Digital Ads have long been a popular method for marketers in reaching their target audience with relevant, timely content. However, in recent years influencer marketing has become recognized as another legitimate way to increase sales and grow your audience.

In this insights article, we can explore how Influencer Marketing works and the advantages it gives you when used effectively.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer Marketing is when a company employs or hires an influencer to promote their product or service to their engaged audience. This method of marketing comes in many forms.

For example, if you were trying to promote a new cake selection, you could contact someone with an online blog to write about their favorite cakes from your new range. You could also work with a creator with a large social following to try your cakes and rate them in video content. 

As well as these, there is a range of methods and channels you can use to grow brand awareness and sales through influencer marketing.

• Blog

• Social media

• Podcast

• Online Video

• Content Marketing

• Affiliate Marketing - Using influencers to promote your product directly.

• Giveaways

• Competitions

• Reviews

• Brand Ambassadors

Influencer Marketing is used mostly in the B2C market, but recently the effectiveness in B2B influencer marketing has become more and more evident. One example of this is SAP.

SAP is a market leader in enterprise application software with thousands of corporate customers who benefit from their solutions. They use top corporate executives and industry experts as influencers and create content around their expertise to reach an engaged audience promoting the SAP brand.

SAP once produced a live stream video collaborating with 11 influencers who answered questions coming in from the virtual audience live. The content reached 80,000 to 100,000 people online. With each influencer promoting the event to their audience through social media and email campaigns, more traffic goes to the content, and SAPs brand awareness and sales increase.

Advantages of B2B and B2C Influencer Marketing, and why it leads to more sales and impressions.

True Engagement.

One of the advantages influencer marketing has is that your audience is more likely to engage with your content. In the example of SAP, the audience is watching that video to learn from top Chief Executives and experts in their field.

Halo Effect

When a Chief Executive with an engaged audience online promotes a product, the audience will trust that product more. All because the audience trusts in that influencer. As long as the influencer is authentic and matches your brand, this is an effective method of promoting it.

Lower Production Costs

In many cases, influencer marketing can be very cost-effective. If you decide to pay an influencer to promote your product or service, you don’t need to pay for your production to promote this product, only the influencer’s promotion price. As well as this, you can avoid paying a recurring fee for digital ads to reach your audience.

Repurposed content

When repurposing your content to promote your brand, it rarely seems authentic. Using repurposed influencer content feels more genuine to your audience and provides more engaging content.

Immune to Adblock

Adblock is the ultimate kryptonite to many digital ad campaigns. With influencer marketing, you can avoid promoting your brand when uninvited to the screen of your audience. Through the channels your content is being distributed, the audience is more inclined to learn about your brand. Whether that is either written or visual content.

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