WHAT IS INFLUENCE MARKETING AND WHAT IS ITS SIGNIFICANCE?

  25-Aug-2018 15:09:13

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Influence marketing or influencer marketing is a new terminology which has come into existence in recent years due to a tremendous increase in internet marketing strategies. Influence marketing has become more active in 2017– 2018 as compared to previous years. Influential marketing is quickly proving to be one of the most effective social strategies for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Influence marketing is valuable as it produces the best and early Return On Investment (ROI).


WHAT IS INFLUENCE MARKETING?

Influence marketing is one of the forms of marketing in which brands focus more on influential people rather than targeting market as a whole. Influence marketing plays a great role in providing quality potential customers for brands. This method of marketing has become a trend now.


HOW INFLUENCE MARKETING WORKS?

The company chooses ople that have well maintained social media accounts with the requisite number of followers for the promotion of their brand. These influential people reach out to their followers either personally or through online platforms and talk positively about the company’s product. The Influencer may post a picture of the brand on Instagram, facebook or may tweet about brand on twitter. They may even write an article or blog about the particular brand. Product recommendation is the biggest thing that most people look for on the internet so influential people's goal is to give recommendations to their followers about the company’s products and services and assuring the credibility of product on the companies behalf. A fact says that 92% of customers trust the recommendations of people over brands. Apart from it, a influence marketer may even allow other marketers to do a guest appearance on their website or platform which most of the obscure YouTubers do on famous YouTubers’ channels. In lieu of it, the company lets its influence marketers use its products for free. The influential person chosen may also get paid to talk about the product to the people. But the person chosen as an influencer must have the followers who trust the influencer person. Fashion influencers, tech/gadget influencer, travel influencer etc. are some examples of the categories of influential people.


TYPES OF INFLUENCERS?

Influencers are of 4 types:

Celebrity Influencer.

Customer Influencer.

Friends and family Influencer.

Online influencer.

In the case of celebrity influencers people trust the celebrity face. Out of all types, customer influencers are considered as the biggest influencers. Friends and family of brand owners also play the role of influencer . Online influencers are the common people who are popular on facebook, twitter or have massive followers on Instagram. Some platforms like ‘INFLUENCER', ‘blogadda.com', ‘blogmint’ and ‘IndiBlogger’ already have influencers connected with them. Apart from it, Klout is a website that grades peoples social reach of an influencer on a scale from 1 to 100. GroupHigh is another platform for the same.


REAL LIFE EXAMPLE OF INFLUENCE MARKETING:

In 2015, Lord & Taylor, a retailer giant collaborated with 50 instagrammers and asked them to post a picture of themselves wearing a specific dress on a specific date with incentives ranging from $1000 to $4000. All the instagrammers happily posted a picture on a given date. The post reached to a total of 11.4 million Instagram users which lead to 3,28,000 actions on Lord &Taylor Instagram account. The dresses sold out in no time.


WHAT THE FACTS AND SURVEYS SAY ABOUT INFLUENCE MARKETING?

A recent survey reported in Forbes magazine revealed that 84% of marketers plan on executing at least one influencer marketing campaign during the next 12 months. Out of all marketers who have used influence marketing, 81% said that they reaped benefits due to it. Moreover, 51% of marketers have used influence marketing for product launch and 50% of marketers have used for content promotion.


SIGNIFICANCE :

One of the significance of influence marketing is authenticity. The reason influence marketing works so well is because the message delivered is authentic. Authenticity is a rare commodity. Influencer campaigns are seen as more credible because influencers are seen as role models. Some of the influential people are mentors for their followers. Any product promoted by these influencers looks like a genuine recommendation.


Another advantage is that this form of marketing comes out to be a cost-effective strategy for brands. Many influencers deliberately try to collaborate with marketers brand simply because it helps them build their brand. Many influencers agree to performance-based pricing model, i.e., the amount paid is directly proportional to the number of likes, shares and retweets.

Influencer marketing also helps in increasing the reputation of brands. Influential people are considered to be a thought leader by many, so when they recommend any product or service people listen attentively and engage as well. Influential people share the brand's vision and mission to the people. These positive reviews by influential people increase the brand reputation in the market. This also helps in compensating for any earlier negative review of the brand by people. Apart from it, influencers also help marketers to access more demographic targets and grow the fan following of brand’s social accounts. Moreover, their efforts also come out effective for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). All of these things eventually helps in the growth of brands. Conclusively, the influencers play a great role in increasing the reputation and growth of the brands.


Written by: AJAY KUMAR

College : DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY