You’ve heard of social media influencers, but are they any good for your business?

Early one afternoon, during an exceptional heat wave at the beginning of summer, a teen walked out of a tour bus into a busy street where he stood with a placard that read “If you’ve ever wanted to get more leads in your business, HIRE ME!”

The bus driver argued that the teen wouldn’t earn $50 if he stood there for two hours. Well, it turns out the teen earned more than $400 in 25 minutes — merely by telling people who cared to listen how he can help grow their business by marketing it to his over 200k active Instagram followers.

The teen silenced and humbled the bus driver, but for the first time as a 15-year-old kid on a tour bus, I felt a sting of envy for someone I never knew back in high school.

Truth be told, if you want to get the best for less for your business, save money and see quick results you need to work with influencers.

These days, consumers don’t trust brands anymore. Only about 10% of consumers still do. With the explosion of social media engagements and emerging technologies, consumers now feel overwhelmed due to the bombardment of different offerings from marketers and brands.

Guess who consumers now trust? Yeah, they trust influencers.

So Who Exactly Are These Influencers?

Influencers are individuals who can affect the purchase decision of consumers; either positively or negatively. Due to their perceived authority, knowledge, relevance and relationship with potential customers, influencers can drastically persuade potential consumers to specific brands.

While celebrities can pass as an influencer, not all influencers are celebrities. Anybody can be an influencer (just like the short story of the teen you’ve read earlier); they are sometimes an everyday person with the right connections and massive social media followers.

Consumers may have trust issues with brands, but when it comes to a personal recommendation, about 90% of consumers still trust brands personally recommended by their friends. So, working with the right influencers can have a multitude of positive effects on your business.

Who Is A Micro influencer?

A micro influencer is an influencer that has about 1000 – 100k active followers on social media or online. This type of influencers is mostly niche specific, and they are often regarded as an industry expert on a particular business niche. It’s easier for consumers to believe that micro influencers have tried & tested the products they advertise. Tech companies often make use of micro-influencers marketing campaigns.

Micro-influencers have a comparatively smaller following and don’t usually boast celebrity status. Their price per post isn’t as costly as the macro influencers. However, one of the disadvantages of using micro influencers is the uncertainty of getting a good deal consistently, since they can sometimes charge a prohibitive price per post.

Who Is A Macro Influencer?

Macro-influencers are a notch down from mega-influencers. In most cases, macro and mega influencers are fused in the same category as they are generally referred to as macro influencers. Macro influencers are influencers that have between 100K – 1 Million active followers. On the other hand, Mega influencers are mostly celebrities who have more than 1 million active followers.

If you’re looking to target a specific type of customer, but still want to reach the masses, then a macro-influencer might be more useful than a mega-influencer. This is because it’s usually challenging to curate a product offering that will interest the broad demographic that follows celebrities. However, if you’d like to reach a broad demographic in a specific niche market that’s directly related to what interests a famous star or what the personality usually post on social media, then using a mega influencer is probably the way to go.

In Summary

Influencer Marketing (IM) is the act of being able to identify an effective influencer who can create high-impact conversations with customers about your brand, and above all, being able to orient marketing activities around that influencer. Influencer marketing has proven to be a valuable method for marketing a brand or product. Some of the primary advantages of working with influencers include: improving brand advocacy, increasing awareness, reaching new audiences, helps in easy drafting of marketing budget, and improving sales conversion.

Having excess influence over customers purchasing choice isn’t an admired concept in the world of marketing. But as online customer conversations continue to evolve so drastically, influencers are playing a critical role in bringing trust to the table for brands and marketers alike. If you don’t want your constant marketing efforts to end up in your customer’s ad-blocker page, you should start using influencer marketing today.

Let us know what you think in the comments below!