The New Era of Influencer Marketing
Social Media is everywhere; it’s nearly impossible to go out in public without encountering some form of social media: people taking selfies, hearing the latest buzz about the Kardashian family, people glued to their phones looking at their social media accounts, etc.. The rise of social media also brings the new era of Influencer Marketing. Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on individuals who have an influence as opposed to brands focusing on their target audience.
Content Marketing vs Influencer Marketing
Simply put, content marketing is content that brands create and distribute and influencer marketing is content that the influencers create and distribute. Generally, even, with influencer marketing, brands will provide the influencers with general guidelines and specifications for their campaign’s desired branding and content.
Why Influencer Marketing?
With traditional content marketing, when you need product shots with models, or you need to create content however with whoever that needs to look professional and on-brand – it can become quite the ordeal when you take into consideration all the things that are needed. First off, you need to find a model who’s look is aligned with your brand that will also appeal to your target audience. Then you need to get a stylist to style the model. Then you need to hire hair and makeup to achieve the look you are going for with your shoot. You will also need to hire a photographer and crew to handle lighting, post-production, and editing, etc. Adding up the cost of all these services and line items can amount to a hefty sum.
Influencers are also content creators and, for the most part, create great content which in turn attracts viewers or an audience. Generally when you hire an influencer, many, if not all, of the aforementioned services are rolled up into one bundle making influencer marketing a lot more cost effective option compared to the traditional content marketing methods. Influencers will generally already have an audience which will help with your marketing campaign’s reach as well. Influencers can help you gain credibility and generally also have their own audiences so collaborating with influencers can create a lot of synergies for your brand.
How Can Influencer Marketing Benefit My Website?
For one you can drive traffic to your website from the awareness it creates. Secondly, you can link to your social accounts and grow them and in turn link to your website from your bio etc. Think as marketing as casting the fishing net, and your website as the net itself, ready to reel in customers. Growth is on the marketing side, and the website is on the conversion side, in this case.
Get your website set up to receive your audience in the right ways from content to UX, and make sure that the user experience people have on both desktop and mobile is appropriate for the audience you’re trying to reach and retain.