5 Things You NEED to Know About Influencer Marketing

1.     What it is.

Since Hollywood has celebrities that influence their industry, we at the internet have bloggers and social media personalities that influence our own. Influencer marketing is embedded right into the things we see every day online, and is integrated to make marketing seamless, getting the right point across. The next four points are some top takeaways about developments in the influencer marketing world from TopRank marketing:

2.     Not everyone’s on board with influencer marketing… yet.

According to the report, only a tiny five percent of marketers have overarching, “always on” influencer marketing systems. While most do agree on its importance and impact, it’s more often used as a quick-fix technique, rather than an overhaul or completely new addition. While the little bursts of influencer marketing are better than nothing, the time to incorporate influencer marketing on a bigger scale is now, while it is still up-and-coming.

3.     Influencer marketing doesn’t stop at social media.

The definition given in #1 definitely helps you to get a grasp for what influencer marketing can do, but it will impact an organization across the board, stretching to the world of analytics, and even customer service. Influencer marketing works best when, excuse the corny stock photo below, departments get together from the same organization to reach a shared goal together.

 

4.     When it comes to influencer marketing, it’s best to think big picture.

As mentioned in #2, some may use influencer marketing to get specific messages across, like one would in any other form of marketing. What sets influencer marketing apart is that it has the ability to promote an entire organizations’ goals, mission statements, and lifestyles. In fact, the top two goals sited for influencer marketing in the report are advocacy and awareness.

5.     What’s most important is true engagement.

Instead of simply focusing on sales and the process of marketing, organizations are seeing most effective results when they are truly engaging customers. And this comes from great leadership! CMOs are continuously looking for more and more engagement in their marketing techniques, and they’re looking towards influencer marketing to make this interaction more human and natural.

 

So What Now?

If you’re noticing a theme here, you probably have a good grasp on influencer marketing. It is all about big changes across the board, whether it be involving multiple departments, getting your messages across on multiple platforms, and most importantly, remaining consistent and available through direct engagement.

What do you think is the most important aspect of influencer marketing? The consistency, the diversity of departments, the large scale of it, the engagement, or something else entirely? Let us know in the comments!