Which would you trust more: a recommendation of a new restaurant from your best friend or an ad for the same restaurant? If you’re like most people, your best friend’s endorsement definitely carries more weight. And that’s the basic idea behind influencer marketing. As social media has become a part of our daily lives, people have started looking more towards other individuals to inform their purchasing decisions rather than brands and traditional advertising. At the same time, social media has increased the reach and impact of bloggers, tastemakers and thought leaders. Influencer marketing is driven by these conditions, using key leaders to spread a brand’s message to their audience rather than the company marketing directly to consumers. While influencer marketing is still a relative newcomer to the marketing arsenal, it’s gaining ground as an essential element in marketing plans. Recent research from eMarketer shows that 67 percent of marketing and communications professionals worldwide reported using influencers for content promotion, and 59 percent stated they used influencer marketing for content creation and product launches. If you aren’t among those numbers, here are four things you should know about this promising channel: 1. It’s impactful. Word of mouth recommendations, as with our restaurant example above, have always been a powerful driver of sales. So it should come as little surprise that influencer marketing would have a similar impact. In a recent study by Augure, 75 percent of marketing professionals consider influencer marketing effective in lead generation, and 76 percent viewed it as…
Read More: 4 Things to Know About Influencer Marketing
