9 Key Benefits of Influencer Marketing You Can't Ignore

Influencer marketing is collaborating with content creators who have a sizeable and engaged audience to showcase, endorse, and recommend your brand.

Unlike traditional advertising, influencer marketing offers variety, creativity, and a wider reach.

But how exactly can you benefit from this type of marketing campaign?

Keep reading to learn nine key benefits you definitely can’t ignore.

1. Higher ROI Than Most Other Forms of Marketing

Did you know that one out of four marketers leverage influencer marketing?

These marketers have reported that influencer marketing campaigns generate the second highest return on investment (ROI).  

How is this possible?

Well, research has shown that 72% of teenagers follow influencers across social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn.

These followers perceive their favorite social media influencers as entertaining and credible. 

As a result of this perception, they trust their influencer recommendations, and rely on them to make purchasing decisions.

Now imagine what may happen when an instagram influencer with 20K loyal followers recommends your product.

This can boost your sales and generate more leads (potential customers), which in turn increases your ROI.

Let’s talk about Instagram, the most-used influencer marketing platform in 2022, with 72% of marketers using it for their influencer campaigns.

A reason for this is the fact that Instagram has a fine blend of diverse audiences with numerous demographics and interests.

Therefore, it provides marketers with the option of choosing different types of influencers and content creators whose follower base align with their target audience.

Other social media platforms also have features that allow marketers to work with influencers seamlessly. 

There’s the partnership feature on Instagram and the shoppable ads on TikTok where you can collaborate with creators for your ad creatives. You can also use influencers for user-generated ads on Facebook.

No matter the social media platform you use, here’s a pro tip: 

You can measure your campaign results and calculate your ROI effectively using influencer marketing platforms like Insense.

Insense helps you:

• Track and analyze data 
• Get comprehensive campaign reports 
• Know what to do better for future collaborations

That way, you can be sure you’re getting great results for your money.

Let’s look at another exciting benefit, especially if you own a small business.

2. Niche Market Penetration through Micro-Influencers

A micro-influencer is an individual who has a small but dedicated and engaged following on social media. 

Unlike macro influencers or celebrities with millions of followers, micro-influencers have a follower count of 5K to 20K.

Below is a comparison:

• Nano Influencers: 1k  to 5K followers 
• Micro-influencers: 5K to 20K followers 
• Mid-tier influencers: 20K to 100K followers 
• Macro influencers: 10K to 1 Million followers 
• Mega Influencers: >1 million followers

In influencer marketing, it’s important to keep in mind that the number of followers doesn’t always equal quality.

This means that despite their smaller following, micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates, and their product endorsements and brand messaging carry more weight among their audiences. 

This makes it easy for brands to utilize the niche market penetration strategy.

How so?

Niche market penetration is a concept of marketing where startups and small business owners focus their attention on capturing a specific target market segment.

Instead of targeting an entire competitive market, an ecommerce enterprise can concentrate on reaching a specific and well-defined group of customers with unique interests and preferences.

Micro-influencers can help with this strategy. 

As they typically have more specialized niche audiences, it’s easier for brands to collaborate with them to reach new audiences and generate authentic quality content.

Furthermore, influencer partnerships with micro-influencers are more cost-effective than those with mega, macro, or mid-tier influencers.

Read on to find out how.

3. Improved Cost-Effectiveness (Especially Collaborating with Micro-Influencers)

Because of the difference in the follower counts of influencers, their prices differ.

Here is how much each of these social media influencers charge on average per Instagram post. 

• Nano Influencers (1K - 5K): $10 - $50
• Micro-Influencers (5K - 20K): $15 - $110
• Mid-tier Influencers (20K - 100K): $35 - $350
• Macro Influencers (100K - 1M): $185 - $2500
• Mega Influencers (>1M): average min. $1200

From this, you can see that the cost of using micro and nano influencers is more affordable than using other influencers.

Knowing that micro-influencers have segmented niches and more engagements, this cost-effective approach means that you are definitely getting your money's worth.

Their affordability, willingness to collaborate, and ability to create authentic content on smaller marketing budgets increases your chances of boosting brand awareness and your bottom line.

Additionally, due to their long-term relationships with their followers, these individuals can humanize your brand.

And there’s no better way to capture the hearts of people than by selling experiences with videos, images, and search engine optimization (SEO) blog posts, on various marketing channels. 

4. Humanizing Brands through Relatability and Authenticity

One of the core benefits of using influencer marketing as a means of advertising is its ability to humanize your brand.

The concept of humanizing your brand involves using a relatable and personalized brand voice and style to interact with your audience.

It simply means posting content that helps you establish a connection with your audience—something that makes your audience relate to you on a deeper level.

This could be relatable memes, or educational posts that highlight their pain points.

And it’s more than just posting—it also involves engaging with your audience, responding to their comments, or simply posting question polls.

The aim of these strategies is to build trust. 

To tell your audience that you are interested in their personal interests, and not just in increasing your sales.

Social media marketing is a great way to establish this trust through influencer partnerships.

These partnerships go beyond sitting in front of a camera and making recommendations.

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It's about encouraging an audience to make a purchase decision in a non-salesy way.

An example of an influencer campaign that effectively humanized brands is the Rebel x Uber eats x Hinge x Chipotle campaign.

In 2020, Rebel Wilson partnered with three different brands (Hinge, UberEats, and Chipotle) for an influencer marketing campaign which increased brand awareness for all three brands, with over 1.2 million views on the influencer’s post.

Now that we have seen how successful an influencer marketing campaign can be, let’s explore how brands can improve their relationship with influencers.

5. Long-Term Relationship Building with Influencers

Everyone, including influencers, wants to maintain a healthy work relationship.

These relationships evolve from just one-off collaborations to growth-oriented partnerships that are beneficial to both the brand and the influencer.

So how can you establish long-term relationships?

You can start by:

• Reaching out to influencers: Find influencers who are interested in your brand, or those who have used your product before.
• Treating your influencers as collaborators: Do not see them as tools for advertising—see them as partners in your brand growth.
• Allowing them to be creative: Create room for them to explore and utilize their creativity. Avoid rigidity and improve flexibility.

When you implement these tips, your long-term relationships will:

• Boost your credibility: This happens over time when the influencer’s audience sees that they continue to promote your brand.
• Improve trust: Your influencer’s audience eventually becomes your own audience. They, in turn, will help promote your brand through word-of-mouth or online digital marketing.
• Have better alignment: Long-term influencer relationships will create sufficient room for influencers to align with brand values and goals.
• Enhance campaign performance: Due to the alignment of your brand values, the quality of your content marketing strategies will improve.

In addition to these, your campaign performance can be measured successfully based on the insights you receive from influencers.

6. Invaluable Market Insight from Influencers

Influencers can act as a valuable source of feedback and information, sharing insights and opinions from their audiences.

As these influencers actively interact with their followers, they have their fingers on the pulse of consumer preferences, pain points, and trends. 

For instance, your influencer can give you insights on the best performing post, the worst performing post, the audience’s preferred product, the audience’s complaints, and the audience’s preferred content format.

Do they prefer humorous influencer content?

Do they prefer images or videos?

Would they rather watch a tutorial or a how-to video content?

The aim of these questions is to leverage this knowledge for product development, content strategy refinement, and customer experience enhancement.

An example of a brand that keyed into this strategy is Thinx. 

In 2019, they targeted the athleisure market. WIth the insights and feedback they received from 25 influencers, they launched a clothing line, designed to meet the needs and preferences of their customers.

By selling each piece of clothing for $35.20 and giving influencers unique discount codes, they were able to successfully generate a revenue of $810,000.

The success of the campaign shows that with influencer marketing, brands can obtain valuable information and boost sales.

Additionally, using influencers can strategically combat the problem of ad-blockers and banner blindness.

7. Combating Ad-Blockers and Banner Blindness

Imagine watching a funny video on YouTube and just when it’s about to get interesting, you suddenly get interrupted by an ad. 

Now this doesn’t happen once, but consistently.

You’d definitely feel frustrated.

It's for this same reason that lots of internet users activate ad blockers on their devices.

An ad blocker is a tool created to remove or hide any form of advertising during browsing. 

Due to the frustration of consistently getting ad pop-ups, consumers are increasingly using ad-blockers and becoming banner-blind.

This makes it challenging for traditional ads to reach them. 

But influencer marketing circumvents this.

Influencers deliver branded content in a format that blends seamlessly with organic content, making it more likely to be consumed and trusted by the audience.

8. Enhancing SEO Efforts

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic on your website giving the search engines, like Google, high quality content they’ll feature at the top. 

A search engine identifies items in a database that aligns to the keywords a user has specified. 

For instance, when you are looking for a food recipe on Google, and you search “[food name] + recipe”, Google automatically gives you a list of articles about the recipe.

The word you searched for is the specified keyword, and the articles you see are those that align to your keyword.

These articles are listed in accordance to their ranks on Google.

SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. 

This is when a page is ranked based on the amount of organic traffic it receives.

So when influencers create content and link back to the brand's website or social media profiles, it generates high-quality backlinks.

These backlinks can positively impact your brand's search engine rankings.

To effectively drive organic traffic to a website, you need to be innovative and creative.

9. Fostering Brand Innovation

Through influencer collaborations, brands can tap into the creativity and expertise of influencers from diverse backgrounds. 

These partnerships can inspire brand innovation, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives.

Brand innovation is an essential part of a brand’s growth and evolution. It’s simply the process of changing, refreshing and even launching new elements of a brand.

The parts that can be innovated include digital assets, products and even the brand’s overall image and identity.

The insights you receive from influencers you collaborate with drives relevant and exciting brand innovation. 

You can adopt new perspectives into your marketing strategies, enhance product development, and ultimately improve brand messaging just with their opinions.

All you need to do is start!

Ready to Dive Into Influencer Marketing?

Want to begin your influencer marketing journey?

Dive in and grab all the benefits to boost your campaign.

Grow your ROI, leverage influencer insights, increase brand awareness, foster brand innovation, and enhance your SEO efforts.

Need help getting started? Book a demo with Insense

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Below are some of the simplest answers to your commonest questions.

Q1. What is the difference between an influencer and a celebrity?

An influencer is someone who gains fame through social media marketing. They have a dedicated following on social media and focus on specific interests or topics. 

A celebrity, on the other hand, is a person who gained fame through traditional media channels for their work in movies, music, sports, or other fields.

Q2. What is the difference between influencer marketing and advertising?

Advertising is a paid promotion strategy aimed at raising brand or product awareness. It typically utilizes creative formats like video commercials or banner ads.

In contrast, influencer marketing is a more organic approach that depends on endorsements from influential individuals on social media platforms.