While you left your desk to get a cup of coffee – actually while you even thought about leaving your desk to get a cup of coffee – something remarkable happened: Influencer marketing became one of the hottest B2B marketing tactics.
Influencer marketing has expanded exponentially over the past two years – growing from an emerging trend to an essential part of social media strategies. And if you’re not using it, you might just be leaving a lot of potential prospects and lucrative business on the table.
What is influencer marketing, and why should you care?
Influencer marketing utilizes key leaders to communicate your brands message to a targeted group of people, typically through websites and social media. These influencers are trusted in business and the media and include professionals such as journalists, bloggers, executives, and industry analysts.
How does influencer marketing work?
An ad showing the latest cyber security software may be of some interest to a business owner; but hearing a well-known CIO extolling its benefits takes the message to a meteoric level. So, while a brand may have traction on its own merits, linking it with a well-known influencer can quickly give a product or service instant credibility and help generate sales.
The gravitation toward influencer marketing isn’t surprising when you consider that 74% of people turn to social media for guidance on purchasing decisions. When executed correctly, influencer marketing can quickly help energize your campaigns for greater results, and in less time. Here are just a few things it can do for you right away, and down the road:
- Broaden your brand’s reach: Expanding your audience is a long-range job, by partnering with an influencer, you can expand your reach more quickly than by solely using organic methods. Why? Because you’re going straight to their already engaged audience with a known entity they trust – and with a personal recommendation to boot!
- Ease the burden of content creation:Influencer marketing is smart for another reason; partnering with influencers to create content together takes some of the work of content creation off your own team’s plate. Publishing content created by influencers on your site gives your followers something that interests them, and adds a new, credible voice to your website.
- Increase social shares: Influencer marketing is a two-way street. When content features a well-known person, such as an influential business leader, they will invariably help to promote it; it’s good for their brand as well! Beyond that, when you select influencers carefully and seek those who already have engaged audiences, they’ll also want to share anything involving them. Everybody wins!
- Drive traffic: Whether an influencer is promoting your brand on a website or in a social post, including a backlink to your website will help drive quality traffic to your website.
- Improve SEO: Quality backlinks not only drive traffic, but they can also help improve your website’s search rankings. High-authority backlinks are difficult to get these days, but influencers can certainly help with this process.
- Boost your reputation: It almost goes without saying, but a personal recommendation from a trusted source goes a long way toward shaping opinions. Influencers are highly trusted by their respective audiences; as such an endorsement or partnership can reap real rewards as you build your brand’s reputation.
- Drive sales: Endorsements can be a powerful force for boosting sales. Influencer marketing can play a key role here: An influencer campaign can generate more buzz – and ultimately conversions – for a product or a service.
These are just some of the many reasons why taking a close look at influencer marketing is more important now than ever. If you need help implementing an influencer marketing strategy for your business, contact the specialists at Brainstorm. We’ll be glad to help!