8 Benefits of Influencer Marketing

1. To (be) influence(d) – an explanation of terms
2. Why Influencer Marketing works
3. For whom Influencer Marketing works
4. Finding the right platform
5. More Reach through Influencer Marketing
6. Advantages of Influencer Marketing
7. Here's why you should get started now

Influencer Marketing is not only gaining in relevance, but is already a fixed component of many successful marketing strategies. According to the Information Service of the Institute of the German Economy (iwd), in 2018 only 12 percent of German companies were willing to invest more than 100,000 Euros in Influencer Marketing. By 2020, this figure had already risen to 25 percent. According to an estimate by the Statista Advertising & Media Outlook, advertising expenditure in the Influencer Advertising segment in Germany will amount to around 477 million Euros in 2022.

 Advertising expenditure in the Influencer Advertising segment (Source: Statista)

So what exactly is Influencer Marketing and what advantages does it offer compared to other advertising measures? We'll explain it to you!

To (be) influence(d) – an explanation of terms

The term “Influencer” is derived from the English verb “influence”, meaning "to influence" in German. Influencers can therefore be defined as individuals who have an influence on others – mostly thanks to a meaningful reach in the digital world or on social networks and platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest or YouTube. But what exactly does this have to do with marketing? 

In the Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon, Prof. Dr. Frank Deges writes: “Influencer Marketing is the planning, control and monitoring of the targeted use of social media opinion leaders and multipliers to increase the value of brand messages and positively influence the purchasing behaviour of the target group.” (Source)

Influencer Marketing is therefore a marketing strategy that benefits from the influence and reach of important opinion leaders and multipliers and actively integrates them into a company's brand communication. A product is often integrated into an influencer's social media content through indirect sponsorship or direct placement. The aim is to establish this product and the brand as authentically and positively as possible with the target group. Depending on the desired goal, it can increase your own sales or your own reach. Influencer Marketing can also help to expand your own target group and tap into completely new target groups.

Influencer Marketing is far more than just classic performance marketing. It's about successful storytelling, emotional branding, engagement, high-quality content and creativity. Successfully implemented Influencer Marketing can create a long-term bond between customers and your brand.

Why Influencer Marketing works

Social Media is their home, their community is like a family – thanks to their close contact with their followers, influencers are usually shown a strong trust. This trust pays off when it comes to Influencer Marketing collaborations and product recommendations. In a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers more than one in four participants said they trusted posts by influencers. While many customers increasingly doubt classic advertising, already 29 % of German citizens have bought a product based on an influencer recommendation.

The difference to other forms of marketing therefore mainly lies with the sender. In this case, it's not you and your company, but influencers who act as private individuals from the perspective of the community – authentic and credible. Moreover, Influencer Marketing happens exactly where almost everyone is today: on social networks.

For whom Influencer Marketing works

Influencer Marketing works for (almost) every company - as early as 2018, 59 percent of companies surveyed in Germany said they were using Influencer Marketing. 24 percent at least considered integrating collaborations with influencers into their marketing strategy in the future. Especially thanks to the diverse possibilities of social networks, strategies can be developed and successfully implemented for niche topics. 

It's important to approach Influencer Marketing with the right expectations and with a fitting attitude. You should be aware that Influencer Marketing is not something that can be implemented on the side and easily - after all, there are entire agencies that specialise primarily in this form of marketing. To achieve success with Influencer Marketing, you need to have a well-thought-out Influencer-Marketing-Strategy, that matches your objectives. It is obvious that there are no miracles overnight due to ad hoc actions. You can find an overview of all practical tools that can support you in developing a goal-oriented strategy on OMR Reviews!

Finding the right platform

While Instagram, with 79 percent, remains the most important channel for Influencer Marketing, 46 % of the businesses surveyed in a survey by Influencer Marketing Hub in 2019, said they also use Facebook for the purpose of Influencer Marketing. YouTube came in third with 36 percent. 

The choice of the right platform is mainly dependent on which social network your target group primarily resides on. Furthermore, it is crucial in which industry your business operates. If you're planning to address B2B customers primarily, Influencer Marketing on LinkedIn is probably a much better choice than an Instagram collaboration. If you're in the gaming market, you'll probably find the influencers relevant to you on YouTube or Twitch, rather than on Pinterest.

More Reach through Influencer Marketing

Successful influencers reach millions of people with their contributions. Through providing links as part of a cooperation, this reach (at least in part) is also transferred to your business. If followers of your collaboration partners like your brand or your product, it is likely they will visit your social media page and ideally even follow it. In any case, an Influencer collaboration increases the visibility of your business on Social Media and helps to expand or widen your target group.

When influencers not only link your social media page, but also your website or your online shop, traffic can be generated outside of social networks through Influencer Marketing.

Advantages of Influencer Marketing

In addition to increasing your reach on Social Media, goal-oriented Influencer Marketing can help to increase your company's credibility and value, strengthen your brand identity, and expand your network. It can partly increase visibility and improve your influence in the market – often even at better conditions than traditional marketing. We have summarized eight key advantages of Influencer Marketing for you:

1. Brand awareness and image

No matter how fantastic your business or your brand are: it is easier to make them known when they are being praised by someone else. Influencer Marketing is nothing more than classic word-of-mouth – but online. They are recommendations from other people, leading to an increase in your brand awareness. After all, 71 percent of users would buy a product recommended to them on social media. 

Influencer marketing also gives you the chance to give your brand a special image. Depending on the choice of cooperation partners, type of influencer campaign or interaction with influencers and their community, you can actively influence the external perception of your company. 

2. Low Costs

In principle, the costs for an influencer campaign cannot be calculated in a lump sum. They depend on the remuneration of the respective influencer. Depending on the size of the account, many campaigns can be realized with a small marketing budget. A cooperation with so-called micro-influencers is usually relatively inexpensive and still offers several advantages: Micro-influencers, for example, appear particularly authentic to their relatively small community. Even if their reach often falls significantly short, the interaction rate between them and their community is often up to 60 percent higher than that of large macro-influencers. Thus, collaborations, depending on the objectives of your campaign, are often not less lucrative for your company – they are usually much cheaper, especially in comparison to other marketing variants or collaborations with more well-known social media personalities.

Types of influencers (Source: suxeedo)

3. Content Marketing and User Generated Content

Influencers are basically nothing more than content creators, who design and produce content for social media on your behalf. Ideally, this content can also be used for your channels, so you can save effort.

The best part: By using User Generated Content (UGC) new emotions are created for your brand – how is your company perceived from the outside and how do customers present your products and brand? UGC can help to discover your own brand from a completely new perspective and give impetus to new thoughts. Furthermore, UGC can strengthen the bond and trust of followers - after all, it's not just you, but also other people that are convinced by your product - and thus increase your authenticity.

User Generated Content doesn't have to be generated exclusively by influencers. Perhaps there are talented photographers or videographers within your community whose content you can request for your purposes. This way, you can even strengthen the bond between you and your followers without Influencer Marketing.

4. The perfect target group

For almost every topic, there are opinion leaders and multipliers on social media today. The selection of the perfect influencer should mainly target the group that you want to reach within the framework of your campaign. Influencer Marketing enables you, by choosing your cooperation partners, to almost exactly determine who comes into contact with your brand or products. Practical software tools like influData or EQOLOT , can make the search for the right influencer easier!

Dashboard of influData (Source: influData)

5. Accurate success measurement

Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves, Reach, Impressions. The list of KPIs in Social Media is indeed long, but the individual indicators can be precisely noted and analyzed. Therefore, you can measure and evaluate the success of your campaign quite accurately – at least on the basis of these numbers. How successful was the current collaboration and how can the next cooperation be implemented (even) more effectively?

There are loads of practical Influencer-Marketing-Tools, that provide data and numbers for your analysis. In order not to lose yourself in these data and numbers in the end, you should definitely define in advance which objectives you want to achieve or pursue with your Influencer Marketing campaign.

6. Infinite diversity

Depending on the target group, objectives of Influencer Marketing and the Influencer Marketing strategy, the internet offers a wide variety of different social networks and influencers. Be it YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok Influencer Marketing – there are many successful ways to implement Influencer Marketing. Even if not every product can be advertised or sold on every platform and Influencer Marketing on different social networks can be implemented with different effectiveness, there is the right place in the Social Media jungle for (almost) every company. By conducting a targeted analysis and dealing intensively with different platforms and the opportunities they offer, you can quickly find out where and how you can best implement your Influencer Marketing.

7. Long-term Partnerships

In many cases, influencers and brands benefit equally from long-term collaborations. The briefing becomes increasingly straightforward, the mutual trust increases, and the influencer's community (almost) knows your company by heart - in a good sense. Although the excitement and curiosity you were shown at the first collaboration may be gone, the confirmation and trust in your brand increases. If the influencer recommends you more than once, you must be something good.

8. Authenticity

The more regularly you place your brand with an influencer and the more it is recommended, the better the collaboration affects the authenticity of your company. But Beware! There is also “too much of a good thing” in Influencer Marketing: after all, a repeated recommendation at intervals of several weeks or some months seems much more authentic than a virtually forced bombardment in a very short time. Through clear communication and regular coordination with your cooperation partners, you can easily find the ideal times for a repeated cooperation. After all, they know their community best.

The conditions also play a major role regarding the authenticity or credibility of your Influencer Marketing campaign: The more freedom you give your cooperation partners to design their content, the more authentically the content can be prepared for the target group. Nothing markets worse than a read-out hymn of praise, right?

Here's why you should get started now

The opportunities that Influencer Marketing offers for your company can hardly be denied. With strategic planning and careful preparation, the maximum can be extracted from each campaign – provided the objectives are realistic. Thanks to the enormous pace of Social Media, new avenues are always opening up for implementing and designing Influencer cooperations in an attractive way. 

Moreover, with time, you can build up a solid pool of influencers and optimize your Influencer Marketing strategy step by step. The longer the influencers work with your company, the less effort is required for the next cooperation. The influencers are not only well-acquainted with your brand, but even better with your target group and can thus be actively involved in campaign planning. This saves not only time, but also probably a lot of nerves. 

That Influencer Marketing has become increasingly successful in recent years is certainly no coincidence. Whether micro or macro influencers, whether Instagram, TikTok or YouTube - there are many ways to start Influencer Marketing and it's worth it over each and every one of them. Let’s go!

These are currently the most popular Influencer Marketing Tools on OMR Reviews:

IROIN® Influencer Marketing Suite

Storyclash

influData

EQOLOT

CreatorIQ

kolsquare

Nindo

LikeOMeter

Skeepers