The term influencer may be modern, but the phenomenon has basically been much longer than that. Who was the first influencer? No less than the plot.
Already in the 1920s Coca Cola launched the site as one of their more prominent marketing figures – and that campaign is still ongoing today. The plot is indeed a fictitious figure and hardly anyone in the 1920s referred to the plot as an influencer.
But the purpose and effects of Coca Cola’s campaign are very similar to what we today call influencer marketing.
Globally, influencer marketing is a huge industry. One of the largest social media marketing companies, Viral Nation, is a startup that is predicted to generate more than $ 130 million in sales in 2018 alone. Although influencer marketing is now a common and popular form of marketing, it is many have no idea how it works, what it costs and why you should use it.
The influencer marking work process is very much like a traditional marketing effort. The company to be exposed must have a clear purpose and goal with the campaign. Which target audience should the campaign target – a new one or an existing one? What message is there to convey? There are a variety of factors to find out before choosing an appropriate influencer.
What, then, are the benefits of collaborating with an influencer versus a more traditional marketing campaign? For starters, an influencer has something that regular advertising usually lacks – a personality, just like you and me.
Thanks to the personal connection, an influencer can influence an audience in a completely different way than an ordinary advertising banner in, for example, an online magazine.
In addition, a prominent influencer has all the prerequisites for creating a successful campaign: a large, easily accessible audience in the form of a following and experience of creating content for a specific target group. In addition to the basic conditions, there are other obvious benefits of influencer marketing:
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Opportunity to reach new customers
Where is the target group? As society becomes increasingly digital, there is also a greater risk that the audience who wants to reach an advertising campaign will no longer read paper magazines or watch tabular television.
However, chances are they are following a popular account on Instagram or reading a blog. Regardless of where a target group exists, influencer marketing offers opportunities to reach a new audience that can in many cases be difficult to reach with other marketing methods.
Greater credibility
Most of us are more likely to consume something that we have been recommended to us by someone we know or have a relationship with. As mentioned before, many influencers’ lifestyles or interests are inspired, much because an influencer can be anyone – it can be you or me.
The personal touch that an influencer creates also gives the campaign greater credibility.
Measurable campaigns
Measuring the effect of a campaign in a daily newspaper is problematic. It goes without saying. But it is also becoming increasingly difficult to evaluate digital marketing as, among other things, ad-blockers make the opportunities for a statistical basis more difficult.
This problem is not found in influencer marketing because all social media platforms have built-in statistics tools. Many influencers also work with custom-built portals to easily measure the effects of each campaign. Then it is easy to see how large the audience the campaign has reached, how many who have engaged and how many who have bought the product or service.
In many countries, the majority of the population use their mobile phones every day, which places higher demands on everyone with a digital presence to adapt to mobile surfing habits. Marketing follows the same trend – there is no reason not to explore new opportunities to be seen and heard!
