Have you ever purchased a product or service based on a recommendation from a YouTuber you follow or an Instagram blogger? If so, you have experienced the power of influencer marketing.

YouTubers and social media personalities are called influencers because of their impact on their followers and their ability to spread awareness and promote ideas.

If you want to leverage this type of marketing to promote your services and products, you are in the right place to learn all the essential information about influencer marketing.

Some of what you will learn in the next few minutes:

  • What exactly is influencer marketing, and how did it begin and evolve?
  • Some statistics regarding influencer marketing.
  • Why you should rely on influencer marketing now more than ever.
  • Types of social media influencers.
  • How to effectively search for influencers.
  • How to ensure the quality of an influencer and verify they are a good fit for collaboration (7 factors you must rely on).
  • How to contract with influencers.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Ever since I started watching television commercials as a child, I always asked myself, “Why do all brands and companies use stars and actors in their advertisements?”

Since you, like me, are interested in digital marketing, you have likely asked yourself this same question. It is not just because these stars are famous and everyone knows them.

The reason they are used in advertisements is that people want to be like them. That is why they will use the same perfume, car, phone, or skin-lightening cream that the stars use.

This is influencer marketing. As you can see, the core idea is old; it is just that we are now living in the era of social media, and celebrities are no longer limited to actors and stars, but also include YouTube creators, Instagram personalities, and others.

If we want to define influencer marketing, we can say:

Influencer marketing is the utilization of top content creators on various platforms, celebrities, and experts in a specific niche to build awareness among people and promote a specific product or service.

Influencers create content about the products and services you offer and publish it to their followers on various platforms, which helps place your products in front of your target audience, thereby driving traffic and generating sales.

If you have reviewed our “Digital Marketing Trends” guide, you will know that influencer marketing is one of the most important digital marketing channels you must rely on now and in the future.

People are not satisfied with just knowing the features your products offer; they want to see someone they trust testing and trying these products, comparing them to what is available in the market, so they can make an informed purchasing decision.

For example, if you go to any popular phone review channel on YouTube, you will find many comments where people ask the channel owner for the best phones that suit their needs and budget.

Similarly, if you go to a cooking and recipe account on Instagram, you will find numerous comments asking the account holder for the best places to buy food and the best kitchen tools.

This is what you must leverage to promote your services and products. Regardless of the industry you operate in, you will find influencers for it on various social media networks.

The Evolution of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing might seem like a modern and new phenomenon, but the truth is quite the opposite.

Influencer marketing emerged nearly 15 years ago with the PayPerPost platform, which was the first platform to act as an intermediary between company owners and bloggers. It allowed companies to pay digital bloggers to create promotional content on their platforms for the benefit of those companies.

The challenge faced by promotional companies and marketing experts at the time was their skepticism regarding the ability of promotion within the content of these platforms to appear genuine and authentic, rather than just another random advertisement that readers would avoid.

From 15 years ago until today, and even as the landscape has changed and evolved significantly, the challenge remains: presenting honest and transparent promotional content for companies or services.

In reality, most of us as humans rely on the recommendations and referrals of those we trust and whose experiences we value. Therefore, when a follower finds their preferred influencer—who provides reliable and relevant content—recommending a brand due to a successful experience, they will consequently trust that recommendation. Thus, the company gains both the influencer's trust and the trust of their audience.

Among the many, many changes and developments that have occurred in the influencer marketing scene since its inception in 2006 is the gradual emergence of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, later joined by Instagram in 2010, and recently TikTok, the giant that has imposed itself on the scene with staggering speed.

In the past, influencer marketing relied almost entirely on bloggers who were accustomed to sharing their stories, lives, and daily experiences with their readers, and who would incidentally promote products and offerings from companies they contracted with to provide additional income for their livelihoods.

The change is that the role of influencers today in promoting products and brands has become a primary income source, not a side one, unlike influencers of the past.

Also new is that today's influencers have endless opportunities to choose from due to the increasing number of social media platforms, starting from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, all the way to TikTok.

Every platform has its own method and style, and everything depends on the influencer's ability or preference; if they prefer long-form writing, they can rely on Facebook, LinkedIn, or even traditional blogging.

Prefer photos and clips? Then Instagram, Snapchat, and/or TikTok are the way to go. Some combine all of them, and that is perfectly fine as well. Even with the emergence of an audio platform like Clubhouse, we expect that influencers will soon find a way—if they haven't already—to promote brands.

Statistics on Influencer Marketing

Although Instagram is famous for influencer marketing, you can still use influencers to market your brand on other platforms and marketing channels, and each platform has its own pool of influencers, such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and others.

According to the renowned platform Adweek, the influencer marketing industry reached approximately $10 billion in 2020. Today, in 2021, its value has exceeded $13.8 billion.

Here are a few statistics about influencer marketing:

1) 9 out of 10 brands use some form of influencer marketing

As you can see, almost all brands employ this type of marketing. There is no better time than now to start employing it for your own brand, regardless of the industry you are targeting; there are certainly influencers who align with your company's needs.

Note that an influencer does not need to have a massive audience to be worth contracting with. You can always partner with an influencer with a small number of followers... keep reading and you will understand why...

2) Influencers with follower counts between 1,000 and 5,000 achieve higher engagement rates

Look for a real influencer who has an active and engaged follower base.

You might contract with an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, but they may not achieve the same engagement and enthusiasm as another who only has a few thousand. The former might achieve an engagement rate of perhaps 3.6%, while the latter could achieve up to 8.8%.

This 5% difference means that the target audience is more likely to take real action regarding the promotional messages they receive from their influencer with 5,000 followers compared to the one with hundreds of thousands.

Working with smaller influencers with fewer followers will ensure tangible engagement and returns.

3) Content marketing generates a return on investment of approximately $18 for every $1 spent.

If you are looking to raise brand awareness and increase sales, influencer marketing is exactly what you need; this is because you cannot find the same Earned Media Value from any other marketing effort for your brand.

The only way to achieve the highest value and return from this marketing medium is to execute it strategically and correctly, which means targeting the right influencer in the right niche.

Why Influencer Marketing?

1. Rising Advertising Costs

Ads have become expensive due to increased competition. You are not the only one looking to promote products and services in your field, nor are you the only one targeting that audience.

For example, if you want to promote clothing for girls, do you think you are the only one targeting this segment? All of this leads to higher advertising costs.

This is in addition to the cost of testing and experimentation until you settle on profitable ads that suit your audience and achieve the best results, unlike influencer marketing, which you can test easily and without significant cost.

2. Many Influencers Don't Know Their True Value

This type of marketing is not well-known to many marketers and business owners in the Arab world, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Furthermore, many influencers in the Arab world are rarely contacted by companies for advertising, so they are often thrilled just to be approached. They may be satisfied with receiving a free product or a small financial compensation.

This is what you should take advantage of, as the competition is weak and there are many influencers you can work with. I will tell you later how to find and utilize them.

3. Avoiding Content Production Costs

One of the most important marketing channels that many brands rely on is "content marketing," and despite its importance, it can sometimes be costly.

You might need to photograph your products or produce promotional materials to market them, but you can avoid all this when you collaborate with an influencer.

The influencer is the one who creates the content and promotes it, which saves you time, money, and effort.

4. Leveraging Influencers for Retargeting

When you rely on influencer marketing, you will receive a significant number of visits to your website, online store, or social media accounts.

You can utilize all this traffic in your regular advertising campaigns; you can retarget this traffic through Facebook or Google ads.

Or, you can create a "Lookalike Audience" on the Facebook platform to target with ads and convert them into customers.

It is well-known that the cost of retargeting ads is lower than regular ads; thus, you get the same results at a lower cost, which further increases your profits.

5. Spreading Awareness and Building Trust

Any professional marketer knows that most people need to interact with a brand more than once before making a purchase. Most people will not buy what you are offering just because they saw one ad.

They need to read about your products and see your ads in multiple places to build more trust in you, which is exactly what influencer marketing provides.

Influencers contribute significantly to spreading awareness about your products and services among their audience, which prompts them to research these products more and interact with your brand, facilitating the process of converting them into customers.

6. Influencer Marketing Enhances User-Generated Content (UGC)

One of the many benefits you will have when hiring influencers to market your brand is the ability to create and circulate User-Generated Content (UGC), the impact of which in encouraging audiences to trust the promoted company is well-known. This is because humans trust other humans, not companies and brands.

However, finding images or content outside of what your in-house team produces can be a challenge. Therefore, you can request to use the content that these influencers create themselves on your brand's accounts; this will allow you to repost their content and showcase your partnership with the influencer to your audience, in addition to their photos and content with their own unique touch.

You can also create a complete and tight plan for sharing UGC to reap the highest benefit and return on investment from it. Also, if you are planning to promote a product soon, you can provide this content for that upcoming product until the launch of your promotional campaign to achieve the highest impact.

7. Obtaining influencer testimonials and recommendations on your website

Whether you are a large or emerging brand, you undoubtedly need to display customer testimonials for your brand on your digital platforms, such as your website or social media pages.

But, as you know, not all customers care about returning to leave a review or share their experience. Therefore, one of the benefits of working with influencers is your ability to quote their recommendation and experience with your company.

You can leave their personal information on your website or promotional platform on the product pages they evaluate, in addition to their opinion and experience about them. This is known as Social Proof, which will give your potential customers a boost of confidence and courage to buy and try the products.

Be sure to clarify the nature of the endorsement or recommendation you want from the influencers at the beginning of your promotional campaign; this ensures they highlight the most important points and strengths you are interested in showing and demonstrating about your products/brand to your audience.

Types of Social Media Influencers

There are several classifications for influencers; there is a classification based on the platform of each influencer, and there is a classification based on the Niche – the field they focus on.

Perhaps the best of these classifications is the one based on the size of the influencer themselves and their reach among the audience, and this is what I will present to you now.

1. Celebrities

Of course, you will not rely on this type of influencer; I do not think you have the budget to contract with football players, actors, and social icons to promote your products and services.

There are some of these celebrities who charge millions just to post a few photos on their Instagram account, let alone filming a video or talking extensively about products.

2. Mega Influencers

Mega influencers are those whose followers exceed one million on various social media platforms, and there are many examples of them.

For example, you might follow Amr Nassouhy, the famous Egyptian content creator in the field of football, with whom many brands collaborate to promote their products such as EA Sports, Nivea, and others.

There are other examples of these influencers in several fields such as fashion, technology, health, fitness, and other areas.

The best use of this type of influencer is to leverage them in promoting exclusive offers, discounts, and competitions regarding your products, as they enjoy a wide base of loyal followers.

3. Medium-influencers

We can describe this type of influencer as those who have more than 100,000 followers and less than a million; they have their place in their field but are not quite celebrities.

Many experts consider this type of influencer the most effective, as the medium influencer creates targeted content that addresses a specific segment of the audience, which facilitates the targeting process.

You might find one of these influencers creating content about weight loss for brides-to-be, or meal plans suitable for pregnant women, and so on.

All of this allows you to target your audience with extreme precision, which increases the chances of your marketing campaigns succeeding.

4. Micro-influencers

We can categorize any influencer with fewer than 100,000 followers as a micro-influencer. Often, collaborating with this type of influencer is highly effective.

Most of these influencers are newcomers in their field; consequently, they care deeply about their audience, communicate with them, respond to their comments more frequently, and are highly committed to their content, ensuring they provide maximum value to their followers.

Therefore, if you search carefully, you can discover some of these influencers and leverage them to promote your products at the lowest possible cost.

How to Choose the Right Influencer

Although there are some tools that can assist in searching for influencers, such as:

  • LinkedIn search.

  • Keyword research tools.

  • Hashtag research tools.

  • Influencer evaluation tools like the Arab platform Dolphinos or the international platform Social Blade.

However, I believe the best way to search is manual research. You should look for influencers on various platforms yourself. For example, if you are searching on Instagram, use all the available hashtags until you find the right influencers.

You can also use the 'similar accounts' feature provided by Instagram to view pages that discuss the same topic you are researching.

If you are searching on YouTube, look for your audience's most important problems yourself to see who owns the channels that help the audience solve those issues.

Alternatively, search through the audience itself. If, for example, you are targeting girls under 20, why not ask some of them about the accounts they follow on Instagram or the channels they enjoy on YouTube?

Then, compile all the influencers who caught your attention into a single list to start selecting the most suitable ones. To choose the best, you must rely on the following criteria:

1- Engagement Level

The most important factor in choosing an influencer is the engagement level on their content, regardless of the follower count. Which do you think is better:

  • An influencer with 200,000 followers on Instagram, whose posts receive an average of 5,000 likes and 200 comments.

  • An influencer with 70,000 followers on Instagram, whose posts receive an average of 10,000 likes and 400 comments.

Naturally, the second influencer is better because the audience interacts and engages with them more. This is what you must verify when making your selection.

2- Audience Quality

One of the most important elements of any marketing strategy is knowing your target audience precisely. You know your product better than anyone else, and therefore you know the demographic the product addresses.

You must ensure that the influencer's followers represent the segment your product addresses to achieve the desired results. This is one of the most important rules of marketing in any campaign, which states: place the right product in front of the right audience.

3- Posting Frequency

There are some influencers who do not post content at a consistent rate. Specifically, you should avoid collaborating with these individuals, even if they have hundreds of thousands of followers.

Posting frequency is very important; it is an indicator of the influencer's interest and dedication to their followers. It also suggests that the audience follows and interacts with them regularly, and that the content is being distributed at a consistent and organic rate.

For Instagram, the best frequency is at least one post every two days, and preferably more. For YouTube, the minimum frequency is one video per week.

4- Marketing Campaign Objective

Do you want to run a marketing campaign to build brand awareness and bring some followers to your social media pages, or do you want to generate direct sales?

Some influencers may be better for building awareness than for direct promotion; therefore, carefully examine your marketing goals before choosing an influencer.

Read also: Tracking in Advertising Campaigns (All the information and tools you need)

5- The quality of content the influencer provides

An influencer's personality and the quality of their content play a major role in the success of a marketing campaign. There are serious influencers who rely on explanation, analysis, and comparison in their content creation.

Others rely on humor and personal charisma to convey information. For this reason, you must choose an influencer whose content quality matches your products.

For example, if you offer a complex product or service aimed at professionals, I believe you need an influencer who relies on critique and comparison in their content creation.

However, if you are promoting a popular product used by many people, I believe you need an influencer with an attractive and striking personality who has a unique style in creating content.

6- Previous experience

You should carefully look at the influencer's content and see if they have previously conducted any marketing campaigns for any brands. If you find many campaigns, this means that this influencer is good and achieves results, especially if a specific brand has relied on them more than once.

Of course, this means that this influencer may cost you more than others.

7- Cost

Cost is a major factor. As I mentioned earlier, some influencers may be content with receiving a free sample of what you offer, while others may cost you much more.

Therefore, after filtering the list you have compiled based on the factors I mentioned earlier, contact each influencer individually to find out the initial cost of collaborating with them.

Based on that, choose according to your marketing budget.

How to make an agreement with an influencer:

Contracting with influencers is as simple as it gets; all you need is:

  • Agreeing on the format of the content: You can ask the influencer to show you a preview of the content they will create.

  • Agreeing on the type of content and frequency of posting: For example, a YouTube video, an Instagram story, 3 posts on Instagram over 3 different days, and so on.

  • Agreeing on the posting time.

  • Providing links and advertising materials, if any, for easy tracking of results.

  • Agreeing on the financial compensation.

Sometimes, you can rely on affiliate marketing when agreeing on financial compensation; for example, you can give the influencer a percentage of every sale they bring you.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is one of the most important marketing channels at the present time. Every day there are new influencers, and people are relying more and more on influencers and social media to obtain information.

This is in addition to the fact that people rely less on traditional media such as television and newspapers, which has pushed many companies towards relying on social media in general and influencer marketing in particular.

That is why you must ride this wave and use it to your advantage, but remember that the fundamental skill of any marketer, which determines the success of their marketing campaigns, is testing and then analyzing the results.

Therefore, first test some influencers with simple advertising campaigns to check the results and ensure you have chosen the right influencers and audience, and after achieving positive results, invest larger amounts.

And remember that whoever innovates, develops, and searches for new and different methods and strategies is the one who achieves the best results and secures a place for themselves in the market, which is becoming fiercer every day.

If you would like to seek the assistance of any digital marketing and professional social media advertising companies, you can contact the Venets team.

We offer you a team of specialists in professional web design services, social media services, SEO, and a variety of other digital marketing services.

Hurry up and contact us through our various digital platforms, or visit the official venets website online.

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Muhammad Ghanem Al-Sawas

Marketing Department Manager

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