Top 7 Benefits of Influencer Marketing

The simple truth in sales and marketing is that every customer decision — from the first click and like to a successful purchase — comes down to trust. Customers want to know not just what they’re buying but who they’re buying from. And despite ranking first on search or having a compelling website, there’s nothing customers trust more than honest feedback from people they know and follow. That’s where influencers come in.

Let’s take a look at influencer marketing and the benefits of influencer marketing.

The Role of Influencers in Building Customer Trust

Influencers — among the biggest social media stars and celebrities in their own right — are in a unique position to provide product recommendations based on their honest feedback. As social media stars, influencers have built their brand in an industry niche, regularly sharing personal and sponsored content. As a result of their authenticity, consumers look to them throughout the shopping journey.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a partnership: it’s the product of leveraging an influencer’s engaged audience and storytelling power to promote products and your brand. It’s a collaboration between brands and influencers to share compelling content featuring product reviews, how-to guides, giveaways, and more. 

For brands looking to reach new audiences and translate social impressions and content interactions to actual versions, the real benefits of influencer marketing is connecting with an already engaged audience. You can skip the audience targeting since influencers already have an audience in a demographic niche that’s ready to buy. Simply, it’s all about leveraging an influencer’s sphere of influence — one that’s quickly eclipsing brand content.

7 Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Noticing stalled engagement and want to reach a new audience? Not converting social followers to customers? Looking to switch up your social content strategy beyond traditional brand content? Discover the benefits of influencer marketing:

1. Highly Valued Trust and Credibility

The fact is, customers already expect you to tell them that your product is the best and why. That’s the basics of advertising. But, unfortunately, it can get tiresome, to the point of distrust, especially with even a single less-than-optimal customer experience.

Enter influencers: real people who rose to influence in social media feeds due to their trademark brand and authentic storytelling of product experiences. Over the years, they’ve built an ever-growing audience who regularly engage with this niche content, making influencers experts they turn to for advice and recommendations. 

This organic trust makes influencer marketing successful, with influencer content like tweets increasing intent to purchase by up to 5 more times, and 40% of consumers reporting having made a purchase because of an influencer.

2. Increased Brand Awareness

Any digital marketing strategy will increase brand recall and reach target audiences. Still, influencer marketing delivers these in a focused manner. Targeted advertising may allow you to reach audiences based on their demographic and psychographic characteristics, but it takes a lot of work to craft buyer personas that help you identify and target various shopping preferences and motivations to buy.

The significant benefits of influencer marketing are that you can skip all of that. For example, say you’re launching a new athleisure line or opening a new restaurant. You can quickly look up the top fitness influencers or food bloggers, and with the help of an influencer agency, you can find top engaging influencers in these niches.  

When you collaborate with influencers for sponsored content, you are directly engaging with your target demographics who are already following these trusted voices. Essentially, you advertise to an engaged audience, resulting in higher conversions.

3. Low-Cost Customer Acquisition and High ROI

Since influencer marketing serves up an engaged audience that’s ready to buy, you can greatly reduce the cost of customer acquisition and speed it up. This is because the influencer has done the work: they have built a loyal community of followers who make purchases based on their recommendations. An influencer agency can then help you craft the perfect campaign, like product features, giveaways, and promo codes, with guaranteed high conversion rates and a pathway to sustaining customer trust.

4. Lower Cost than Traditional advertising

Influencer marketing is more cost-effective than traditional ad buying, with better, high-quality leads and conversions. In addition, you only need to compensate an influencer per post, and you can choose how much sponsored content you want to publish. 

More importantly, you choose the influencer you want to collaborate with. While mega influencers charge more per post due to their reach, you may find that micro-influencers have higher engagement rates due to more frequent interactions with their followers. Smaller brands in Toronto can also greatly benefit from cost-effective influencer marketing by offering freebies and swag for compensation.

5. Refresh Your Content Strategy

The hard truth is, over time, brand accounts can be stale and formulaic. You can only cycle through so many product and team features. To really drive purchases and build trust, customers love hearing from people who have tried your products and can provide honest feedback.

Influencer marketing allows you to switch up your content calendar and refresh your social media strategy. By sharing their product experiences rather than outright telling customers to buy, influencers weave in your sales pitch organically, which doesn’t strike customers as pushy. Moreover, as more customers are getting around ads with ad blockers, authentic influencer content remains valuable and effective in reaching customers since these audiences choose to follow influencers.

6. Long-Term Benefits

A single influencer campaign can open doors to long-term partnerships. As audiences constantly follow and interact with their favourite influencers, brands can benefit from repeat collaborations, especially as new offers are launched. Their enduring influence also means that influencers continue to set trends, which you can leverage for keeping audiences engaged. As a result, influencers remain trusted brand advocates who can drive conversions and sales even long after the campaign.

7. A Variety of Industries

There’s an influencer in every niche. While influencer marketing is most common in the consumer goods market, there are popular content creators in any industry. Aside from popular influencer content in health and fitness, beauty, lifestyle, fashion, and tech, there are also influencers in business and finance, parenting, pets, science, and more. An influencer agency in Toronto can match your brand with these content niches and find the most trusted voices to collaborate with.

Partner with Our Influencer Marketing Agency in Toronto

Are you looking for new ways to reach the right audiences in Toronto? Find your next brand ambassadors with influencer marketing. At Consultus Digital, we have built a community of the most trusted, engaging, and top-rated influencers across different industries. Get all of the benefits of influencer marketing, from unbeatable trust and credibility to low-cost customer acquisition and long-term partnership. Discover the power of influence to inspire lasting customer trust.

Discover the benefits of influencer marketing. Let’s launch your influencer campaign today. Partner with Consultus Digital in Toronto to find the best influencers for your brand, and build a community of happy, loyal, and engaged customers. Contact us today to get started.