What is Influencer Marketing?

D escription - Looking to use influencer marketing to your advantage? Here is how your business can make the most of it. So, what is influencer marketing? To know it, we must first understand what we mean by the term marketing itself. Understanding What is Marketing Marketing as a term is very commonly used in daily life. What does it mean exactly? According to Dr. Philip Kotler, American marketing author, consultant and professor, marketing has different definitions when viewed from different standpoints and times in history. The simplest and oldest meaning of marketing is that marketing is simply selling all the products that a particular company produces to whoever will buy the products, to anyone and everyone. To sum it up, marketing involves gauging the needs of the people and finding attractive solutions to those needs. Why should your business go for marketing campaigns? Too often, marketing is confused with selling. Marketing is not the process of just disposing of the products that have been made. Marketing is a complex process that is neither precisely science nor art, rather a combination of the two. Simply selling involves only one perspective – the seller’s. The seller’s aim is to dispose off the products that have been manufactured. Marketing is much more than that. How can influencer marketing help? Influencer marketing is a new type of digital marketing technique which focuses on targeting specific individuals instead of targeting the whole market. These individuals are influencers who can influence potential buyers. The marketing activities are targeted for the key leaders who will take the responsibility of delivering your brand’s message to a much wider audience. The influencers are inspired, hired or paid to spread the marketing messages. How does Influencer Marketing work? Influencer marketing uses both social and content marketing to popularize the brand. The influencers use their own social channels and create content to inspire the market. The influencer campaigns aim at promoting word of mouth advertising. The key leaders influence their friends, family and followers to follow a specific brand. The influencers for your business need not be your current customers. The influencers always get something in return such as free products or monetary compensation for their efforts. This is also different from affiliate marketing where the affiliates simply promote the products. How do you develop the right influencer marketing campaign? To develop a successful influencer marketing campaign, you need to identify the influencers first. This can be done manually, which is time consuming or you can use some automation tools that automatically look for influencers in your niche. Then, you need to develop marketing campaigns suitable for your influencers. This should highlight the benefits that the influencers will receive. You also need to develop marketing campaigns that can be used by the influencers to create brand awareness among potential customers. This should highlight the benefits that the end users can receive. As with any marketing campaign, you should follow and analyze metrics to measure the reach, brand awareness and sales in your influencer marketing campaign as well. [Photo: 42works]