Brands these days are constantly looking to explore new channels to communicate with their existing and potential customer base. One such trend which has gained a lot of popularity over the past year is Influencer Marketing, which basically means using individuals who connect to large audiences through the content that they create and post on various social media platforms. These individuals may be bloggers, vloggers, content creators on video streaming platforms or anyone else who engages with a large audience on a regular basis.
The reason why brands are so eager to collaborate with such individuals is that the mediums that they use are far more engaging and interactive for the general public than any other medium of communication. Secondly, it is much more economical because these influencers don’t charge as much as brand ambassadors do. They connect to people on a much more personal level through their content and get a lot more responses from the public via reactions to their content in the form of likes, shares, comments and channel subscriptions. This gives the brand an opportunity to reach a customer base that they normally might not have been able to tap and also increases the chances of boosting sales.
For example, a beauty Influencer like Nikki De Jager who has a very popular makeup tutorial channel on Instagram is able to reach a very large audience through her content. A brand selling cosmetics can leverage this opportunity to communicate to the viewers of that channel about their products by collaborating with her.
Another example is Marian Di Vaio who owns a blog about male fashion trends and hairstyles. A brand selling men’s grooming products could collaborate with him and integrate their products in his videos to give those products a good reach.
The reason why brands would choose to advertise through this medium is that if somebody like Nikki De Jager or Marian Di Vaio uses those products in their videos and recommend them to their respective audiences, the people who follow those videos are likely to purchase those products.
The reason why people may buy those products is the trust factor between the audience and the content creator owing to their massive following.
The biggest takeaway for brands from such collaborations is that through these influencers even they are able to establish a relationship directly with the viewers of those channels. However, brands must make sure that in the process of collaborating with such creators they don’t end up hindering their creativity. Doing so may destroy the organic nature and authenticity of the influencer’s content and can nullify the very purpose of influencer marketing.
Brands should let the influencers do things their way because their originality and creativity are what bought them success and that is what brands aim to leverage.