Consumer confidence may be slowly waning due to inflation, geopolitical tension and looming recession, but despite the arduous time ahead, brands still need to find ways to gain new customers and keep their current ones engaged.
In order to tackle this set of future challenges, brands should rely on influencer marketing instead of traditional marketing strategies, which often has unfocused targeting and is less versatile. With influencer marketing, you can gain more reach, increase sales, build trust and more.
Keep reading to find how you can use influencer marketing to your advantage at a time of such uncertainty and future predictions for the industry.
Why partnering with influencers is the right path in the current economy
The biggest hurdle brands have to work through in this uncertain economy is their budget. With the oncoming recession, most consumers will be reluctant to spend their money, or will focus their spending on services versus physical goods. According to eMarketer, persistently high inflation could lead consumers to be more cautious spending their money in 2023.
In a stable economy, brands can afford to spend a lot of money on advertisements and have higher confidence that customers will buy their products. That isn’t the case anymore thanks to the recession. Brands still need to spend money on advertising and gain customers, but they must be frugal and thoughtful about which type of marketing they will invest in.
Increasing brand awareness while sticking to your budget
With such a limited budget, influencer marketing is the right path for brands to gain more customers without the need to spend a lot of money on marketing. Influencers are able to create and distribute their content for a much lower cost than if a brand had to hire production crews to film and design an ad. They have a passion for creating high quality and engaging content and love connecting with their followers. You have a guarantee that your influencer will represent your brand well and create content your target audience finds useful and engaging.
Influencer marketing can help increase brand awareness by introducing your brand to potential customers. They already have their own base of loyal followers that their content will reach. On the other hand, relying on paid advertisements is a lot more expensive and may offer lesser returns. You hope your target audience sees these paid ads and are receptive to them, but an influencer can really sell to your target audience on a much more personal level.
Leveraging nano or micro influencers
Keeping budget in mind, smaller businesses can consider working with nano or micro-influencers. Although most will assume that an influencer with a larger following is better, there are some things that nano or micro-influencers do better than their bigger counterparts.
One of the biggest benefits of leveraging nano or micro-influencers is their affordable rate. Although influencer marketing is cheaper than social media marketing and traditional marketing, collaborating with macro and mega-influencers can be rather costly for small businesses.
Nano or micro-influencers have higher engagement and conversion rates because of their smaller followings, allowing influencers to connect more deeply with their followers than bigger influencers. This deep connection makes it possible for influencers to convince their followers to try out a product because the followers feel the sponsorship is authentic. They trust influencers and have a certain level of admiration for them - if your favourite influencer recommends a product and raves about it, you’re more likely to purchase it for yourself.
A path to increasing sales
Influencers are adept at increasing sales. Their ability to produce engaging content and their followers' trust in them make it easy for them to convince their followers to purchase a product. In fact, 49% of consumers decide which product to buy based on influencer recommendations. By asking influencers to recommend your brand, you will gain more sales than you may get through traditional marketing.
Influencers are also motivated to work the extra mile to create a great promotion since they will benefit if the sponsorship goes well. Many influencers hope to create long-term relationships with brands so they will receive future sponsorships, which is why they have to make sure that the first sponsorship is a great success. This incentivizes a win-win situation relationship between influencers and brands. So long as influencers work the extra mile, brands will get more exposure and an uptick in sales while influencers receive more sponsorships.