We talk a lot about different marketing strategies on the Intentionally Inspirational blog. While many components make a great marketing campaign, a specific strategy stands out in terms of the ability to gain brand awareness. As well as building a new customer base and driving more sales. Have you considered influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing has become a massive industry over the last few years. It’s rise coincided with the rise in social media marketing. Many brands now consider influencer marketing an essential part of their overall marketing strategy. With 16% of them using this strategy in 2019.

But what is influencer marketing? Why is it so powerful? And how do businesses use it?

In this article, we’re going to go through a few reasons why influencer marketing is so powerful. We’ll show real-world examples of how it has helped grow businesses and how companies use it as part of their marketing strategy. 

What is it?

Influencer marketing is where companies pay people with large social media followings to promote products or services. 

People with a large number of followers on social media are considered “influencers”. They collaborate with certain brands to help the brands promote their products and services to a broader audience. 

The influencer marketing industry has grown significantly in the past few years. It’s now predicted to grow to $15 billion in the next two years. This shows how important this marketing strategy has become to many different brands and marketers. 

But what makes influencer marketing so powerful?

Reasons why it is powerful

One reason why influencer marketing is so powerful is its return on investment. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, businesses get an average return of $18. 

This 18:1 ratio is massive and beats the average marketing ROI of 5:1 and the “outstanding” 10:1 rate. Depending on the type of brand and market sector, businesses could see figures even higher than this. That is if the right strategy is implemented. 

Research has also shown the impact influencer marketing has on consumers. Rakuten Marketing found that 8 out of 10 people had bought a product that they had seen being used or recommended by an influencer. 

It’s also important to realize that, before making purchasing decisions, many consumers turn to social media to see if a particular product or service is right for them. 

So it’s vital to have a social media presence with the help of trusted influencers. They will help build brand awareness and allow customers to find what a product/service is like. 

Companies that use it

Many companies, big and small, use influencer marketing as a key part of their marketing strategies. But some of the best examples include Amazon and Gymshark.

Amazon uses influencer marketing to promote Audible. Audible is their audiobook app with a massive library of books. The screenshot below shows an example of a social media influencer reviewing Audible. The influencer gives a full review of the app, showing both the pros and cons, how to use it, etc. 

Amazon’s campaigns manage to total over 80 million campaign views from a combined audience base of over 130 million. This inevitably led to a huge number of conversions, with many people downloading the Audible free trial or subscribing instantaneously. 

Another brand that recently made headlines was Gymshark. Gymshark is a fitness clothing brand that grew by 20x in 5 years to become a billion-dollar company. A key element to Gymshark’s exponential growth was its collaborations with fitness influencers. 

Initially, the founders of the fitness brand would contact various social media influencers and send them Gymshark clothes for free. This resulted in many big-name fitness influencers supporting the clothing on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and more. 

Since then, Gymshark has continued its influencer strategy, working with prominent sporting figures, like the professional boxer, Ryan Garcia, and many professional fitness influencers on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Influencer marketing is undoubtedly one of the most significant factors that made Gymshark quickly become a “Unicorn” company — a privately held company with a valuation of over $1 billion. 

Look at how you can use it

You must look at your business’s current marketing strategy and see how it could use social media influencer marketing to help drive brand awareness and overall business growth. 

If you’d like to know more about using digital marketing strategies to grow your business, check out the latest posts on the Intentionally Inspirational blog.

Written by Lewis James