Influence Marketing vs. Word of the Mouth

A lot of businesses are hesitant to jump on the bandwagon of partnering with influencers because of one main reason — it is expensive. You need to set an outreach campaign to find suitable influencers. You need to set up a brand deal with them. You do not only need to pay for their advertising fee, but you also have to set up an affiliate partnership to incentivize their followers to subscribe to your products or services. These deals can be malleable, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re pricey. This article shall prove why you should give influencer digital marketing a go.

What are influencers?

As the name suggests, these are individuals who have a certain level of influence over an audience. This means that they have amassed a sizeable number of following that adores them. This could be on any social media platform — YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, or even a combination of all of them. There are multiple pieces of evidence that prove that influence marketing works. The general rule is that the more following they have, the more expensive it would be to avail them.

Should you try to influence marketing?

Yes, and maybe. As aforementioned, they are quite expensive. Most of the time, only multimillion companies have access to the biggest names in the industry. If you’re a startup, you might want to advertise traditionally, which is through the word of mouth. This means that you wait for positive feedback from your first few clients, and then post those on all of your social media accounts and on your website. However, influence marketing is also a good tool to jumpstart your business. It hastens the process of getting the word out there.

Is influence marketing effective?

Yes. A person will only subscribe to a product or service if they know that there has been an established trust on their service. Dedicated subscribers and followers will most likely avail of your service, especially if the influencer you picked is perfectly compatible with your product. For example, if you’re in the cosmetics industry and you got James Charles to endorse you, it is guaranteed that your sales will hike up because he is deemed as an esteemed figure in the beauty community.

What are the possible problems with influence marketing?

There is a popular term called “authenticity blur.” People may not be so quick to trust someone who vouchers for your business because of the principle that it is paid. It is mandatory by law to disclose if a product endorsement is paid or not, which means that people will somehow feel that the payment for the advertisement could have caused the influencer to be not sincere about their endorsements. A lot of factors can affect this, the biggest of which is the sincerity of the influencer when they talk about the product or service. Other factors include the social media digital marketing strategies in endorsing the product or service, which appeals to the fact that online users are naturally very visual. 

Overall, this does not mean that you should entirely abandon traditional ways of advertising. But if we’re talking about speed, then influencer marketing is definitely the way to go. And there are social media marketing agency that provides the best social media marketing services for your website development.