Chances are you already have a content marketing strategy in place. Although it might not be the best in the world, it's an effective marketing strategy proven to work. But have you ever considered adding influencers to the equation?
When you're fighting to stand out and reach your target market, your content might not be enough looking at the intense competition. You need influencers with an engaging community to represent and market your brand, including pulling the required traction.
With this strategy, you're hitting the accelerator since your influencers will create the momentum needed for your content to take off. By the end of this piece, you will understand why you need influencers in your content marketing strategy and how you can get started. Let's begin!
1. Better Returns On Investment
Imagine going on a diet to lose weight. For two weeks, you kept at it, coupled with exercise for two hours a day. Then, for the first time, you feel great and lose weight too. After that, however, you stopped exercising and returned to your old diet habits.
What do you think will happen? You will undoubtedly gain all the weight back, and your efforts will be wasted. The same thing happens with content, and regardless of your strategy, it takes time, money, and resources.
But when you couple your strategy with influencer marketing, you are getting your content out in front of an audience without waiting months and years for your SEO to kick in.
2. Build Trust
Studies have shown that people love a familiar face compared to traditional adverts. As a result, their interactions with ads have become weaker and weaker to the point where there's a phenomenon known as Ad Blindness.
In 2013, Infolinks released a proprietary study on banner blindness and discovered that users tend to ignore around 86% of ads. That shows that customers are beginning to doubt advertisement credibility.
But when you add a familiar face to your long-term content marketing strategy, you forge trust with customers—not forgetting traffic, clicks, shares, and engagement.
An example of a company doing this was Klarna’s Smooth payments campaign with Snoop Dog or Lady Gaga, they chose 2 influencers that their target audience resonated with.
3. Social Media Engagement
Another reason to use influencers in your content marketing strategy is the instant social media engagement they generate. Influencers are the holy grail of marketing - your content will benefit from their influence should they share or interact with it.
When a familiar face consistently promotes your content on social media, you build a more extensive customer base who are engaged and willing to take the desired actions. If your influencers can take over your social handles for a day and respond to comments or host lives, you're sure to create a big buzz.
4. Generate Leads
The ultimate aim of every business is to make money, and they need leads for that to happen. So when it comes to marketing, everything you do comes back to this point, and content marketing has proven effective.
That is because for potential customers to make a decision, they first need to be nurtured, and content marketing provides you the means to do that. That is because 82% of people research online before buying a product.
When you back up your content marketing with influencers, you will see a dramatic upward curve thanks to their massive followings.
5. Build Awareness
Nobody will know who you are when you're still pretty new in the marketplace. So when you run marketing campaigns, there's no guarantee they will jump up and buy from you. Moreover, as the days go by, it's getting harder to be noticed as there are more ads than there is space for.
But when you incorporate influencer marketing into your content marketing strategy, you wouldn't have to fight for the spotlight.
The more your influencers create and share, the more likely your content will be seen by your ideal targets. It forces them to become aware of your brand and products, which is the first step to conversion.
6. Creates Customer Loyalty
Don't assume that just because someone buys your product, they know exactly how to use it. Instead, help your customers get the most out of your products through helpful and informative content.
Imagine for a moment that your brand sells iPhones. While some of your customers could be lifelong iPhone fans, plenty of customers aren't tech-savvy and might need guidance on how to use it.
Using influencers, you can design content that guides new users on how to use your product without hassles. You mostly see this on YouTube, where a YouTube influencer reviews a product or service, including how they work when in use.
7. Improves Your SEO
Working with influencers is a great chance to generate better natural backlinks for your website, improving your site ranking. This can happen in a couple of ways, such as working with influential bloggers or influencers with their own websites.
When you work with these influencers, they can create content and link to you, generating a high-quality backlink for your site. And when influencers share your link, there's a high chance for a higher-authority domain to pick it up and link to it.
Since influencers provide intriguing and unique content, Google will consistently crawl your site for fresh content.
Conclusion
A while ago, Adweek conducted a joint study by Annalect and Twitter and found that users trust influencers almost as much as they trust their friends. It has made influencers an intrinsic part of your strategy, and they will give your content the nudge it needs to succeed.
You can get started by working with influencer agencies or platforms like Society Icon and Upfluence. With a good content marketing calendar, scaling your business through influencers becomes easy!
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