Having a diverse array of marketing channels is extremely important when trying to market your product or service because you want to make sure that you are seen by your target audience in a variety of locations - on the Internet or physically. One of the increasingly important ways to market digitally is influencer marketing from YouTube to TikTok. Below, I will discuss top five reasons to work with influencers in your next marketing campaign -

Traditionally, before the explosion of the Internet and social media in the early 2000s, for advertisers to reach millions, the brand would have had to go from outdoor advertising to TV advertising spending millions of dollars. Today, where the most popular video gaming influencer has over 100 million subscribers and the most popular fashion influencer over 20 million followers the cost to reach that same target audience is at least halved. For influencers to produce content - and jaw dropping content at that - it takes fraction of a cost that of a traditional media outlet, for example, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Which brings me to my next point...

Traditionally, at a photoshoot, there would have been a crew of at least 15 from the photographer and his/her assistant to the wardrobe stylist and makeup artist. With influencers, there are only two individuals involved during a photoshoot - the influencer, who serves as a creative director, wardrobe stylist, makeup artist, and hair stylist, and the photographer. In addition, editors hire retouchers who then have to edit all of the images in order for the photographs to be published. With influencer marketing, the influencer is the photo retoucher and the turnaround time is very quick. 

There are millions of influencers, from consumer influencers with 500-1,000 followers to celebrity influencers with over 1,000,000 followers, all of which address various target groups. For example, there are fashion influencers who address the fashion industry, there are athlete influencers who address the sports community and also target groups who are into fitness, and there are beauty influencers who only focus on cosmetics, skincare and haircare. You may be a lifestyle brand, for example Giorgio Armani, which sells clothing, perfumes and sunglasses under its name. As a result, you don’t have to search far and wide to address all of these different target groups. With proper research - and I strongly advise not to cut corners and work with interns and students but to hire a professional - you can find an array of influencers who address all of these industries - from cosmetics to fashion.

With today’s tools, like Instagram’s Insights and Analytics, it becomes very easy to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. For example, Instagram provides the number of impressions, reach, and actions taken from a post, including InstaStories and static posts. With outdoor advertising, a brand could only make a rough estimate of how many people and who saw the ad.

Influencers are able to not only advertise on their social media channels but are able to produce content for the brand to repurpose, are able to form exclusive collections with the brand or are able to hold classes on, e.g., how to apply makeup, while promoting products. In other words, the possibilities with influencer marketing are endless from namesake brands to content creators.