With social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube giving platforms to anyone with a smartphone and a stable internet connection, we are living in what can be termed as the Influencer Era.
The world is becoming remarkably digital, and an example of this is being able to place a live bet from the comfort of your home. Marketing from the comfort of your own home has also been made very simple by influencers.
Simply put, an ‘influencer’ is someone who is an expert on a specific topic, or at least has a large amount of knowledge about it and can convince people to buy a certain product.
Social Media Influencers are people who use their social media platforms to garner a large number of followers after they market their expertise to a large group of people. These followers then like, comment and share the content that is being created by the influencers, helping them engage a much wider audience than before.
This is good news for businesses who want to market their products and are looking to reach a bigger audience. Whether you choose to use bloggers or mega-influencers on Instagram, getting them to market your brand can be exactly what you need. Nike is one of the best examples of this.
Believing in a ‘pyramid spillover’ theory, they use mega-influencer athletes to upload posts wearing Nike gear. Consumers looking at their favorite athlete using a certain product then makes them more inclined to buy it.
This article takes you through some of the most important ways how influencers can make your business stand out and improve in a competitive market.
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Boost Your Audience
If you’re a small business owner with an online business and a website, you might be struggling with lack of traffic, and ultimately a lack of profits.
Researching ways to improve your traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) or spending excessive money on hiring web designers to give your website a better look are all valid methods to try and improve your audience numbers. However, these can be time consuming, overwhelming and might not give you results fast enough.
Reaching out to some social media influencers with thousands of followers is an easy way to immediately reach more people. Simply sending them a free sample of your products, and asking them for a product review helps you reach numbers that you weren’t before.
It’s important to choose influencers that align with your brand image and have followers who trust their choices.
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Targeted Marketing and Improved SEO
Hiring an Influencer from the same niche as your product allows you to set aside all the data research to figure out your target audience. For example, if you’re trying to market a beauty product, reach out to makeup artists and fashion or lifestyle bloggers on platforms such as Instagram.
Doing this will allow you to reach your target audience without doing much research, because the target audience is present in the followers of the influencers you choose.
When popular influencers talk about your products, you can produce external links on your website that will allow it to go up in search engine results.
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Consumer Trust & Cost Effective Marketing
Influencers have a very loyal fanbase. A survey found that about 40% of users on Twitter have been convinced by an Influencer to make a purchase. This statistic not only shows the reach of influencers, but also shows how their followers react to their marketing.
For anyone looking to acquire loyal customers, hiring a popular and trusted influencer would mean that you now have the trust of all their followers as well. This means that the buyers you get from this outlet are going to stick with your brand and make repeated purchases.
This also helps make your marketing a lot more cost effective. Not only are you reaching a much wider number of people, you are getting loyalty in return. The input could be as little as sending a few free product samples for an Influencer to test out, and the output can shoot up to getting hundreds of loyal customers in return.