Influence. Engage. Repeat.

A whopping 122 Million people in India use browsers with in-built adblockers in India. Today, Adblocking has grown by almost 90% as compared to 2015. This just goes to show how much people hate receiving unwarranted ads, relevant or not! However, this resentment towards such forms of advertising has created an alternate medium of creating touch points with customers. This medium is cool, quirky, organic and, if done right, ensures that the customer isn’t left with that nasty after-taste of a ‘shameless-plug’. Influencer Marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead ‘inspire’ influencers to get out the word for you. It is the process of building relations with the people who can build relations for you.

To put it crudely - Influencers influence! Influencers are those figures whose subject-matter expertise, reach, and sway can be a huge asset to your overall target marketing strategies. The audience that these influencers cater to follow their every move because these influencers are real people with authentic opinions, thoughts and beliefs. Associating one’s brand with influencers through social digital marketing strategies guarantees that the brand is perceived positively with an added feeling of genuineness. It is best that a brand uses digital marketing experts, agencies or other digital media marketing companies who can tie up with mid-level influencers like bloggers who have a smaller but often more loyal audience. Such tie-ups are tested to have driven 16 times more engagement than ‘mega influencers’. Around 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. A mere 33% trust ads. This is primarily because consumers want authenticity from brands that they use or interact with. Once you can add a little bit of thought and direction, influencer marketing can be used to share entire experiences of brands and products that are way more engaging than flashy adverts.

Nowadays, each brand is out there measuring social media ROI. How to measure social media ROI depends on what the specific goals of such strategies are. At its core, social media ROI is what a brand or organisation receives from the time, money, efforts and resources that are directed in influencer marketing. Here are a few tips to maximise the ROI of such affiliations.

• Identify the topics of influence that cater to your target audience.
• Vet the influencers who fit perfectly with your brand. Analyse the content quality, reach, engagement and an alignment of values & tone with your brand
• Create a mutually beneficial relationship with these influencers. Influencer Marketing is the process of building relationships with the right people, to reach the right people.
• Test the Resonance of the influencers. Analyse the ROI and the impact of such associations with the traction that they are able to generate for your brand.

Influencer marketing isn’t something that you need to deploy as a growth hack. From start-ups to the biggest names around, everyone realises the potential of Influencer Marketing. Take the example of Nike. A sports brand with over a billion followers, and million dollar budgets, opted for everyday female sports enthusiasts in their ‘Da-Da-Ding’ campaign. They branded these women as ‘Nike Athletes’ and created a ‘Nike Running Club’ whose members were all of these sports, fitness and lifestyle bloggers in the form of fitness enthusiasts. The campaign used relevant personalities who catered to a loyal base of followers and gained great recognition. Another example would be Daily Cocktails, an adult beverage company that teamed up with influential bloggers to host red carpet parties with their drinks. Because they sent branded merchandise and even a red carpet to each blogger—the content they scored was visually driven and highly engaging.

Influencer Marketing is a tool that can easily get brands the recognition they desire. Creating a message that people actually want to hear, share and speak about is key. As easy as influencer marketing makes it for brands to reach loyal, engaged and readily available customers, the strategy and message should be well thought out, planned, unique and interesting. Now, it’s your turn to influence!