Shimara Azhar

Influencer marketing is where companies will have collaboration or partnerships with a popular social media individual who will have a brand value with a massive follower base who can sway on the customers buying decision. It has a significant value when a business collaborates with an influencer for their marketing activities since consumers will have a positive impression on the influencer with their specialized knowledge, interests, practices, understanding on the specific areas trustworthiness and the niche they’re experienced with. Perhaps influencer marketing is rapidly increasing in social media marketing with the current market trends. An influence has a major capability of creating top of the mind awareness however, consumers fond of new trends, ideas, fashions and certain specialized areas. To be an influencer there are three potentials required to consider,

Relevance: The influencer marketer required to be in-depth with the knowledge, well experienced, needs to personally experience the brand, and be truthful of what he/she talks about

Reach: The influencer should have a good reach and an established audience through all his/her social media platforms with the extended of followers.

Engagement: An influencer should always get more likes, shares, comments and review from the audience and always active and engaged with updates and should be interactive with the audience.

There are few examples as follows,

• Dwayne Johnson when it comes to fitness and entrepreneurship, he plays a major role in the industry nevertheless he’s the most famous action hero with over 362 million followers in Instagram.
• Cristiano Ronaldo Soccer player Hollywood iconic with good looks further with over 787 million followers.
• Kim Kardashian is an American influencer/reality TV star with 450 million followers.
• Selena Gomez is an American actor/musician and she’s a former Disney star with 499 million followers.

Having said that there are numerous Influencers in the market with highly recognized and tremendous follower base with their specialized interest segments.

However, with the current market trends the traditional marketing in the 21^st century is slightly declining and transforming towards the digital era perhaps business is investing more in the digital media platforms in addition to the influencer marketing. Furthermore, in VUCA world business spends more on Influencer marketing whereas there is an 65% of advertising budget set for influencer marketing in various business. Influencer marketing has a wide extent of coverage, demographics in social media platform. However, followings are the reasons why influencer marketing has taken a significant growth the contemporary market,

Increased Leads: Since Influencers has taken a long time to build an audience and followers in their social media platforms, they will always take the initiative on the best business engagement with their audience which will generate the qualified leads further this can convert the audience in to customers of that particular brand.

Shared contents and assets: Influencers are very creative and innovative with the contents that they come up with and they are renowned for creativity, whereas companies need not to have a creative writing team to make contents for the business which is also a cost saving for the business.

There is a higher return in investment: Influencer marketing campaigns has a wide range of a coverage and a best reach, having said that it has a higher ROI, it increases the sales revenue, brand awareness and the audience reach further to a solid growth in the social media platforms and the engagement.

Cost efficient: Cost-effective way of marketing compared with the traditional marketing. Depends on the marketing budget the business can select the influence marketing individuals to the business such as a mega, macro, micro or nano.

Four types of influences with the number of followers.

Build trust: Influencer marketing is a best way to build trust and engage with the customers whereas the traditional marking will take a significant time. Customers like to get the true opinions for the influences on varies facts such as, fashion, home appliance, life styles, health care, beauty, fitness.

Influencer Marketing is more authoritative than the traditional marketing

It’s more focus than the traditional marketing which has a target segment with specific demographic where as traditional marketing doesn’t have a specific target audience, it’s easy to reach the niche audience with the common interests with a positive impact.

Traditional marketing doesn’t have any specific way to research on the market and the customer purchasing patterns whereas influencer marketing has a wide range of ways to send the message to the audience. There are so many different social media platforms that can be used to deliver the message.

Influencer Marketing is more trust worthier than the traditional marketing whereas influencers talk with their personal experience and it’s their daily routing but in traditional marketing an actor or the brand representative will just praise or give the brand message on voice which has no weight on what they say.

• Example: Kate Lavie is a lifestyle blogger who promote and influence the Naked juice, she will not talk about the juice but she will influence the audience as she drinks the juice as her daily routine which has made a huge impact on the audience on opinions and the trustworthiness of the product and it increase the sales of Naked juice.

Perhaps the Influencer marketing will enhance the brand performance and the brand awareness among globally with an effective customer relationship and stakeholder engagement at any given point. The traditional way of communication has been slightly declined with in contemporary market with the trends and requirements Influencer marketing continue to thrive with the ongoing market needs. It’s necessary for a business to choose the right influencer for their business sustainability.