Essential influencer marketing facts for 2020

51% of marketers believe that influencer marketing helps with quality customer acquisition but how else could it benefit your digital marketing strategy?

While many social media users and consumers are growing tired of influencers, they are still an incredibly effective marketing tactic for brands. In an increasingly digital world that has seen people become immune to more traditional forms of advertising, influencers do exactly what they say on the tin – they influence purchase behaviour.

Influencers are trusted to give honest reviews, recommendations and tips to their followers, which means they can make a difference to which product or brands consumers ultimately buy from. The ultimate form of social proof, influencers have a degree of credibility in their niches, which makes them a go-to source for information.

Beyond this, influencers do something that many brands still struggle to do – they build relationships with their customers. A large part of their appeal is the fact that they talk to their followers, answer questions, create content that is requested and build communities around their channels.

All of this shows that brands could make an impact on their bottom line by utilizing the power of online influencers. If you still need a bit of convincing, here are a few more reasons influencer marketing could be the right addition to your digital marketing strategy:

Influencer marketing can mean better customers

Over half (51%) of marketers believe that influencer marketing helps them to acquire better customers. While any customers can mean conversions, higher-quality customers can result in recurring purchases and brand advocacy.

More than increasing ROI and sales, high-quality customers are more likely to talk about your brand, recommend your products and create social proof of their own that helps boost your digital presence and bring more people to your site or social profiles.

Turning customers into brand advocates can be a challenge though and influencer marketing isn’t the only tool you’ll need to use. Tying in your influencer campaigns with work to improve customer experience and retention could ensure you make the most of the customers being brought in by influencers.

Influencers delivers solid ROI

We all know that every part of your marketing strategy needs to be designed to deliver return on investment. After all, wat’s the point in activity that doesn’t bring something to the company and help you achieve your goals?

Luckily, influencer marketing delivers really strong returns. On average, for every $1 that a business spends on influencer marketing, they are making $6.50, meaning that the returns really do make it worth it.

In fact, influencer content can deliver an ROI that is 11X higher than traditional digital marketing tactics.

Influencers aren’t just on Instagram

Instagram seems to have become synonymous with influencer marketing, but it isn’t the only social media platform where influencers work. Twitter can also deliver great returns when brands work with influencers, meaning there are a lot of options for marketers.

In total, 68% of marketers believe that Twitter us a key channel for influencer marketing, which is likely helped by the fact that 40% of users of this platform have made a purchase as a direct result of an influencer tweet. On top of this, purchase intent increases by 5.2 times with Twitter users see influencer content on the platform.

A mix of content types

A big plus of content marketing is that influencers often create various different content types. From blogs and social media to podcasts and videos, you can easily find an influencer in your niche who creates the type of content that is going to best suited to your target audience.

However, video is a particularly influential form of content – especially when combined with the power of influencers. Video is highly engaging, delivers information in a easy-to-digest way and can be used across different channels. When you consider that 18% of consumers are influenced by YouTube videos from influencers, there is a lot to gain from mixing up your influencer content.

Utilizing influencer marketing

There are many ways that you can incorporate influencer marketing in your digital marketing strategy, but there is also a lot to take into account. To help you assess whether you should use this tactic and the various ways you can utilize influencers, take a look at the influencer marketing statistics included in this helpful infographic from Milk Whale: