What is Influencer Marketing, and Why Does it Matter?

Influencer marketing is nearly ubiquitous in the world of marketing — but it wasn’t always that way. While people like celebrities have always had influence, the term “influencer” didn’t enter our vocabularies until the blogging boom about 15 years ago. Along with social media, influencer marketing has exploded in popularity across both business to customer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) spaces. Why? Because it works.

What is influencer marketing?

Essentially, influencer marketing is a figure on social media who collaborates with brands to sell their products or services to the people who consume their content. This is typically associated with the biggest content creators on a social media app posting videos of them using a product or service and talking about how great it is and why their followers need this product or service. It can also come in the form of a YouTuber stopping mid-video to tell you about a service you should use and their special code to enter to get money off. But, while the norm is giant creators doing influencer marketing, someone doesn’t actually have to have a huge following to be successful in influencer marketing, it’s more about their ability to build an authentic, engaged community that trusts their recommendations. 

Why does influencer marketing matter?

In short, it matters because it has changed how businesses will market their products and services forever. This is due to a couple of main reasons. First, it’s relatively cheap. Paying an influencer one time to make a video talking about your product or service that you can use forever is significantly cheaper than paying for an entire advertising campaign that will feel out of date in a few months. Influencer marketing is also an easy way for brands to build trust and drive sales. By working with an influencer who already has fans that trust them, the fans trust your products by association because they trust the influencer they follow. Fans also want to have the same products as their favorite influencers so they’re going to buy the products recommended to them. Lastly, influencer marketing is important because any size brand or type of business can benefit by using this technique. While the most popular examples are for makeup brands and skin care, nearly every business (especially small to mid-sized ones) can benefit from real people sharing real stories about their product or service.

Interested in finding out what marketing works best for your business, or how you can properly utilize influencer marketing? Contact us to see how we can help!