Business strategies for social media: Guidelines to marketing your business online

, the influencer market, which is the current biggest tool to build product awareness and user engagement. 

Marketing in Social media

Businesses on social media have two options to market themselves or their products. They can either use their own social media presence. We call this content marketing. This type of marketing builds exposure and interaction based on the quality of the content and product/service.

The other method involves a person with influence or one simply known as an "influencer”, marketing the product to their audience. We call this influencer marketing. It is more direct than celebrity endorsements in terms of creating audience engagement. This is usually potrayed as a personalized recommendation for their audience/users. 

Content and Influencer Marketing

Who are influencers?  

According to Veirman, influencers are persons who have built a following on one or more social media platforms and are recognized as reliable spokespersons in one or more niches. Accordingly, the traditional definition of an influencer is a person whose word or advice is valued by a group of others who view their content.

There are various characteristics of an influencer like credibility, leadership in opinion, and physical appeal. Marketability of an influencer's brand endorsement is determined by those factors. As customers view them in familiar settings, their endorsement feels more like a suggestion from a friend, which makes them unparalleled in their capacity to connect with the audience.  

An Influencer

Growth of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has expanded at an exponential rate since 2019. The global influencer market has grown to a historic high of 21.1 billion USD in 2023. Currently, 25% of businesses use influencer marketing as their main method of promotion. In the present day, influencer marketing is similar to celebrity endorsements. Because a sizable section of their target audience aspired to be like their beloved stars, celebrity endorsements were successful. This is also the exact reason why influencer marketing is successful today.

According to reports, 69% of social media users believe the advice given by their favorite artists and influencers. This gives an opportunity for the businesses to make use of the customers who are ready to engage with a product/service, if only it comes from a specific voice that caters to them. 

Influencer market today

How can a business use both these tools?  

There are 2 billion active users each month on Instagram. Getting their attention is the difficult part; but they are all potential customers.

These days, a company must use both influencer and content marketing to stand out today. Even while influencer marketing performs far better statistically than content marketing, it is still crucial for developing a brand's reputation. To elaborate on how this works:

• An influencer promotes brand ‘X’ on their platform to their users. 

• This prompts some of those users to view the said brand and product. 

• This is where the product’s content marketing comes into play. Depending on how good the product is, how well is the content showcasing the product. 

• The merits of both these aspects will determine for the user if the product is worth their purchase or not. 

Marketing through social media requires businesses to build a symbiotic relationship between their brand content and how their content reaches their audience. Hence, influencer endorsement bridges the gap between the two. Businesses should identify the following to use these strategies effectively:

• Who is their target audience?

• Who are their favored creators?

• Do these creators have good outreach?

• Is their brand content catering to the target audience?

If a business is able to positively answer the above four questions, then they will be able to replicate the following success stories. 

Success stories from the world of Influencer Marketing: 

1. Iceland Foods- This frozen food company had the difficult job of coming up with a delicious frozen meal experience. Iceland meals achieved retention rates of 55% on Facebook and 59% on Youtube by working with fifty smaller influencers to show how these meals can be incorporated into the lives of a varied range of people. They started the "Power of Frozen" campaign in order to take advantage of this success and market their own material. 
2. Dyson-The electronics manufacturer Dyson recognized that pet parents were the primary consumers of its Air Ball Vacuum product. Few were aware of it. In response, Dyson teamed up with five influencers that owned pets and allowed them to utilize their own unique styles to promote the product. Because the target audience related to the content, there were an average of one million interactions with the product page and an overall 10% increase in user engagement, making this a highly effective campaign.  

More success stories

Do you need help building a successful marketing strategy, look no further. Contact Marketing Eye today to have our dedicated team assist you in your success story.