10 Reasons Influencer Marketing Will Explode in 2016

Many believe influencer marketing to be the next big thing in the fast paced and continually changing world of online advertising and promotion. Much of the world is changing due to the power of social media, and from a marketing standpoint the rise of the social media influencer can create a world full of endless possibilities.

An Introduction to Influencer Marketing

Instead of looking at companies for direction as they once did in the past, consumers are now looking at fellow consumers and favorite online personalities to influence and inform their valuable purchase decisions. Personalities with large followings on Pinterest, Instagram, and Youtube (amongst other platforms) now have center stage to inspire and sway their followers to make purchases based on their own related likes and interests.
For modern marketing techniques, influencer marketing allows companies and brands to harness the potential of consumer word of mouth and to conceive higher returns on their marketing investments. A new channel has been opened up, allowing brands to connect with consumers in a more direct form and scale, and on a more native and relatable level. With the right tools and authentic engagement, brands can amplify their message and narrow in on their target audience by creating branded content with a platform of social media influencers.
WIth this new change in branding comes a hesitance from marketers weary of being left behind by the fast growing legion of other marketers eager to embrace this quickly evolving channel.
Here, we’ll take a look at the top 10 reasons why influencer marketing is here to stay and outline the important reasons why you should launch an influencer marketing campaign right away.

1|) The Power of Influence

Although paid advertising is often used by companies as an effort to effectively drive sales and maintain financial growth within a company, there are few marketing strategies that can motivate sales more than a warm and meaningful word of mouth from consumer to consumer. Today, there is no better way to spread positive word of mouth than through the power of influencer marketing, which provides a modern and effective way companies can identify, target, and motivate individuals who hold respected influence over potential buyers and consumers.
A studyby McKinsey & Company found that consumer word of mouth is the ‘primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions’, and ‘its influence will probably grow: the digital revolution has amplified and accelerated its reach to the point where word of mouth is no longer an act of intimate, one-on-one communication’
The same study by McKinsey found that ‘marketing induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising.’, and any sale that came from consumer word-of-mouth had a 37% higher retention rate.
This presents an enormous opportunity for Influencer Marketing to step into play, as brands can use a modern word of mouth to further their distinguished personalities that consumers already follow, respect, and adore.

2) The effects of Social Media

The ability and influence of social media on today’s modern world is no secret, providing a powerful tool for businesses to achieve marketing results and success. A report from Salesforce found that 70 percent of brands, hailing from every category, increased their budget for social media for the year of 2015, with numbers expected to rise for 2016.
With powerful numbers like this, the alternative influence of social media is turning traditional media advertising models on its head. Consumers are no longer making the majority of purchase decisions through traditional advertising, but instead turning to the powerful influence of fellow consumers via the platform of social media. This way, they are able to connect and discuss their experiences and relationships with a service or product with other people who have documented and experienced the same.
Influencer marketing provides an insightful strategy, strategically partnering the right tools, engagement, and personalities to inform and entertain the average consumer. The modern consumer is beginning to expect brands to talk with them instead of talking at them, providing this alternative marketing strategy to be the perfect social platform to politely influence, encourage, and inspire.

Read More: 10 of Pinterest’s Most Powerful Influencers

3) Growing popularity

Influencer marketing has become a hot topic in the complicated world of branding. Through the importance of peer recommendations and their amplification through social media, influencer marketing has become a widely discussed topic among marketers, top reporters, and thought leaders across a growing international platform.
If you search the keywords ‘Influencer Marketing’ on Google Trends, you will see it is classified as a ‘Breakout’ search, which means that this search is experiencing current growth greater than 5,000 percent. This shows that influencer marketing is a hot and relevant topic, and launching a campaign will inevitably assist your modern marketing strategies.

4) A powerful arbitrage

What is an arbitrage?
An arbitrage is defined as a practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.
In short, an arbitrage is an opportunity to make big profits with small effort, existing when something is being sold for less than the value of it’s actual worth. A scenario being; a consumer purchasing a product and getting a discounted price, as the products actual value is greater than the actual market price. The consumer’s profit will be the difference between the product’s market price and product’s actual value.
Arbitrages are a commonplace in modern advertising, an example being the launch of the Facebook ad network. When the network was first launched, early users reaped record returns on their investments (ROIs) as no others were competing for the valuable ad-space. But as Facebook inevitably became more popular, numerous marketers began bidding for the ad-space and the 2014 prices were driven up by over 335%. This evaporated the initial investors ROI, and the arbitrage then was ‘closed.’
Influencer marketing is a current and relevant arbitrage. Although there is a tremendous and near unlimited supply of modern influencers, few marketers are running actual influencer campaigns. By failing to do this, the cost of buying into the powerful promotion of influencer marketing sits below its real and actual value, (which will later be measured by your all too important ROI).

5) Current affordability

As more people learn and invest in the value of a marketing arbitrage, the price is inevitably driven up and the arbitrage will close. An example of this comes with the company NeoReach in 2013. At that time, the going rate for a branded Vine video with 3 million loops was a meager $400. On today’s rates, a branded Vine with that level of exposure will earn $10,000 – $15,000, with prices only going upward.
Arbitrages don’t last long, meaning now is the time to get onboard with the current affordability and advantage of modern influencer marketing.

6) Trackable & Targetable

For decades, the advertising industry was limited to only having access to traditional marketing strategies that yielded information about branding impact, audience reach, and sales influence with knowledge and awareness of consumer appeal being impenetrable at best.
In a digital world, every visit to a website, ‘like’ on social media, and image posted online can be tracked, analyzed, and stored. With this development, mass amounts of online data can be turned into valuable insight toward your advertising performance and target marketing audience. This means influencer marketing can revolutionize the precarious advertising world and provide stability with the online facts, numbers, and data that will ever continue to evolve and exist.

7) Modern alternative to paid advertising

The average American is exposed to somewhere around 5,000 advertisements in a single day, providing to be an overwhelming, if not extremely annoying, exposure to what is hoped to be a successful marketing ploy strategized by countless brands and companies across the globe. Unconsciously, we humans are tuning these ads out, causing a phenomenon called ‘banner blindness’, a seemingly hopeful marketer’s worst advertising nightmare.
A digital advertising platform called Infolinks discovered that only 14% of their respondents could remember the most recent ad they were exposed to, nevermind identify what product was attempting to be promoted. Because of these interruptions, people are flocking to products like AdBlock or paying for upgraded monthly subscriptions to free services to avoid the pop-up advertising that saturates the modern day media experience.
With the power of influencer marketing, the product becomes no more an advertisement, but instead an influence, dropped organically in the modern consumers lap in a far less intrusive way.

8) Familiar advertising

According to a study from MDG Advertising, 70% of online users would rather learn about a product or service through content rather than through the dated ways of traditional marketing and advertising. Another study by Dedicated Media found that a consumer’s intent to purchase is 53% higher for native and organically placed ads.
This proves the facts of the power of influencer marketing on the modern day consumer. Instead of interrupting the consumer experience with unwanted and misplaced ads, company brands, products and services are able to be flaunted and marketed organically through the power of inspiration and influence. This creates a more enjoyable experience for consumers, while building a powerful marketing solution for brands, with the added potential of immense growth in the online marketplace.

9) Modern appeal

The facts and figures of the strength of modern marketing continue to show themselves. In an advertising ploy by clothing retailer Lord & Taylor, they instructed 50 social media influencers to wear the same dress on the same day, then informing the Instagram fashion crowd that the dress was a must-have article and necessary for those on top of modern fashion trends.
With that powerful and well planned influence, the dress sold out the following weekend.
By working strategically with tastemakers and influencers, communication is opened and flaunted to the marketplace, which could allow your brand or product to easily become the next big thing. This also allows content to be repurposed and recreated to appeal and impress to your existing customers, in turn building and inspiring long lasting brand loyalty.

10) Improved SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

In addition to building your brand and improving your sales scales and numbers, influencer marketing will also help with your search engine ranking and SEO, an important factor in the competitive marketplace of today. According to a study by The Social Media Revolution, social posts generated by users accounted for a staggering 25% of search results for 20 top international brands.
The more people mention and post word of your brand on social media, the more your popularity will grow on Google, allowing you to stay relevant in the rapid and ever evolving waters of the modern online marketplace.

Don’t Miss: Everything You Need To Know About Influencer Marketing

How Vizified Can Help You?

Social media has fundamentally changed the balance of power and control between customers and brands, enabling peer recommendations to play a much greater role in consumer purchasing decisions.
With this power in full force, Vizified is the current leading Pinterest Marketing and social influencer outreach platform. Our social influencers help to spread your brand’s message through thoughtfully crafted and visually ‘sponsored’ social shout-outs and pins. Images are processed 60,000 times faster than text, evoking emotion and showcasing brand ideals. In the digital age, studies show that image content gets 94% more views than written content alone.
This makes Vizified’s strong influence through Pinterest all the more relative, as Pinterest accounts for 41% of ALL social ecommerce traffic online. 93% of all Pinterest users have used Pinterest to make a purchase, with an average order value of $80 (higher than both Facebook and Twitter). Because of this, brands are flocking to Pinterest to take advantage of this unique and eager ‘ready-to-buy’ consumer base and audience.
With this powerful influence, Vizified can help you:

• Acquire more customers
• Generate more leads
• Drive additional sales
• Increase brand awareness

Vizified’s unique influence is one step ahead of the modern online marketing strategy, providing your brand with a surefire way to succeed in a rapidly changing, ever growing, and intimidatingly fast paced online environment.