Influencer Marketing is no more novelty. It’s the new standard.
Before 2016, Influencer marketing was the efforts by brands to promote their products or services through celebrities and media personalities saying “Hi, I use this. You should too.”
But over the last few years, the influencer pool has expanded to include niche content creators who drive audience conversion with one thing: original creativity. In our current advertising climate, digital (and all it represents) is the new school on effective brand awareness and connection, and influencers are the one of the main leads through which a campaign becomes successful.
The Influencer
By a vague description, influencers are people who use their large social media following to generate an income by promoting brands and services/products. For a long time, influencers were mainly celebrities and other media personalities. They had the household names and presence, and were actively contributing to culture conversations.
Recently however, the influencer group has grown and anyone who creates fun, engaging content that others enjoy and relate to can pick up the influencer tag. The influencer bracket has separated into macro and micro influencers, with brands partnering with people whose followers start from as low as 1,000 up to 2 million.
The Influencer is no more the award-winning celebrity. They are the YouTube content creators, the Instagram-only blogger and Twitter account with the best memes. They are those the consumer follows because they sound like us, live like us and have the same aspirations as we do. These are the new age influencers who are converting their followers into consumers for brands.
Why the influencer?
There is so much to be done with Influencer Marketing and the advertising world is still in the early stages of discovery. Brands have the opportunity to create more than product awareness or drive campaign popularity. Influencers are already existing creative content pools that brands are encouraged to partner with always.
With consumers now falling largely within the Millennial and Generation Z set, giving any brand the wider authentic reach, your best bet is with an influencer campaign.
People trust our everyday influencers more than they do celebrities. Influencers can connect more to a community, are trendy and produce fun and relatable content. Influencers in recent times have been shown to drive consumer decisions from their audience.
The new wave of influencer marketing relies on one core value: authenticity. Authenticity is becoming the new influencer currency in the current market because consumers are more aware of what is being advertised to them and what brands try to reach them through influencers.
The New Standard
Perhaps what is most comforting about influencer marketing is that the rules are being written as we go; the strategies and the different angles to explore are still being discovered with every new campaign and it can only get more interesting from here.