Influencer Marketing & How It Is Used By Marketers

Online Marketing predominantly consist of tactics like SEO, SEM, Analytics, Email, Mobile and Social Media Marketing. Amongst all these tactics Influencer Marketing is slowly evolving into a “Must Have” tactic in the media plan.

But What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing means identifying and building relations with individuals who have considerable influence over the target audience.

Influencers are trusted third parties like bloggers, journalists, industry analysts, academics or public figures.

Influencer Marketing is growing steadily because Influencers enjoy the trust and credibility of their target audience and marketers want to leverage on it for their brand.

A Firm Starts Influencer Marketing By:

• Identifying Influencers (Tools used : Klout, kred, Traackr, etc)
• Marketing to Influencers
• Marketing through Influencers
• Marketing with Influencers by turning them advocates of your product.

According to Influencer Marketing Status Report 2014 – Augure

Marketers Use Influencers For:

                                          Source : Influencer Marketing Status Report 2014

However according to a new Influence Marketing Survey of about 1300 marketing professionals conducted by Sensei Marketing Inc. and ArCompany Inc., Marketers believe in Social Influence or Influencer Marketing but not on Influence Measurement Tools.

• 55% of respondents surveyed say that these tools are not useful as the results are too varied, and its “hard to understand why these influencers should be contacted”.

Key Findings of The Report:

                                                              Source :Influence Marketing Survey

• 64% of the Respondents say that they use scores as just the starting point and then manually shift to the results to identify influencers they want to work with.
• Good part is 28% of the Respondents say Social Media Influence or Influencer Marketing is a key part of their marketing campaigns
• 68% of the Respondents say that they plan to dedicate 1/5th or more of their marketing budgets to Social Media Influence or Influencer Marketing in the next year.

Overall Success of Influencer Marketing depends On

• Setting Relevant Objectives
• Identifying key Influencers
• Developing a cohesive communication plan with a policy framework and communicating it effectively to everyone concerned.
• Accurate Monitoring of the content published by the Influencer
• Using tools to analyze and measure achievement of objectives.