One of the most potent tools in marketing your business is using the power of the influencer to expand your branding and sales efforts. Influencer marketing has become far more popular in the past few years thanks to its powerful effect on digital marketing and personal branding.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Instead of trying to reach everyone in your target market, you instead use those who have influence over that group to spread the word for you. This means identifying those who have substantial audiences in your target market and convincing them through inspiration or just plain paying them in one form or another to have them get the word out about your products or services.
The roots of this form of marketing goes back well before the internet when popular television and radio programs were sponsored by companies that wanted to have more sway over their target audience. Today, the influencer marketing works well with content and social media marketing efforts that bolster your appeal while increasing the appeal of what you offer.
Sales & Branding
Keep in mind that this is not word-of-mouth marketing, although it is somewhat similar in nature. This form of personal branding helps make your products, services, and company more appealing to your target audience which in turn provides more sales opportunities. There are good reasons why this form of digital marketing works for online businesses.
Established Trust: Building up trust is one of the most difficult aspects in promoting your business simply because you start off with no one knowing about your company. An influencer already has the trust of their audience, so potential customers will use the trust the influencer shows for your business, much like a friend or family member’s recommendation.
Expanding Your Marketing Effort: You’ll find that the influencers will often be able to reach more potential customers in your target audience than you are able to alone. This means that you can add to your customer base people that otherwise might never hear about your products or services.
Cost Effective: Consider how much you stand to save on your digital marketing efforts by focusing on influencers. Instead of trying to appeal to a wide swath of people, you instead bring in a few influencers who use their appeal to advertise for you. This makes your marketing far more cost efficient because you simply need to identify and reach out to a few people and they do most of the work in letting others know about your business.
Easier Tracking: When a large part of your marketing and personal branding efforts flow through a few influencers, it’s much easier to track the results to see how well they are working for you. This way, you can weed out those who are not producing results while emphasizing other influencers so that you sell even more.
Influencer marketing is a simple, straightforward method of digital marketing and personal branding that overcomes many of the issues facing new businesses. You will need to target the right influencers and offer them something worth their while for their efforts, but the results are most worth it.