What Exactly is Influencer Marketing? – Get your basics right

Ever wondered how much power an individual with a huge social media following on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat or any other such platform, wields? Known as influencers, such social enthusiasts are already helping brands (major and minor) in cementing an unbeatable stature in the market.

Seems interesting? Then read on.

Influencers are the crop of new age social media users who, over a period of time, have developed huge following across various platforms. Their word is nearly the gospel of truth and their followers would vouch for the same. What if they endorse a particular product or service! Would their followers blindly follow them? Would they rush to the nearest stores to purchase the same? Well ‘yes’!

Why influencer marketing is here to stay?

Here are some of the reasons why influencer marketing is going to stay here for a long period of time:

It wields immense power

What is better than consumer to consumer word of mouth marketing? And when the source of the communication is none other than a real world celebrity (well, almost) the word spreads faster than fire. McKinsey, a world renowned management consulting company, has recently pointed out two interesting points in this regard:

• Consumer to consumer word of mouth leads to twice more sales when compared with paid advertising
• The customers acquired through this method are 37% more likely to be retained

It is social

Given that the whole world has acknowledged the power of social media, it is imperative that your brand goes social too. The who’s who of global brands has registered their presence across platforms and is always looking for ways to tap into the same.  Today’s customer doesn’t rely on traditional advertisement methods to purchase a product. He or she wants to know about the experiences of others and take a decision in this regard only then.

These days, customers do not want the brands to tell them what to get. Instead, they want information on top of entertainment. In this context, influencers form the crucial missing piece of puzzle, connecting brands with a huge potential customer base.

Paid ads are saturating customers

Customers are exposed to advertisements day in and day out, to the point of saturating them. As per research firm Yankelovich, an average American watches nearly 5000 advertisements a day. That is a huge number and it is quite likely that everyone’s message gets drowned in the sea of ads. Another important stat worth noticing is that only 14% of respondents of a study conducted by Infolinks, a digital advertising platform, could remember the last ad that they saw.

In this context, would it be prudent to launch yet another ad campaign with no surety of whether your message would reach the target audience? Instead, influencers provide a much better return on investment (ROI).