In today’s modern era, social media marketing is enveloping the world. The credit for this mountainous takeover goes to the social media influencers. An influencer is a person who has the ability to alter with the purchasing decision of people based on their reviews.
They have a wide fan following and people tend to listen to their assessments regarding any product before making their own decisions. As the name itself suggests, influencers establish some kind of an influence on their audience, having the power to mould the mindset of their audience.
The main aim of influencers is to ease the indecisiveness in the customers. The major form of marketing these days is not through leaflets and pamphlets, but through words and voices. People tend to develop a blind belief in influencers, on what they say and on what they have to offer regarding any product.
What is the job of an influencer?
The job of an influencer is actually quite simple. They just have to keep their social media active, post lots of images and videos, give us all a little peek in their lives, and voila! Job done. Whenever a brand launches a product, the first task up their sleeves is promotions.
As stated earlier, marketing today is all about words and voices, so brands tend to hunt down people who have a large set of target audience regarding their requirement. After recruiting the desired influencer, brands just have to sit back and relax and watch their selling charts grow as the influencers lead their promotional campaigns.
5 Tiers of Influencers by Follower Count
Influencers are generally categorized into 3 types based on their fan following. They could be of any category; sports, lifestyle, makeup, skin and hair care, social influencer etc. But on a broader scale, influencers can be classified into 5 tiers by follower count:
Nano Influencers
Nano influencers are the freshman of influencer community, who has 1k to 10k followers. They just started their career as an influencer.
Micro Influencers
Micro influencers are the influencers with a fan following ranging from 10k to 50k. Their target audience can be of any above mentioned category. Mostly bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters etc. cumulate this category. Sometimes micro influencers may have better performance than the top ones, especially in a niche market.
Mid-tier Influencers
Mid-tier influencers are the influencers who have 50k to 500k followers, and they have the potential to grow larger.
Macro Influencers
Macro influencer are the influencers with a fan following ranging from 10,000 to 1 million or more. Their target audience can be any of the above mentioned categories. They are generally low key celebrities working on small projects or bloggers. Brands and organizations need to be very vigilant while choosing influencers from this category as fake influencers saturate this category.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers have a fan following of more than 1 million. They can be famous celebrities, like movie stars and singers, or sportspeople. They can cost brands and organizations up to $1 million for a single post leading to promotional campaigns.
Power of an influencer:
As mentioned above, social influencers have the ability to cause a spell on the minds of their target audience regarding any specific product. This statement itself highlights the power of an influencer but stats are there to further strengthen this statement. According to a survey, 70% teens, 86% women and 49% consumers in general rely on influencers for their purchasing. On the whole, 31% purchasing is conducted in general, owing to influencers. The power of influencers can also be seen through this study conducted in 2017 that brands and organizations received a return of $7 for every dollar they invested on influencer marketing.
Top Brands with Successful Influencers Campaigns
Influencer marketing is the focal point in any brand’s promotional strategy. According to a survey, 3.17% companies spend more than half of their budget on influencer marketing and around $5-10 billion is earned by influencer marketing annually. Furthermore, 63% of companies have laid in their agenda to increase their budget on influencer marketing. Influencers basically establish a bridge between the sellers and the consumers. Some of the most fruitful collaborations of brands and influencers are given below:
Bigelow Tea:
Bigelow Tea is the most recognized name in the tea and coffee business. They launched their new tea recipe with the aim to attract their audience towards a healthy lifestyle. For that, Bigelow Tea collaborated with bloggers and lifestyle influencers, like Ashley Thurman, to showcase their product to their audience on an emotional level so as to promote the benefits of tea for a healthy lifestyle. The company observed an overall 18.5% increment in their sales due to influencer marketing.
Glossier
Glossier is the world’s famous brand for makeup and skin care products. They confessed that almost 90% of their sales are attributed to influencer marketing. The hand out free samples of their newly brewed products to beauty bloggers and let them create the buzz.
Adidas
The world famous sportswear brand, Adidas, had a massive boost on their sales in 2015 when they collaborated with the famous influencer Selena Gomez. Adidas jotted down a 24.2% increase in their sales after influencer marketing.
Motorola
The smartphone company Motorola opted for influencer marketing for the promotion of the launch of their Moto Mods and Moto Z family. They collaborated with a total of 13 influencers mostly YouTubers, and claimed that their product had an audience reach of 38.1 million.
Amazon Audible
Audible is an Amazon company that deals with audio books. They started influencer marketing with the aim to increase the number of their monthly memberships. Audile declared that their promotional campaign developed an audience base of 132 million.
Hence influencers lay down the foundation for brands and organizations to reach out to their target audience. Influencers thus occupy a very vital position in any company’s promotional strategy and the scale and the number of influencers in the world of today is ever growing.
