The ways in which the advertisement and marketing industry used to function have got revolutionized into a more versatile and competitive structure. Digital Media has come up as the most powerful form of ‘reaching out to the target audience of their business. Companies of every scale are keeping their budget much limited for the physical form of advertisements through banners, posters, and newspapers and instead focusing on the digital platforms where the largest audience of the world is present, which is Social Media. Any kind of business promotion through the social media portals whether the inorganic or organic format can be analyzed much better than other mediums of promotion. 

Through social media platforms, businesses have the opportunity to pitch to the ideal customers for their products and service. The prime aim for businesses in paid promotions is mostly to generate leads and drive more sales. Except for the strategic content generation methods and social media advertising, the rise of Influencers Marketing through a single person or organization promotion is also being witnessed. A person is called an Influencer when the person has a large group of followers in the social media audience and is being followed because of their expertise and knowledge of a specific niche.

When influencers indulge in the process of making endorsements or promotions for a specific company to influence the audience in the specific expertise field then it’s called Influencer Marketing. In other words, Influencers promote your business products or services to their followers which influences many customers to trust your business immediately and even make purchases only because that specific person with expertise recommended it. 

The influencers come up with unique content dedicated to your business product or services that highlight the best features of it and convince their audience to make purchases as the Influencer is already having expertise in the specific field. Sometimes Influencers do promote certain specific products on their own without any facilitated payments but that’s very rare. Suppose a makeup-artist gains a huge following across popular media platforms like Facebook and Instagram through posting valuable and useful content for the ideal audience. If in a random video the person promotes a specific foundation cream or eye-liner then the background of this Influencer works wonders in authenticating the product of its features. 

The building relations between Influencers and Enterprises

The world is already accustomed to another format of influence which is the Celebrity Influence in the medium of conventional advertisement videos. It’s not a new thing when a movie star promotes a soft drink with great enthusiasm in a television advertisement. This format was also a similar kind of product influence that wasn’t well-labeled before. But the Social Media Influencing which is occurring around the digital world is not exactly that kind of celebrity endorsement. The majority of Influencers have good knowledge or expertise in the category of their content and promotions. Gen-Z and Millenials are most influenced by these influencers and are trusting new products and brands without any analysis delay. 

This immense trust is what makes Influencers in great demand even for the giant companies with proven sales models. Instead of focusing on celebrity hiring, marketing teams of the companies are identifying the suitable Influencers for their product and service promotion. Collaborations happen between brands and influencers either for one-time promotion or long-term endorsement. If the hiring is for the long term then Influencers have more responsibility to design and post content in gaps of specific intervals.

 If the influencer niche aligns with your brand category and the content gets placed with all the suitable features then the targets of increased brand visibility and recognition get fulfilled with reflection on statistics much more quickly. The new customer acquisition rate is also found where the whole influencing process has been conducted appropriately. Influencers are highly valuable for any business and what they say about your brand through social media not only remains in their profile but gets shared by many among their followers thus providing an immense reach to your potential target audience.

The benefits of UGC and customer testimonials 

The in-flow of User Generated Content (UGC) becomes more regular and increases in quantity when the influencers are hired for product endorsement and promotion. Social Media Influencers often take the authentic approach of Reviewing your business product in the most dominant and attractive content format which is Videos. The audience who genuinely trust a particular influencer often tags them on image or video type content highlighting the business product they had purchased upon the influencer’s recommendation.

 These types Customer-Posted content have a superior level of authentication and trustability for the new potential customers getting introduced to the brand. If the influencers are also mentioned in the product promotion content to tag the influencers with posts of new product purchases then almost every influenced customer would post content with your branded product. Resharing this content with the influencer’s permission will keep your business’s social media platforms have a steady flow of content that is generated directly by the audience without any kind of payment. The Social Media development team at Softgrid would handle your entire social media application building process with packed advanced features and a competitive smooth interface.

Testimonials and reviews from actual customers who are not influencers have a very large part to play in your business development. But even after you have requested through an email or website account many customers don’t make the effort to record a testimonial or post a review. In the same scenario when active and celebrated Influencer steps in the results are much bound to get varied. When the same thing is asked over social media by influencers a chunk load of testimonials and reviews can be found by the influencer through tagged posts. 

Softgrid social network department specialists have also found another interesting fact. If the influencers share some of the testimonials and reviews on their popular social media account then more testimonials start getting generated with the hope of being recognized and shared on the huge-followers account held by Influencers. Having a detailed discussion with the hired influencer before starting the digital campaign is important for getting the right kind of testimonial and review format from the customers.

Payment based on followers and with a rigid budget fixation

Not every influencer would be having the same amount of payment demand for promotions. It would depend upon the followers and influence quotient they have. Softgrid experts have found that many social media accounts exist that call themselves “Professional Influencers” but have an audience base that is not suitable for the category of products they work towards. There also exist some non-professional influencers who do not have a specific category of expertise, they just put forward any product they are paid to promote. This is why a proper analysis through the expert’s eye is required to identify which Influencers would be able to bring benefits to your business.

 Several renowned celebrities from different fields are also Professional Influencers and are known as Mega Influencers. But it’s not right to immediately assume that they would have the capability to influence a large digital congregation into making immediate purchases. On the other hand influencers with only around 10K followers might have such a dedicated audience that a great boost in lead generation and sales can be expected. These followers are known as Micro and Macro Influencers based on the exact count of potential followers mostly interested in a specific niche. 

Influencer Marketing is an essential fragment of the overall Marketing and Advertising budget of your company so a detailed budget plan would be necessary. The content that would be created and posted by the influencers on a single or multiple platforms can be used by the brand across the website and mobile application too. The ROI that you would be expecting for your business from Influencer Marketing also needs to be taken into consideration. Oftentimes the charge goes up depending on the followers the influencer has and the number of promotional posts you will be demanding. The average price that you should consider in the US for each post through an Influencer will be around a hundred dollars.   

The Aim of Building a Community

An active cheering community will form around your business with the right plans and the digital community will bring immense benefits to the brand in the long term. Softgrid experts suggest also looking into the existing customer base and followers of your business profiles. There remains a very high probability that many influencers can be found among them if your business is not rather new in the industry. These Influencers might be of micro and nanoscale depending upon the number of followers but they will also have the capability to go an extra mile.

 Micro-Influencers are often noticed to be more engaging with the dedicated audience in comparison to large-scale influencers. As the Influencer’s audience will get formed only based on the Influencer’s knowledge of a specific category more conversion rate can be expected from the small audience as well. When you will be hiring multiple micro-influencers instead of one then forming a community in the initial stages can become much easier. The distributed outreach along with extra effort from the influencers through DMs and multiple social media platforms will drive the business towards excellent growth. 

What are Virtual Influencers

Many times it has occurred that a Virtual Influencer has been mistaken for being a Human Influencer. The businesses who will be venturing into the world of Hiring Influencers should be knowing about Virtual Influencers. Virtual Influencers are actually fictional characters who are computer-generated and have characteristics that are very similar to actual humans. They are also known by other names such as virtual model and virtual persona and some of them have such a large fan following that many micro-influencers can just dream of achieving.

 But as these Influencers are created with the advanced technology they need to be mostly controlled by Virtual Technology experts with further backing from a reputed brand in most cases. Surprisingly it has been noticed that the majority of potential customers of a particular category brand are finding the virtual influencers appealing and engaging. If you are still having doubts about this Softgrid recommends opening up Google and searching about “Lil Miquela Virtual Influencer” and “Bermuda Virtual Influencer”.