Influencer marketing just works. Part of the reason for that is that it taps into the phenomenon of social proof, in which we trust what other people say about brands more than we trust what brands say about themselves. On top of that, influencers spend years building an audience and earning trust, and working with them can provide a handy little shortcut if you’re unwilling (or unable) to put the work in yourself.
In today’s day and age, there’s no need for us to convince you of the value of influencer marketing. After all, the chances are that you’ve already made a purchase because of one, even if you’ve just clicked an affiliate link on your favourite blog or checked out a creator’s merchandise.
Driving purchases is just one of the many benefits that come from having a comprehensive Instagram influencer marketing strategy. In fact, even though we’ve listed ten benefits, don’t make the mistake of thinking that they’re the only advantages. If you don’t believe us, just give it a try for yourself and measure the results.
10 Reasons Why You Need Influencers on Instagram
1. It Increases Your Reach
One of the main reasons why people choose to work with influencers is the fact that they already have an established audience. This means that any content that they create will automatically be seen by a large number of people without the need for additional advertising costs.
2. It Boosts Engagement
Influencers spend a lot of time interacting with their followers, to the point at which 40% of millennials say that their favourite influencer understands them better than their friends. This means that when you work with an influencer, you’re automatically going to receive more engagement than if you simply posted something from a corporate account.
3. It Saves On Content Creation Costs
When an influencer is creating content, there’s no need for expensive film shoots or hours of resources from copywriters and graphic designers. Some brands get nervous about handing creative control over to an influencer, but the key to influencer marketing is to trust them. If you’re worried about what they might create, perhaps they’re not the right influencer for you.
4. It Improves Your Return On Investment
When most people talk about the Instagram influencer marketing cost and how time consuming it can be, they forget that it has a dramatic impact on your return on investment. That’s because of the three factors mentioned above, which effectively mean that you only pay once for content creation and content distribution.
5. It Helps You To Reach Your Niche
Unless you’re working with an international superstar like Kim Kardashian, the chances are that your influencers specialise in a certain niche. This is good news for marketers, because it means that they can be sure that they’re reaching the people that they want to reach. If you’re a fantasy author and you work with an influencer who reads and reviews fantasy novels, for example, then you’re automatically going to get a warm reception.
6. It Enhances Social Proof
Social proof is the idea that we trust what our friends and family say about a product or a service more than we trust what the company says. We see social proof in action every time we check reviews or ask our friends for a hotel recommendation. Working with an influencer is a great way to tap into this concept and to come up with a marketing campaign that people trust.
7. It’s Inherently Visual
Instagram is an inherently visual social networking site, and that’s great news if you’re selling something that just looks fantastic. Of course, this can be a disadvantage if your product or service looks bad or if it has no visual element to it at all, but if anything that can help to highlight a problem that you ought to fix. Before you even get started with Instagram influencer marketing, you should start to think about what the eventual images and videos might look like.
8. It Encourages @Mentions
@mentions are increasingly important on Instagram because the site is set to deprecate the part of its API which allows third-party tools to track hashtags. This will make it harder to track branded campaigns and is the reason that many people are turning to @mention tracking instead. The problem is that it’s not always easy to get people who are talking about a brand to specifically tag them in the conversation, but influencer marketing can be a great way to get the conversation started.
9. It Fosters Creativity
Let’s face it: it’s hard to keep coming up with new ideas, even when you’re a professional and it’s your job to do so. The good news is that working with Instagram influencers allows you to harness their creativity too, and marketers often find themselves pleasantly surprised by the direction that an influencer chooses to go in. It’s never a bad idea to get a second pair of eyes.
10. It Makes Your Brand More Fun
Ultimately, working with influencers helps to humanise your brand and to make it a little bit more fun. As hard as it is to quantify how “fun” a company is, working with influencers is a sure fire way to improve the sentiment that people show towards you. This is especially true if you mix influencer marketing with a campaign that allows their audience to get involved. Make sure that you do a little research beforehand to see whether that’s something that they’d be interested in, though.
What’s Next?
Now that you understand the value of Instagram influencer marketing and you’ve seen some of the main reasons why it’s worth doing, the next step is for you to put what you’ve learned into action.
Get started with influencer marketing if you haven’t already and be sure to measure the impact on your bottom line. After all, there’s no single marketing technique that works for everyone, and you’ll need to monitor your ROI to know whether it makes sense for you.
Still, influencer marketing is a vital tool in any marketer’s toolkit, and you’d be crazy not to at least give it a try. And remember that once the content has been created, you can use tools like Miappi to create visual galleries of influencer-led UGC and even to display it at the point of purchase. Good luck.
