Currently, beyond building business-consumer relationships, companies prefer to establish human-to-human relationships. Relationship marketing and inbound marketing are the main disciplines that promote this philosophy as an effective alternative to breakthrough advertising. Influencers, being people who have great credibility in one or several topics and have a significant number of followers either on social networks, blogs and/or websites, are an ideal bridge to build that consumer-brand relationship.
The majority of Internet and social media users trust the opinions of influencers because they are people who, like them, want to have an unforgettable experience with the purchase of a product and/or service. Therefore, any brand that this person recommends will be valued immediately, since in itself, a much more authentic connection and receptivity is generated, as it is a person who is recommending something.
Imagine how much the reach of that publication could be, if the person who recommends it has a great influence on their followers. Surely a recommendation that comes from you guarantees a successful purchase and high positioning.
The role of the influencer
Influencers seek to build a personal branding that allows them to characterize, with clear objectives, the messages they want to transmit, the audience they want to address, the environment in which they want to operate, etc. Opinion leaders have shown us that companies are not the unique ones that can create commercial brands and personal branding is a perfect example of this. This term focuses its origin on the power that digital platforms have had to promote opinion leaders who turn their communities of followers into their largest market.
Influencers have typically earned the recognition and credibility of large communities. Your publications must be frequent, of quality and with a great value proposition behind them. Influencers are built by adding: personal brand, trust and experience.
What platforms do influencers use?
Nowadays, influencers could be classified both by social networks and by contract conditions. Usually, the channels most used by this group of people are YouTube and Instagram. Through this first social network, they share much more specific experiences and stories that they have lived with brands in vlog formats. On the other hand, Instagram has further accentuated the relationship between brand and influencers by placing a label that indicates “sponsored by”, which accompanies the publication of these users.
In a context in which it is becoming mandatory for influencers to indicate when a photo on Instagram is sponsored and is part of an advertising contract, this company has taken this step in a bid to offer greater transparency between content creators, brands and communities.
The impact of influencers on social networks
An Influencer‘s opinion for their followers is much more credible than any advertising or marketing campaign. In addition, their publications have a greater effect and sometimes even decisive. Let’s analyze for a moment the case of Kylie Jenner and Snapchat.
Kylie Jenner is a young entrepreneur who founded her own makeup brand and since then, has had a high global reach. On Instagram she has 110 million followers and on Twitter 25.6 million, that is, she has a very large audience that is constantly interacting with her publications.
On February 21, 2018, Kylie made a tweet that cost Snapchat $1.3 billion, posting, “Is someone else not using Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… this is very sad. The company had a 6% drop in the stock market that day and received a series of criticisms as a result of this controversial statement.
This case shows us how an opinion leader could even alter the economic growth of a solid company, with a long positive performance in the market. In other words, the impact of influencers on social networks is both a positive and negative reality, depending on the customer experience that person has.
Despite this, hiring an influencer for your brand can have great benefits, such as:
- Generate the opinion you want about your brand or product. Since their messages will aim to be positive, always highlighting the benefits and advantages of your products and/or services. This is a happy customer who will constantly be posting how satisfied they are with their new purchase.
- They help you connect with your buyer personas, that is, with your ideal buyers. As it is an audience that is related to your brand’s value proposition, this influencer will bring you closer to your target audience. Influencers usually segment their audience very well according to the content they want to transmit. If we take as an example, an influencer whose publications have to do with eating healthy and exercising, a brand of sports clothing and nutritional supplements would surely be your greatest ally.
- It makes your advertising less intrusive and more friendly. It is not an advertisement that is visually disruptive, but rather it is an accurate recommendation in relation to a product that, within the correct audience, represents an excellent solution to a problem.
In this sense, influencers have played a very important role in digital marketing by powerfully increasing the sales and web positioning of companies that have connected with their interests. Beyond an advertising contract, an influencer is a satisfied customer who motivates other people to know, buy, and your products and/or services. Influencer marketing is without a doubt a trend that is increasing more and more and that in the near future, will become one of the main promotion channels for brands.
