What is influencer marketing?

Influencers, social media, followers, content, paid posts, impressions, product placement, affiliation, advertisers… These terms are increasingly present in digital marketing dialogue, and it’s not always easy to navigate the vocabulary. And yet, these words gravitate around a concept that’s new but already growing quite the reputation: influencer marketing. The definition of influencer marketing introduces the concept as “brands [promoting] their products through endorsements or recommendations from influencers and content creators on the internet.” (BigCommerce)

Influencer marketing is a complex yet simple idea: it’s a branch of digital marketing that aims to invest in online campaigns revolving around the power of influencers. These creators publish a post (or multiple posts) to promote a product or service in order to convert followers into customers. For example, a product review, tutorial, or “shopping haul” can be great organic post ideas to create engagement with a brand.

The tools of influencer marketing

Connecting creators and brands works through platforms such as CPA networks (CrakRevenue is one example, providing hundreds of offers to affiliates looking to convert their traffic into revenue) or influencer management tools (FansRevenue, CrakRevenue’s influencer marketing platform, works to make affiliation as accessible as possible for new creators and influencers) is the first step in setting the gears of influencer marketing in motion.

These tools make selecting the right offers for your audience and converting your traffic into revenue as quick and easy as possible. Over the past year alone, for example, CrakRevenue had provided its affiliates with over 250 new offers across 9 verticals. There’s something out there for everyone!

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This year, FansRevenue, the #1 tool for affiliate influencer marketing, won the Best Social Commerce Campaign in the 2022 Influencer Marketing Awards. The very existence of such awards is proof enough that influencer marketing is taking the online world by storm. If you’ve used Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, or even TikTok recently, you’ve probably encountered influencer marketing content in your day-to-day life. These collaborations between brands and creators are growing more popular as a way to boost online sales.

The idea is to make the most out of a community of followers built by an influencer to achieve more precise, better-aligned, and more effective product placement. What’s the point of trying to sell maternity clothes to teenage boys? Here lies the strength of influencer marketing: by investing marketing strategy efforts into well-known ambassadors within specific niches and communities (such as micro-influencers), you’re addressing the best-targeted customers possible in order to achieve better results.

Once your favorite Instagram account shares a product, offer, or brand with you, you’re immersed right into influencer marketing. And more often than not, when done properly, you’ll barely notice it! This marketing strategy aims to help make the conversion funnel as organic and pleasant as possible. And it works! These campaigns ensure that a post will find the best people to connect with your product or business.

Why invest in influencer marketing?

In 2022, brands, businesses, or products without social media presence are scarce. An Instagram or Facebook account is nearly considered a prerequisite to establishing a community of customers interested in a brand or company. But once one’s business image is well in place, what can one do to gain notoriety, widen their audience reach, and connect with new customers? This is where collaboration with an online ambassador or influencer can be an essential tool to reach specific goals and targets. One simple post can go a long way to attracting the next customer! That’s the power of influence.

Picking the right influencer to promote a business within their community raises the chances of reaching a target audience head-on. These influencers’ followers are often much more receptive to brands or products introduced by the accounts they’ve grown to love and trust, thus guaranteeing an open and curious audience.

Now more than ever, digital marketing seems to progress toward a more human approach. Customers want to connect and relate with the personalities and ambassadors recommending services or products online. Influencer marketing is so powerful because its core is based on real people with real experiences. Right now, investing in a more human marketing strategy is the best way to reach potential consumers on social media and convert interest into sales.

The pros of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a rapidly growing idea, but one that has been proving effective for longer than you might think. With the ascension of Youtube over the past decade and the addition of content monetization on its platform, the power of ambassador influence on its audience has been making its mark for over ten years already.

One of the most significant advantages of this communication strategy is the flexibility offered by entirely customizable campaigns and posts. Whether it’s through celebrity endorsements, nano influencers, micro-influencers, or macro-influencers (yes, these are three completely different things!), you can hit your target more efficiently than ever if you use the available tools to their fullest potential. It’s potential begging to be tapped into!

A brand can quickly increase its visibility by investing in a large, more mainstream community (or macro-influencers). Focusing their efforts on a smaller niche may encourage higher engagement and conversion rates. Choosing the right social media platform is also a key element in developing an influencer marketing campaign. Each platform has different strengths depending on the nature of your product or service.

Selecting the right influencer platform

For example, a video post is well-suited for platforms such as TikTok or Youtube. A more graphics-heavy campaign would work well for Instagram. A product review or recommendation could be well-presented in a blog post. With the launch of new features on many of those platforms, such as Instagram Reels, the possibility of sharing content across multiple social media tools is practically unlimited. It’s nearly free engagement for less work!

Influencer marketing thus allows you to get the most out of your investment and to reap the best engagement and visibility possible without doubling or tripling your efforts, time, and budget. With tools like CrakRevenue and FansRevenue, it’s easier than ever for advertisers and affiliate influencers to connect with the right partners and save even more time and effort building a tailored, customized campaign for the right audience!

However, with the rise in popularity of influencer marketing campaigns, it’s essential to keep in mind that one key element stands at the center of the most effective campaigns: trust and authenticity. More than ever, consumers prefer honest content they can relate to. They want to trust the message that their favorite influencers share with their audience. That’s why customizing offers and brand selection is more important than ever.

Rather than choosing the influencer with the most followers, brands should make their pick depending on the one who will genuinely feel passionate and interested in their product or business—the one who’ll be the most transparent in the content they share. Honest posts, even negative, are more effective in helping brands connect with a customer and reach their goals than fabricated, overly positive posts.

Businesses might consider investing efforts in communities that might be smaller but that connect the most with their brand. Once an influencer has found their niche, they know they can hit the target dead on. With micro-influencers specifically, who stand out for unique, more specific interests, brands are guaranteed to connect with followers that are open to their company. Here lies the best way to create a strong, trusting connection that will convert users into customers.
Whether you’re an affiliate or influencer or an advertiser looking to invest in influencer marketing, make sure to set yourself up for success with the best tools out there, whether that’s an influencer marketing platform or a CPA network.

Though if you’re here, you might just be an expert already – have you voted in mThink Blue Book’s 2022 survey yet?

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