What are the benefits of influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is big business. According to Statista, the global influencer marketing industry is worth $13.8 billion, and more than 50 million people around the world consider themselves digital creators. That’s a lot of content.

With so many influencers and so much content, what are the benefits of influencers to your Digital PR campaign?

If you are using a PR agency, likelihood is that you will be looking for brand awareness and measuring this by looking at volume, reach / impressions and the influence of these media outlets on your target audience, but they’re not very personal are they? They’re huge media brands and organisations reaching millions. So what happens when you want to build a more personal dialogue with your target audience? Step in influencers. Influencers can take your brand and make it personal, apply it to everyday life and talk about it on a seemingly one-to-one basis with a group of very engaged social media followers.

When you think about them like this, they can be a valuable addition to campaigns or can work independently to tackle some specific goals within your PR strategy.

How do you know which influencer is right for your brand?

Celebrities and macro influencers are leading the way, using social channels to build their personal brand and building a lucrative career from commercial deals. They may have the magic “Million” next to their follower figure but there will also be zeros added to your marketing spend as a result. 

The good news is that these influencers have already done the hard work and gathered a following for their brand or specialist field. Consider this when pulling together your target lists. They may feel like the right fit, and they may reach millions, but how will your content fit within their feed? The follower profile may be right, but is the content?

And if you’re not sure about their follower profile, then ask. It’s always a good idea to request this when planning a collaboration with a digital content creator.

Hands off and hands on

If you have decided to take the plunge, your bravery doesn’t stop at choosing your influencer. As a brand owner, you have to take your hands off the creative execution and trust that the influencer will work your product into their feed in a way that feels right for their audience. Over managing your brand’s content creation can cause some real challenges. We recommend spending time in preparing a full brand brief for your partner and then giving them some creative license.

Influencer posts feel more like a conversation than a commercial

And on that note, the biggest difference between a paid ad and influencer collaboration is probably the fact that influencer collaborations often feel like conversations, not commercials. Influencers are having conversations with their followers all the time and your brand can be a seamless part of that daily conversation, rather than something people were forced to see.

Trust and Recommendation

That’s why influencers help consumers form a personal connection with your brand.

People trust the influencers they follow. There’s an actual person behind the content who already has a relationship with the followers. This will help consumers to form a personal connection with your brand.

That’s why most professional influencers are very strict when it comes to brand collaborations and they only work with brands they can authentically support. Followers have most likely seen them collaborating with several brands and they trust their choices. Consider influencers who are selective about the brands they work with because your brand content will be viewed as more credible by the influencer’s audience.

Influencers can help with your content strategy

Social media needs a lot of content and sometimes it can be very time consuming and expensive to produce enough content to fill all your channels. 

Influencers are professional content creators and collaborating with them gives you high-quality content which with the right agreements in place, can be used in your own social media channels as well. When planning influencer campaigns, consider all the uses of the content and align them with your overall content strategy to help you to deliver top-notch digital content.

Provides value to your audience

People have chosen to follow the influencers since they admire them and enjoy the content they are producing. When your brand is presented in their content, the followers are seeing something that brings value to them. Why else would they follow the influencer?

We here at Cherish PR can help you to get the most out of your influencer marketing campaigns by planning the right strategies and selecting the best influencers to fit your brand. Our experience in the industry will help you to create long-lasting relationships with influencers and their followers. Every influencer campaign has different needs and we are here to help to guide you through this complex world.

Do you think there are some other benefits of influencer marketing?