Influencer marketing entails partnering with influencers to promote products, brands, or services. This involves sponsoring posts or using influencers to tell your brand story.
Unlike conventional marketing, Instagram influencer marketing leverages a huge following to improve brand visibility and build a strong portfolio.
However, you should first research to ascertain the credibility of influencers before collaborating with them. This is because despite having dozens of influencers in the social sphere, not all are credible.
Remember if you partner with influencers that have a bad reputation then you risk compromising the credibility of your brand. As a consequence, you risk losing your footing in a competitive business environment.
Most marketers can attest that influencer marketing is effective in generating higher ROI and greater value for their brand. With slightly over 17% of companies spending almost half of their marketing budget on influencer marketing, it is no doubt that influencer marketing has become a powerful marketing strategy.
In this article, we explore the role of influencer marketing in the business environment.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy that aims to use influencers for product mentions and endorsements. However, the process involves using established content creators to not only advocate but also engage with your brand message.
Generally, influencers help brands in creating and distributing content that resonates well with their target audience. Due to the high number of followers that influencers command, they have a great power to boost your brand awareness. In return, more people are likely to notice your brand and make purchase decisions.
Now that you understand the role of influencers, here are the benefits of Instagram influencer marketing.
Improve Brand Awareness
Aside from expanding your reach and positioning, Instagram influencer marketing lets your followers learn about you, your story, and the products or services you offer.
Through an expanded network, more people can notice your brand thereby improving chances of getting conversions. It is against this backdrop that you should leverage the power of influencer marketing to not only grow your Instagram profile but also build a strong brand portfolio .
If you want to increase your brand exposure within a short time and create online buzz on your Instagram account, influencer marketing is a perfect option.
Building Trust
The idea behind influencer marketing is simply to build trust with the target audience. For example, when an influencer recommends your products or services within their network, it creates a sense of credibility for the brand they are promoting.
Once you use a credible influencer to promote your brand, people are likely to perceive you as an industry leader and a trustworthy entity. With many brands jostling for space in a competitive market environment, building trust with your target market plays a critical role in generating sales through Instagram influencer marketing.
Improve Conversions
If you are struggling to get conversions through your Instagram account, it’s high time you consider partnering with influencers or established content creators. So far, most customers are likely to buy products recommended by influencers.
Due to the potential of Instagram reaching a wider audience thanks to influencer marketing, you are likely to get more conversions for your products and services. To grow your sales funnel, you should consider influencer marketing to help you drive sales and improve Return on Investment (ROI).
Building long Term Relationships
Besides helping you grow your audience, influencer marketing is ideal in building a long-term relationship with the target market. Once you establish a relationship with influencers, you stand a chance to establish a strong bond with them thereby helping both your brand and an influencer to get long-term results.
The more lasting relationships with influencers, the higher the chances of getting long-term results for your marketing strategy.
Improve lead generation efforts
One of the core benefits of influencer marketing is lead generation. Once you expand your reach, you stand a chance to generate quality leads for your brand. In the long run, you are likely to get more conversions and achieve growth.
The more people you reach the higher the chances of getting buyers for your products and services. Therefore if you are struggling to generate leads for your brand, it’s high time you consider Instagram influencer marketing to boost your lead generation efforts.
While there are tons of benefits of Instagram influencer marketing, the main challenge is identifying a credible influencer. Just like any other industry, there are both genuine and fake players. So how can you tell whether an influencer is real? Here is how!
Compare follower To engagement Ratio
To tell whether an Instagram influencer is real, simply compare the number of comments and likes with the number of followers. If it is not proportional then you have a reason to worry. This means such influencers may not add value to your Instagram account.
In fact one of the key criteria that you can use to verify the authenticity of an influencer is simply looking at the engagement rate. In case you want to get a return on investment by partnering with an influencer, you should strive to ascertain whether they have loyal followers
Quality of Content
You can also look at the quality of content shared by an influencer to ascertain whether they are real or not. For example, if an influencer claims to specialise in the fashion niche, check whether they are sharing styled content. If not then it is unlikely that they hold influence in that space.
The criteria does not necessarily aim at looking at the quality of content but whether the influencer has a consistent messaging strategy.
Look at Their endorsement History
Finding out brands that an influencer may have worked with is a great step in assessing credibility. If they have worked with other established brands then you can collaborate with them. Checking the history of various brands that an influencer may have worked with is a perfect way of ascertaining whether they offer value for money.
On the flip side, this strategy may not be effective for new influencers who may not have worked with established brands. All you need to check out is whether a platform has collaborated with any brands that you can use as a parameter to ascertain whether they are credible or not.
Check out their audience
If an influencer claims to be an influencer in the women’s niche especially apparel, you can check out whether they have female followers. If they have predominantly male followers then they may not add value to your brand.
This is because female followers signal authority in that particular niche. To know more about an influencer audience, you can leverage various online tools to get detailed insight about their audience.
Conclusion
Instagram influencer marketing comes with tons of benefits for your brand. Aside from helping you expand your audience, influencer marketing lets you showcase your products and services to people who may not be within your reach.
Whether you are an established entrepreneur or just starting with Instagram, you can leverage influencer marketing to not only increase following but also improve conversions.
The bottom line is that you should choose a credible influencer to protect your reputation. This is why you should carry out background checks on every influencer before partnering with them.
