Influencer marketing is all the rage these days as people are willing to listen to them more than traditional advertisements.
Collaborating with influencers can bring about brand recognition, build a loyal community, and put your brand out there in the market. However, most marketers are at a crossroads when it comes to influencer marketing as they are not yet sure of its results.
Therefore, we cannot help but wonder what exactly it is that stops companies from collaborating and what marketers think about influencer marketing.
We outreached our community of marketers and asked them what their opinion is.
Here is what we asked and what their responses were:
How important is the role of influencer marketing for any business?
Community’s Take On Influencer Marketing
Matt Barnett
Founder and CEO of Bonjoro
“I firmly believe that influencers have their place in any business. Many companies, especially B2C, can benefit from hiring an influencer, as their endorsements can lead to massive engagements, which we all saw many times. Sometimes, hiring influencers can be the fastest way to reach a high number of people, some of which could be your potential customers.
While massive influencers can’t usually only reach your target audience, they can create a considerable word-of-mouth buzz that can positively influence your company.
Also, influencer marketing is probably the most cost-effective way to improve your brand value, which is I believe deserves its rightful place in today’s business world.“
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Daniel Snow
CEO and Co-founder of The Snow Agency
“The role of influencer marketing is vital for any business. We have a great deaI of experience working with influencers, so I know that they are great at monetizing their audience. I have gained a lot of insight from them. Influencers can definitely help with content marketing and campaigns.”
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Alina Clark
Co-Founder of CocoDoc
“Influencer marketing is an indispensable factor to promote the brand of business and increase the trust of the customers about your store. You know, any customer also wants to buy the product or the service at a reputable store. So using influencer marketing for the business is very necessary.
Influencer Marketing can help you improve your revenue, develop brand awareness, increase your social influence, and much more.
Besides, there is another advantage when you use Influencer Marketing: you do not need to have a large budget – the most important thing is that you need to find out how to do it, have an effective Influencer Marketing plan, and choose the “True” Influencer for the campaign.
Connecting with influencers in your field is intended to increase interactivity and trust in the product. Top influencers in the field can help you reach out to more targeted customers. They can lead people to believe in your brand by connecting you with people who care about them.
The result: you can sell more products, gain the trust of the user, spread the message PR quickly. And whether you are a large or small business, you should use Influencer Marketing. It will increase the level of access.”
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Genesis Gutierrez
Blogger at Daily Genesis
“It gives individuals an idea of the kind of person who uses set products you’re promoting. The face of the influencer and what they do and who they are attract whatever product they are promoting.
People who buy a product are buying it based on who they want to be or what they want to do. When someone follows an influencer, they are interested in what they do and what kind of life they have.
Therefore, if they see an influencer who meditates everyday, workouts, focus on mental wellness, and uses an essential oil company in their everyday routine, someone interested in following that lifestyle will also want to buy that essential oil. The result of that will increase the company’s sales.”
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Michael Hammelburger
CEO of The Bottom Line Group
“Millennials are by nature, true digital natives, and they’ve learned to know which brands to trust and which ones to avoid. They understand how brands are marketing to them so they approach campaigns not with full enthusiasm but with scrutiny if the message is authentic, if the product or service is valuable, and if the brand isn’t too pushy.
Because of this, the best way to market to them by businesses that the ongoing pandemic has impacted is to avoid being overly aggressive and straight-in-your-face.
It’s the reason why influencer marketing has become big business in the first place. Startups, most especially, can tap micro influencers so they can improve their PR campaigns at a lesser cost.“
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Kelly Stanze
Manager of Marketing & Communications at KURU Footwear
“Influencer marketing can be a valuable channel in any marketing mix, but its impact depends on many variables. Your specific products or services, your industry, your brand voice, your existing customer base, potential customer base, and so much more should factor into your planning process for influencer marketing.
Understanding your core audience, and fringe audiences in which you want to grow, is vital. Without some goals in mind and great insight into what audiences you’re wanting to reach, it can be a huge shot in the dark.
However, when the right intelligence on your consumers are paired with the right influencer partners, the channel can yield hearty returns. The benefits of influencer partnerships go far beyond just the value of the added exposure. There are SEO benefits to the social cues and backlinks generated through partnerships.
There are often halo effects in other marketing channels when influencer marketing allows new audiences to be exposed to your brand. Often, influencer partnerships can yield new followers on your native social channels and email lists, as well — and the value of having new potential customers opted into your communication on social media and email is priceless.“
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Kate MacDonnell
CMO at Coffee Affection
“Influencer marketing is more important than ever. Back in the day, getting famous athletes and actors to endorse products was effective, but influencer marketing now reaches an even bigger audience. So many people live online, following hundreds of influencers – whether on YouTube, Instagram, or elsewhere.
An influencer even just casually mentioning your product or company as something they like or use will have an immediate and measurable effect. I’ve often found there to be a sort of ripple effect with influencer marketing as well. First, the audience of the influencer buys the product or service, then their friends and family and so on.“
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Sonya Schwartz
Founder at Her Norm
“As a founder, influencer marketing makes you a more trustworthy brand if you are a small or big company. Nowadays, people are wiser in choosing where to spend their money. They listen to feedback first before coming up with a decision.
Influencer marketing makes them trust a brand more. They have this thinking, She will not promote it if it’s a failed product. making them confident in purchasing the product. It also spread brand awareness for those who have limited access to information and use only social media to be their primary source of information.“
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Michelle Devani
Founder at Love Devani
“As someone who is working in the digital industry, I know how marketing works. In this generation, collaborating with the influencers has become one of the most trending strategies companies use in order to promote their brands.
Influencers like vloggers/bloggers/celebrities are the ones who are most in demand when it comes to collaboration. Since they have generated many followers and subscribers on their respective social media channels, marketing teams are conniving and trying hard to get their attention to promote their products or services.
Either they give them free products for some time, or pay them talent fees in exchange for the promotion. Indeed, influencers are one of the most useful tools in today’s marketing generation.“
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April Maccario
Founder at AskApril
“With the different marketing strategies that every business implements, influencer marketing has been the most effective strategy in today’s time. As a business owner myself, influencer marketing is very important because people nowadays idolize influencers and are being influenced by the brands they use.
This leads to generating leads and prospects for your business which is the importance and main goal of this marketing strategy. That’s why there are so many brands that collaborate with influencers to also gain popularity.“
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Jacob Sapochnick
Founder at Sapochnick Law Firm
“As both a social media influencer and business owner, my thoughts about Influencer Marketing are it will boost the brand’s popularity, increase audience participation, and improve sales. Influencer marketing is a form of advertising in which powerful individuals wield power over potential customers. Celebrities are often chosen as points of reference in most of these situations due to their popularity and significant impact.
Here are the most reasons why Influencer Marketing plays an important role in your business: You can reach more audiences. This is a fantastic way to reach out to new clients. Choosing an influencer with a potential audience encourages your campaign/message/product to be heard by people who are going to be involved in what you have to say and connect with you.
Influencers gain customer’s trust. Consumers most trust influencers’ content and reviews. As an influencer, I completely agree; I’ve seen a lot of people buy the things I’ve recommended.”
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Carla Diaz
Co-Founder at BroadbandSearch
“The Importance of Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is very important for any business because it helps you to create a stronger connection with your consumers.
When you pick the right influencer, whom people trust, you’re essentially putting your product/service in front of an already trusting audience and leveraging the trust that the influencer has built with that audience to improve your business’ reputation.
Of course, you’ll need to pick the right influencer with an audience who are actually going to want to interact with your brand, but the gist of it is that influencer marketing has a lot of potential to help you grow and improve your business and your customer base.“
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Martin Seeley
Chief Executive Officer at MattressNextDay
“Looking for the best person to endorse your products and the whole company as a whole involves a lot of consideration, after all, they have to embody the values and advocacies your brand stands for. Influencers for instance can encourage their followers to support a brand, and in return, the brand benefits from the influencers’ endorsement.
Influencers are often experts in their fields, making them genuine endorsers as they tend to give honest reviews and promote their lifestyle as a brand. Often, they are sometimes the voice of a certain demographic. However, it is not enough to be popular to become an influencer, you have to have a genuine brand and lifestyle to increase your integrity as a person worth following.
Businesses and organizations can greatly benefit from influencer marketing, but they have to be sure that the influencer they collaborate with can bring value to their reputation and increase consumer trust.”
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Samantha Moss
Editor & Content Ambassador at Romantific
“Influencer Marketing is one marketing strategy that has continuously grown in popularity over the years. And this marketing strategy is slowly becoming a favorite for business owners and digital marketers alike. And I think this is for good reason because, as a content ambassador, I think this can help businesses in many different ways. Especially now that it has become harder to get consumer attention, and many consumers have become skeptical buyers.
Influencers have a huge following and a wide reach. This makes influencers really helpful to businesses when it comes to increasing brand visibility and boosting brand awareness. Also, influencers have devoted and loyal fan communities who trust their opinions. So influencer marketing is really a huge help to businesses in strengthening their credibility and gaining consumer trust.”
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Ryan Smith
Founder of Ant and Garden Organic Pest Control
“Influencer promoting is when influencers make a significant and important substance relating to a specific product, item, or campaign. Influencers are often genuine customers who have inside and out information about certain subjects. This gives them specific influence and engages them to inspire their followers to purchase a particular product.
This strategy is compelling as it was tracked down that 49% of individuals depend on influencer suggestions whenever they make a purchase decision. Likewise, 40% of individuals say they’ve bought a thing on the web after seeing it used by an influencer via online media destinations like Instagram, Twitter, Vine, or YouTube.“
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Nate Tsang
Founder & CEO at WallStreetZen
“Influencer marketing offers one of the best ROIs in digital marketing today. You can gain access to an audience who likely aren’t available on most other channels and put a lot of trust into the influencers they follow.
You can partner with the mega-influencers with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers or niche down with a nano-influencer who has just a few thousand motivated fans. There’s still a lot of growth in the influencer marketing channel, and it will only grow as mistrust in advertising becomes more prevalent.“
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Chris Laan
Founder at DesignerSheds
“The thing about influencer marketing is that it’s very hands-on. You’re negotiating a marketing plan with the individual, and you have to understand and speak to their needs for a successful partnership to blossom.
Don’t look at influencer marketing as a one-time deal. Yes, you can get results by paying for one promotional post, but you’ll do better by building a relationship with them and gaining insight into what their fans want. If they like your product or service, they may even promote it for free. That’s why finding the right influencer is critical to success in this marketing channel.”
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Reuben Yonatan
Founder & CEO at GetVoIP
“Influencer marketing has become more critical over the years. Now, any business can find an influencer in their industry. There are B2B influencers, tech influencers, home services influencers… You name it, you can find someone with an engaged audience.
It’s not just Instagram, either. There are influencers on LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, and probably some more niche social media sites you aren’t aware of.
Influencer-focused agencies can effectively connect you with the right individual to work with for a paid post. Like any marketing, you need to be data-driven and have a way to tell what your return on investment is. It only works if you put in the effort—the influencer helps, but it’s still your marketing project.”
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Paige Arnof-Fenn
Founder & CEO at Mavens & Moguls
“My best tip for a successful influencer marketing campaign is to utilize a mix of influencer types. Instead of just focusing on the most popular/branded individual influencers, include internal experts, micro-influencers, niche experts, prospects, and customers in your influencer marketing mix. Getting multiple perspectives and insights permanently enriches the discussion and generates more activity online.
When I started my marketing career in 1990, there was no social media and brands had to pay a lot of money to celebrities to endorse their products. Today small businesses can successfully advertise and promote their brands online without spending tons on traditional media by leveraging the internet and online marketing.
Research shows that peers and influencers carry more weight today with consumers than paid endorsements. This is great news for organizations that can¹t afford to shell out the big bucks for fancy ads or a celebrity campaign. Instead, those brands might be better served by working with micro-influencers who offer smaller follower counts but post around niche interests, leading to more meaningful one-on-one connections with audience members.
Input from the brand should flow seamlessly with their other content, which comes down to an understanding of micro-influencers¹ core messaging, with brands seeking to match campaign posts with the micro-influencer¹s usual look and feel. It should not feel like a paid opportunity, slapping on the #ad to a post. You want to give them the freedom to create their content but ensure it¹s still getting the message across.“
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Sharon Van Donkelaar
CMO at Expandi
“Influencer marketing is crucial for businesses nowadays since it’s a more subtle and effective marketing strategy than the regular advertising methods we grew accustomed to.
Influencers can create more leads for companies through their personality and lifestyle rather than through the product/service itself since they are not modeling faces used as amplifiers of the brand’s message but separate entities that choose to promote their products/services because they’re simply amazing.
In essence, pairing your business with social media influencers is the best way for your business to reach larger and different kinds of targets with minimum effort, but most importantly, it helps you gain trust for your company, so we can freely say that influencer marketing is a truly indispensable strategy nowadays.”
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Mika Kujapelto
CEO & Founder at LaptopUnboxed
“Hand selecting the right influencers can help you develop trust with your customers since customers are more prone to trusting influencers than other marketing strategies.
Use influencers who have already supported your
business somehow because it will be more authentic to your customers when the influencer later promotes your products. The influencers will be more genuine and passionate when discussing your business, reflecting positively on your business.
However, most companies should *establish ambassador programs to have them vetted and protect your brand* because not every influencer can be 100% trusted.
Influencers can also be your employees. They can gain more* trust and loyalty to your business since customers want to see more realistic experiences associated with your business. Ensure they’re promoting your
interaction through how-to videos or tutorials that won’t hinder their personality since you don’t want it to come off as ingenuine to your customers.”
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Teri Shern
Co-Founder at Conex Boxes
“Influencer Marketing – Is It Important?: I don’t believe influencer marketing fits all businesses. There are specific industries that influencer marketing itself doesn’t quite fit into, whether that be the style of influencer marketing or the way the audience perceives influencers.
With that being said, if you can find that there is a demand for influencer marketing within your industry (or if you can adjust your product’s market positioning accordingly), then influencer marketing can be a great tool for effectively connecting with a sustainable audience.
You are, after all, marketing to these consumers through a reputable source that has those consumers’ active attention, and there isn’t much that beats that in terms of marketing.“
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Eden Cheng
Co-Founder at WeInvoice
“Influencer marketing is an inevitable factor in facilitating your business brand and enhancing your store’s customers’ faith.
You must know any potential customer who wants to purchase the product or service from a branded store needs to be influenced first by seeing your service. Therefore, irrespective of the platform, influencer marketing can
help add more potential clients to your bucket list as they are considered the best influencers as people they have trust in.
A study showcased that it was highly effective by 92% of the respondents, and other 86% were also desirous of dedicating a definite budget for their top-notch influencer marketing campaigns.”
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Avner Brodsky
CEO & Co-Founder at Superwatches
“The role of influencers will grow as social media use increases.
In recent years, social media users worldwide have increased. On average, around the world, each person now uses social media for 2 hours and 25 minutes each day. Global social network penetration is now 54 percent, and social media’s impact on people’s online and offline behavior is evident in current events. Key actors in this milieu are social media influencers, whose roles will continue to grow. Research estimates that by 2022, influencer marketing will be worth $15 billion.
Social media influencers engage audiences on a personal level.
Influencers, primarily the micro (under-100,000 followers) and the nano (under 10,000 followers), are essential for a brand because of their ability to reach their target audience and engage them in a personal way.
Micros and nanos appeal to the fastest-growing demographic
In addition, micro-and nano-influencers are particularly effective in reaching the fastest-growing audience demographic – the Gen Z – who seem to be looking more to people they can genuinely relate to and who are perceived to be “authentic.” This doesn’t mean they have to be celebrities in a traditional sense.”
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Aaron Haynes
CEO of Loganix
“Influencer marketing is extraordinary and essential in today’s age. Influencers know their target audience well, which provides massive value to businesses.
Influencer marketing also plays an important role when it comes to content strategy. Content created by influencers can always be repurposed, and it’s something we regularly do in SEO and other digital marketing campaigns.“
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Ben Reynolds
CEO and Founder of Sure Dividend
“Investing your money in micro-influencer marketing can help you reduce marketing costs and connect you to your target audience. Micro-influencers might not have a large following, but this gives you a significant advantage by their close engagement with their audience. Engagement and response rate* is crucial since it indicates how influential the influencers will be with their followers.
When you choose ones that have an audience that matches your target customer, you can gain customers who might be more interested in buying your products or services.
When you use a micro-influencer, you’re not only saving money and profiting from it. *It’s also like investing because you’re protecting your business against the risk of loss by working with several micro-influencers. If you’re investing all your influential marketing budget on one influencer; you might end up with little to no results.
*Therefore, influencer marketing can be a helpful marketing strategy that will help you reach more customers interested in your niche and create more trust in your business when a trusted influencer endorses your company.”
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Saurabh Wani
Content Marketing Associate at Automate
“Influencer marketing is one of the channels that has been in action for the past few years. This is an experimental channel that has been a boon to a few industries like social media.
But this is not the only way your business can grow. Influencers promoting your product will give you an extra push to bring in some warm leads. But at the same time, the old marketing channels like cold calling, sales outreach, email marketing, content generation, affiliate marketing, etc., are to be considered.
In my opinion, Influencing marketing is one the most important channel for marketing, but it is *not* the only channel.”
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Iqra Azhar
Founder of Slay Collective
“I believe influencer marketing is just as important as content marketing or other forms of paid advertising. Influencers have spent years developing trust in natural ways.
If you align yourself and collaborate with the right influencer, it can take your business from startup to well-known and established. It depends on your business goals, though, and other basics in place such as your website, business model, line of products/services, etc.
The collaboration often pays for itself and brings you, future customers, too, just from influencer content creation. Some brands choose to make a certain well-performing influencers year-round ambassadors and pay them affiliate fees under exclusive contracts, and that really builds their audience and sales fast and well.
It is no surprise that there are companies around the world hiring for influencer managers and directors.
Influencer marketing is not the only way to grow your brand, but it can be a great option especially if you have specific target audiences to reach that are on certain platforms over others.”
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Liam Fallen
Founder at LiamFallen
“Influencer marketing definitely plays an important part in any marketing campaign but it should only be used in conjunction with other strategies.
For example, If you’re an e-commerce store looking to gain exposure using influencers, you should use that window of opportunity to grow your newsletter signups or to share coupons to encourage people to return etc.
Influencer marketing can definitely get eyes on your products but ensuring you keep them there is what’s important.”
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Abby Ha
Head of Marketing & Business Development at WellPCB
“Influencer marketing is important for any business that wants to survive online. At least, that’s the consensus that I’ve found in my quest to learn more about how brand owners leverage this technology to improve visibility and increase sales.
There are so many benefits to using influencers, and I’ve outlined a few that will show you exactly why this technique is so effective.
Increase traffic to your website
This is probably one of the biggest reasons why influencer marketing is being used by companies worldwide. Data has shown that people trust recommendations from their peers, family members, and friends more than they trust advertising or marketing techniques brought forth by brands. If you can find an influencer who is respected by your target audience, you can leverage his or her influence to help you increase traffic to your website.
Influencer marketing is a great way to tell your story to your customer base. You see, all these social influencers out there are quite literally creating content daily, and that means your brand can get in front of your target market uniquely and memorably.
Huge Reach
Influencers have a considerable reach globally as many people rely on their opinions before making any decisions. They have a substantial following and influence to get your ideal target clients to notice your business. This is because most people tend to trust these influencers. Influencers are your key to achieving massive exposure for your business. Additionally, you don’t pay a lot of money for this exposure because you can collaborate with influencers.
If you haven’t already, you should consider influencer marketing because it allows brands to connect with a new audience that’s relevant to them.
Influencer marketing is more effective than traditional forms of marketing like TV ads or newspaper articles because marketers can reach the people they want to target rather than going through a third party. The fact is that influencers have built-in audiences, and they know how to leverage that following. Influencers can create authentic stories around brand content that attract a certain kind of follower.”
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Tarun Gurang
Digital Marketing Expert at TheStockDork
“Without any doubt, influencer marketing is the latest & trending marketing technique at the moment for any business. The foremost reason is due to an influence to whom you are selecting to do marketing i.e. collaborating to promote the product or service.
Because an influencer has already established a targeted audience that you are seeking for your business to get aware of your product or service, i.e., to increase the brand. You don’t need to do traditional marketing like SEO, PPC, etc., and don’t need to wait for a long time.
This influence marketing will give you an instant result with guaranteed results. This will provide you with 2x more leads/sales to your business compared to other marketing strategies. The only disadvantage of this is that the larger an influencer has followers, the costlier his/her charges. However, it is still beneficial and worth it for your business if done correctly.“
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Eric Holguin
Brand Ambassador at Herrman and Herrman PLLC
“Although influencer marketing is not essential to business, influencer marketing can be a valuable tool for any business. Influencers offer an authentic backing to a target audience through their expertise and connection to that audience. Influencers are typically trusted by their following and can expand a brand’s reach.
Influencer’s content endorsing a brand is also easy to repurpose for advertising and digital marketing. Influencer marketing can also boost social media engagement and even search engine ranking. Still, working with the wrong influencers can have negative results. Macro, micro, and nano-influencer marketing are valuable options for businesses and will continue to gain relevance throughout 2021.“
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That’s all for this post. We would also love to hear what you think about this topic. Let us know in the comments below!
