a post. But skin in the game, it takes so many years of dedication and hard work to increase the followers and build an influencer image.
However, audiences prefer listening to influencers before making purchase decisions for products and services.
As a result, there is no doubt that most of the time influencer content plays a significant role in product marketing and brand building.
Furthermore, marketers should leverage the social media platform for their online marketing and achieve their marketing goals by harnessing the power of influencer marketing around the social media platform.
Why Use Influencer Marketing for Brand Awareness?
There are several ways to increase brand awareness, over the years brands have used various mediums such as television, and newspapers to reach and increase brand awareness. But today, it’s a digital era so brands are now shifting towards modern marketing tools such as social media to convey their brand story.
However, brands often face challenges in reaching their target audience, spreading awareness of their products or services, and seeking the attention of a large number of audiences even after running so many marketing campaigns on social media.
As a result, influencer marketing is something that is gaining popularity among marketers due to the results it generates. Today, the audience watches more influencer content rather than normal content.
Because it has more insights, proper information, and a lot of ingredients that normal content does not have. And so harnessing the power of influencer marketing can help marketers increase brand awareness.
But before that let’s take a look at how influencer marketing can help you as a marketer to increase brand awareness. And why should you prefer influencer marketing over marketing campaigns?
Benefits of influencer marketing:
Influencer marketing provides an edge in your marketing campaigns, it boosts the effectiveness of the campaign.
- Reach and visibility:
Influencers have a large number of followers usually which ranges from thousands to millions depending on the influencer. And it helps brands reach a large audience and increase their visibility through the influencer’s existing followers.
Often, influencers have a strong presence on social media platforms. So it allows brands to reach target specific-niche audiences who belong to the similar category of audience that brands are looking for.
- Targeted approach:
In social media, when brands run social media marketing campaigns it reaches all types of audiences. There is a presence of mixed audiences in social media it is very hard to filter the target audience that brands are looking for, and even if they did reach, there less chance of getting brand awareness.
As per the report, “50% of all ad sets analyzed were reaching less than 1% of the set target audience, Only 10% of all ad sets were reaching more than 12% of the set target audience.”
As a result, Influencer marketing fulfills the strategic need for reaching target audiences who are potential customers of the brands. Influencers have built their community or network on specific niches which helps brands to directly reach their target audience in a short period.
- Enhanced credibility:
Run influencer marketing increases the credibility and loyalty of the brand as Influencers have already built their trust and credibility through their content and the audience does believe in their content, that’s one of the major advantages of influencer marketing that brands receive.
Influencer collaboration with brands also adds a strong connection and reliability to the brand’s image, which makes it more trustworthy and authentic. When the influencer is a believer in a brand’s product or service and endorses a brand, their audience is likely going to view brands as credible.
- Engagement and interaction:
Influencers’ content often gets more engagement due to the authenticity of the content, and with the active followers of influencers on every post. However, they can generate more likes, comments, and shares that help their post boost the reach and extend it to a wider audience.
Furthermore, influencers do generate user-generated content (UGC) by collaborating with different brands. And encouraging their followers to share the content or posts related to those brands.
However, big celebrities and sports influencers are always in the headlines, so whenever they promote any brand or a product, the newspaper and articles cover their marketing collaboration news which again increases the richness of their marketing campaign organically.
Leveraging Influencers for Brand Awareness:
Influencer marketing is hard-core to crack unless it is not a perfect strategist. Because many brands fail to choose the right influencer and content that does not thrive into the results that brands are looking for. So here are some of the steps to consider while leveraging influencer marketing for brand awareness.
Identifying the Right Influencers:
Choosing the wrong influencer can lead to a loss of marketing campaign goals and a lot of other resources such as time and money for both brands and influencers. To avoid this the brands should follow these steps.
- Understand your target audience:
Before collaborating with any influencer it’s essential to do target audience research. It will help to understand the buyer’s personas, and with which influencer your target audience aligns.
Because different sets of influencers fit different audiences, for instance, Ronaldo and Messi have a good fit with sports-related brands. So if the brands whose target audience is sports people and if they collaborate with Ronaldo and Messi then, their audience will prefer their brand more rather than other brands.
As a result, it’s important to choose influencers based on your target audience, whatever influencer your target audience admires as well as the influencer that relates with your brand or brand story will fit perfectly for brand collaborations.
- Researching relevance and reach:
Once figuring out your target audience, It’s very important to research the relevance of those influencers with your brand. Furthermore, influencers usually have their followers with different sets of audiences, and in some cases, there are very niche influencers as well that have particular sets of audiences. So it’s important to understand their community and followers’ interest to increase the reach of your campaigns.
- Authenticity and trust:
When a brand is operating in a catered market or risky market where gaining the trust of the audience is far more important than products selling. However, in that case the brand will be required to collaborate with some of the renowned influencers whose trust and authenticity are high. And whom people believe and trust.
As a result, it helps brands to establish trust among the audience as it’s associated with reputable and trustworthy influencers.
Crafting Effective Collaborations:
Crafting the goals and purpose of the campaign is important for successful marketing campaigns. By keeping transparency with influencers the partnership will maintain for a longer period and the authenticity of sponsored content as well. However, there are a few ways to make more effective collaborations.
- Takeovers and co-creations:
One of the foremost ways to collaborate with small and medium influencers is influencer account takeover or joint content creation where the brand creates the content with influencers regularly and posts it to their social media accounts. However, the content must be engaging in order to fulfill the goals and purpose of the marketing campaign.
- Leveraging different platforms:
By strategizing the marketing channel based on the platform will give more reach to the content. For instance, if your target audience uses YouTube then finding a YouTube influencer who is more active on YouTube and has more followers based on that platform will be more effective.
Furthermore, if your target audience is present on Instagram or TikTok then the brand should collaborate with TikTok influencers or Instagram influencers.
- Using authentic content for storytelling:
Content is very important when it comes to marketing campaigns or influencer collaborations. Creating content that is related to your brand and target audience is more effective for successful collaborations. However, brand storytelling can also play an important role in case the pillar of your brand is your brand story or product story.
Measuring ROI of Influencer Marketing:
With every influencer marketing campaign, it’s important to measure the reach of your brands. Furthermore, how it helped your products to boost in terms of sales and market share.
As a result, keeping an eye on key performance indicators of the campaign will provide you with some insights. However, the insight needs to be addressed while doing other influencer marketing campaigns in the future.
The data can help you analyze what went well and what went wrong. Hence, you can optimize the data to improve your approach in the influencer marketing campaign.
The Future Trends in Influencer Marketing
The influencer marketing is increasing every year. Today, in order to build the brand image and spread brand awareness. Influencer marketing is the best tool to optimize.
However, there might be shifts in content creation that influencers do as the attention span of the audience is less these days. The brands might prefer to create short-form videos rather than long or live-streaming videos and other interactive content.
Furthermore, brands are also collaborating with YouTube influencers and creating long-tail content with podcasts. These days podcasts are more consumed by viewers.
As a result, the future of influencer marketing seems to be unpredictable but one thing is clear and short, influencer marketing is going to grow more in upcoming years rather than other marketing mediums.
Winding up
Although, influencer marketing is a growing industry that is expanding every year, so building a career can be worth it. And companies, who are looking to build brand awareness, and reputation should optimize influencer marketing mediums to disrupt the market, and increase their market share.
