Few things in life go together as well as influencer marketing and inbound marketing—it’s truly a match made in heaven. In 2016, roughly 86 percent of marketers claimed they were using influencers in their inbound marketing strategies and most were looking to double their initial investments. It’s clear influencer marketing is taking the world by storm, but what makes it so effective? Why is influencer marketing working so well?
While most people would assume the answer is complicated, it’s actually quite simple: the way people buy has changed—and not necessarily in the favour of traditional marketing methods. Today’s consumers want a more personalized, trustworthy, and interruption-free shopping experience. They don’t want to be convinced
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You want your content to be seen as shareable and engaging. While a consumer might not be very likely to comment on or share a Facebook ad, they are likely to engage with a video or photo that’s been posted by one of their favourite social media personalities. Your influencer may have 200k followers, but with all the traffic generated by the post, it will quickly lead to another 100k eyes on your brand.
Putting It All Together
Influencer marketing and inbound marketing use the same tactic to increase sales: they both attract prospects to your brand without being invasive or forceful. That’s why the two strategies are a match made in heaven. Instead of forcing a message into the minds of a target audience, inbound marketing and influencer marketing both invite consumers to engage, but only when they decide it’s time.
Additionally, these strategies allow for product and brand education. Today’s consumers want to research a product before they buy it. They want to know how it works, what it looks like, and how it will benefit them. With influencer and inbound marketing working together, consumers get a holistic view of the product, from an influencer recommendation to a blog post on how it
Inbound marketing was coined by HubSpot founders to “describe marketing strategies and practices that pulled prospective customers toward a business and its products, through the use of Web 2.0” and its applications. By contrast, traditional marketing (also referred to as outbound marketing), reaches out to a client’s customers using marketing techniques such as print advertising, radio advertising, TV advertising, cold calling, direct mails, and trade shows. HubSpot observed that traditional marketing techniques were becoming less and less effective at bringing in new business. Three factors
My choice of a company that makes use of inbound marketing in its approach to reach a larger audience or market is the Dollar Shave Club. Which uses a humorous but honest approach (through an online flash video and some catchy text) to try to convince the viewer to convert from using famous luxury brand shaving products, to generic but high quality products that produce the same look, feel and experience (during and after shaving) at only a fraction of the cost. Here’s a short point by point analysis of the advertisement
HubSpot is a dynamic and promising startup that has recently reached its 1,000 customer milestone. The company, led by founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, offers an intuitive and easy-to-use marketing software that acts as a tool for customers to spearhead their ‘inbound marketing’ campaigns. The company is an evangelist of ‘inbound marketing’ where companies try to pull prospective customers toward a business and its products through the use of Web 2.0 tools such as social media and search engine optimization. With this, HubSpot argues that the rules of marketing have changed and that traditional marketing plays, or ‘outbound marketing’ where companies traditionally bombards its
But it doesn’t mean that influencer marketing is dead. Influencer marketing agencies are success drivers first because they are trusted to choose the right influencers. As long as audiences trust their influencers, influencer marketing will not be dead. It is down to the agencies but the influencers also play their part. Another aspect to consider is that influencer marketing agencies that have a more manual approach will progressively put themselves out of business. Technological businesses will gradually replace them because they know how to get a one to one relationship with the influencers but also to identify them through technology. Many people tend to conciliate influence with popularity. Influencers are not only ideas maker; they also have a highly engaged community. The first objective of influencer marketing is not only to generate viral content but to interact and engage with a target audience through the influencer’s voice. All in all, influencer marketing is evolving at a rapid pace and will continue to
Many international and local brands come to Vertic because of their strategic approach to advertising. Being a strategic partner with LinkedIn, Vertic became experienced in influencer marketing, and so I had the opportunity to understand how influencer marketing works. I learned to work on several strategy tools and programs
Although internet/interactive marketing allows practitioners to engage with influencers one on one, practitioners must listen and act strategically and almost immediately to continue consumer conversations about their brands (Booth and Matic, 2011). Listening to consumer is very important to understand them and can create suitable message that can attract the attention of the
Imagine that you’re the average influencer online. You get dozens of pitches every single day from people wanting you to promote their product or service. Many of them offer free items in exchange for a mere mention. You aren’t going to grab the attention of an influencer simply by contacting them. That is why it is best to build that relationship first and foremost.
The proliferation of marketing and advertising, coupled with the onslaught of millions of media channels in today’s world, has given cause for consumers to tune out and effectively avoid a great deal of traditional supplier driven messaging. The creation of technologies such as PVRs, satellite radio and Internet ad blocking software are driving a fundamental shift in the way the public consumes media and the advertising often tied to it. Television ads, radio spots, online ads and even emails are facing increasing competition for effectively capturing the viewer’s attention and provide positive ROI for the marketer. This competition, coupled with the rising cost of media buys, has caused marketers to search for an alternative means to reach the customer. Viral marketing is an attractive solution because it utilizes the free endorsement of the individual rather than purchase of mass media to spread the word. Because the distribution model is free, viral can potentially be lower cost and more effective than traditional
Buzz marketing is all about word of mouth, and leverages, “not simply the power of the trendsetter, but also “the power of wanting to be the trendsetter”. (Walker,2004). Marketers activate buzz marketing as an effective, perceived unbiased message to gain trust and loyalty among consumers. Tremor feels that “buzz marketing is the most effective way for a message to travel through networks of real people communicating with others. ”(Walker, 2004).
Despite the fact that push communication is overwhelming the market, it gives the idea that sooner rather than later, pull marketing will turn out to be more noticeable. Push-Marketing, although still utilized, is thought to be not as compelling as Pull Marketing. Push-marketing most prominent issue is the reality, that consumer’s perception of interference has a negative effect on consumer’s attitude to mobile marketing (Zhang & Li, 2012). Pull-marketing gains advantage by utilizing the richer customer data, so the organizations can provide more personalized and relevant marketing, which is beneficial for both parties (Kautonen, Karjaluoto, Jay-awardhena, Kuckertz, 2007). Often pull-Marketing is called permission-based mobile marketing, alluding
Brand advocates are the customers who actively recommend brands and products without being paid for such an act. They do so wherever they go or through any communication medium that is online & offline for their favorite brand. This requires high commitment level from the organization side to build considerable level of customer satisfaction and trust toward it. When customer trusts the brand, he/she started liking the brand which creates affective and emotional feeling which may converted into the advocacy for the brand. There also another way of influential marketing in which a key individual who has authority, high level of influence and many personal connection is placed to vouch for the brand or
Outbound Marketing is a business strategy that is used to advertise it product and services to target the consumer whether they are interested or not. Outbound marketing is known as Traditional Marketing.
Businesses should research the different methods of utilizing information collected from online content before deciding which one would be the most effective in helping it reach its marketing goals. Further, in this case, we learned about the different approaches to online marketing strategies. Nowadays, more and more consumers are relying on social media to influence what products and services they purchase. Thus, there are companies that collect, analyze and compile this information for the potential value it may hold. In addition, we learn that utilizing online word‐of‐mouth or viral marketing methods are becoming a more effective way to reach consumers. Similarly, LinkedIn’s approach towards helping a client increase brand recognition and sales was by targeting online influencers. However, that approach might not be as effective as the CEO of Umbria believes it is (O’Brien & Markas, 2011). Influencer marketing is one of the ways that businesses are using to bring awareness to their brands. Be that as it may, there is a danger to selecting an influencer simply based upon how many followers they may have. For example, Kylie Jenner has over 100 million followers across all social media platforms. Nevertheless, despite her impressive numbers would she be the right influencer for a company like, LinkedIn? Probably not. Wherefore, a business must ensure that they have established brand recognition with the right influencer who can effectively turn the post into profits.
An influential brand communicates about the products and services your company provides and develops trust and reliability at the same time. Your brand exists in day to day interaction with your customers and the picture your share, post you update on your we solution, the content of your marketing resources along with the social media post.
It is no secret that people trust the judgment of other people when it comes to buying a product or finding something new online, we turn to yelp, google reviews and as mentioned before our facebook friends. Because of our willingness to trust people that seem trustworthy, often times companies use influencers to showcase specific products. By having an influencer use a product in a picture or show the product in a video consumers often trust it and want to buy it and this ultimately leads to greater sales. While I am sure there are no little league influencers, there are many really well known little league teams in