Influencers and the Real Effect They Have on Purchases [Infographic]

With the rise of social media, influencer marketing has become a big way that brands can reach a larger audience and build trust with consumers.

People like Kylie Jenner, Chrissy Teigen, or even Beyoncé have large, engaged followings that trust their opinions and take their endorsements of a product to heart.

When brands team with them to deliver their messages, they don’t have to do the extra leg work of making themselves seem trustworthy because the celebrity already does that for them.

For perspective, when a brand teams up with Beyoncé, they get access to her 149 million Instagram followers they may not have usually. People that may have not normally know or follow the brand would now see it because they follow Beyoncé.

That’s a huge new audience!  

Even if you can’t afford an A-list celebrity, however, influencer marketing can still be an effective marketing tool as micro-influencers are increasingly more effective.

56.3% of consumers acknowledge that influencers have an impact on the way they go about their day to day lives.

In other words, they see posts and then make decisions based on what they’ve seen from the influencer — including making a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendations.

Roughly half of the consumers say they’ve made a purchase because of an influencer.

With this information, it’s hard to not want to include influencer marketing into your overall marketing strategy, especially with so many consumers already following influencers on social media.

However, it’s important to note that over 30% of consumers reported not trusting influencers, so you should gauge your audience’s sentiments towards them before taking action.

Getting Started with Influencer Marketing

If you do, as with any marketing campaign, you need to start with your goals.

What do you want out of this? Are you looking to increase purchases? By how much? Or, are you just looking to build brand awareness? What does that awareness look like??

It’s important to be specific so you know if your campaign is performing well.

From there you need to think about your audience.

It’s important to make sure the influencers you’re pulling in are liked and trusted by followers of your band.

If you work with someone your audience isn’t already following or is unfamiliar with, it’s going to be even harder to see success.  It takes time for your audience to trust and follow any influencer, so make sure you’re aligned.

You can do a quick Google search, check out social media, or survey a couple of your current customers to see who they follow.

Start to reach out to a few of them and let them know what you’re looking for.

It’s important to also get their opinion on your product/software so you make sure you’re finding the best person to represent your company.

Now that you have the right person selected, you can fully flesh out your strategy.

Work with them to figure out what kind of posts they need to create.

It’s important that they’re honest, transparent, and staying true to themselves to make it seem more natural, keeping your audience’s trust intact.

If you look at Chrissy Teigen, for example; her partnership with Pampers makes sense because she has two small children, and knows what it’s like to be a busy mom.

Once they start posting, stay on top of your reporting and tracking to ensure you’re hitting your goals.

Check in with those who make purchases and see if they saw any of the influencer campaigns and if it influenced their decision.

Continue to monitor and make changes as needed to get the most out of your influencer marketing. Check out AdWeek’s Infographic for more information on why you should start including influencer marketing into your strategy!