The marketing world has taken a huge turn from adopting traditional means of communicating marketing goals to the digital world. And that in itself is fast degenerating into many phases, rendering concepts like Influencer Marketing to be more effective than usual online advertising. In 2017, influencers could be said to have won a larger share of the marketing communication tools over others like classic online advertising. A lot of brands moved in the direction of influencers in order to get sales for their products or patronage for their services.
Influencers are individuals that through their personal interest either by giving their opinions on particular areas or living their passion on Social Media platforms have garnered thousands or millions of followers, who are dedicated to their profiles and updates that come from them. For example, Educators, Comedians, Musicians, Artists, Active Minds, Coaches, Activists, Entertainers, Trendsetters, etc. Some of these influencers (macro-influencers) charge thousands of dollars for sponsored posts, while on the brighter side, there are micro influencers who have a significant social media following between 1,000 and 100,000 who charge as low as $137 per post.
Obviously, this new trend is not expected to come to an end anytime soon, as more and new approaches are being given to it by industry experts, and influencers too are now smart enough to build brands of their own that qualify every time to market for various brands. Likewise, platforms/marketplaces like Kashklik are being developed to bring influencers like micro influencers closer to brands that are in need of their services; this is an attempt to broaden the scope of influencer marketing.
What then are the advantages of influencer marketing over online marketing that makes it a new goldmine in the marketing business in recent years?
1. Classic Ads are blocked by AdBlockers: PageFair, in their 2017 report on adblock, included survey results of different adblocks that is growing explosively in Asia and already spreading to North America and Europe, both on Mobile and Desktop. The report shows that 615 million devices now use adblock and 380 million devices out of this are mobile devices, while 11% of the global internet population is blocking ads on the web. With these statistics, how sure are we on ROI? This is why Influencer marketing is preferable; through sponsored posts on different influencers platforms, marketing messages get to target audience without getting blocked. Marketing messages are also passed timely and are exposed to ripple effect due to the sharing options on Social Media platforms.
2. Influencer Marketing Brings Viral Effects Unlike Regular Ads: Unlike the viral effect generated from influencers, regular or classic ads do not give that. Because macro and micro influencers cut across different set of audience, and their followers in turn become advocates for them and on the long run the brands being promoted through shares, reposts and retweets, they generate viral effects for the marketing message. Sharing on Social Media does not have a defined limit, it goes on and on.
3. Lack of Trust in Classic Ads: When messages come from brands directly in form of classic ads, users get to be more skeptical about such messages because they are surely packaged by the brands, and it is obvious every client wants to tell the best stories of themselves. Unlike when these messages come from those who users can trust like influencers due to the emotional connection they have with them, leads are generated and marketing goals are achieved.
These and more, are reasons to embrace Influencer marketing for your marketing needs. Due to the affordability of micro influencer marketing, adoption of more micro influencers through a micro influencer platform like Kashklik would give a boom to your brand.