The 4 T’s of Influencer Marketing Benefits

The state of influencer marketing is relatively robust, as demonstrated by a recent UK poll. In the last year, over two thirds of respondents reported that "influencers' post-paid rates have increased." Furthermore, pricing increases are nothing to laugh at, considering that social media superstar posts often cost $87,731 apiece.

What's more, 75% of marketers stated they want to spend even more on influencer marketing, while only 3% said they will reduce their spending!

So why are marketers so ready to rain cash down on their influencer marketing channel? Well, it comes down to the 4 T’s.

Trust.

Trust concerns have severely impacted traditional web advertising. Pop-up and pop-under windows, spam emails, and obtrusive display adverts are no longer trusted by the public. Because it's a simple fix, this is another reason why ad blocking software is ruining the market.

Influencers are the opposite ends of the spectrum. To be an influencer, you need to be able to have people (many people!) trust you, which comes from opening up your life to them. 

Having someone people trust endorse your product confers that trust to your business. It’s a powerful branding tool, especially in the realm of micro-influencers who are seen as experts in their particular space.

Trend.

There are two way to parse the benefit of the word “trend.” The first is that influencers can get your business trending on social media. After all, that’s what they do best.

A business that hasn’t had much luck trending can hire an influencer to grease the wheels. And the way they do this is through the other meaning of this T-word: trendy. The influencer makes it cool.

You know what’s not very cool? Dixie Cups. And yet, they utilized an influencer push that showed a 100x return on the original campaign forecast!

A good influencer marketing campaign can get you trending and trendy if you work with the right influencer(s). Let them leverage their social cache with the help of your creative team for potentially amazing results like this.

Track.

According to a survey by Rakuten Marketing, “38% of marketers say they are unable to tell whether influencer activity actually drives sales.” While the MarketingWeek article paints this as a negative, note that this is a minority. The majority of marketers seems to understand how to track influencer marketing, which is a great thing (and not hard!).

Social media influencers by definition use social media, and tracking whether their posts lead to sales shouldn’t really be a mystery. Every post should have a unique link or coupon code associated to measure conversions and traffic. Not only that, almost all the major social platforms are rich with features that make it simple to track. For example, Instagram’s “comment to buy” feature allows followers to convert right from the app.

All you have to do, at the very least, is keep an eye on your statistics to see if there is an increase in traffic following an influencer's post. Have you noticed the line rising unusually high? The advertising did, in fact, appear to have some impact, at least broadly speaking.

Tracking leads and conversions to their original source is a feature and advantage of influencer, referral, and affiliate marketing. It's not working the way it should if you're not sure.