Business growth by social media marketing: Building a brand online

66 billion USD respectively. 

Therefore, it's imperative now for businesses to actively make use of social media platforms and especially the influencer market to carve their own space in the consumer's mind by boosting both brand visibility and customer engagement. 

Social media marketing

There are usually two ways in which a business can market its products or services. It can either be marketed through their own handle to market their products, either handled in-house or outsourced. This is known as content marketing. It is the style of marketing where visibility and engagement is built on the merit of the content and product/service. 

The other way is where a person of influence (an “influencer”) endorses the product to their audience. This is known as influencer marketing. It is similar to celebrity endorsements but is a more direct form of gaining visibility and engagement with the audience, as the power recommendation works better in this space. 

Content and Influencer Marketing 

Influencers and who they are?

Veirman defines influencers as people who have built a large network of followers and are regarded as trusted tastemakers in a niche or more than one niche. This means that an influencer is primarily a person whose word or recommendation has some form of value amongst a set of people. 

There are multiple factors for an influencer like physical attractiveness, opinion leadership, and credibility. An influencer’s overall portfolio in these factors determines the acceptability of their brand endorsement. Their ability to connect with a sect of audience is currently unmatched due to an authentic connection they have with their audience, as the users are seeing them in familiar surroundings lending towards this marketing push feeling more like a recommendation by a friend. 

An Influencer

Growing popularity of Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has had a meteoric rise since 2019. The size of the global influencer market currently stands at 21.1 billion dollars, in 2023, a record high for the market. Currently a quarter of the market uses influencer marketing as the main push for their brand. Influencer marketing can be considered a new age version of celebrity endorsements. The reason celebrity endorsements worked was due to the fact that there were many people, who were their audience, that wanted to emulate their admired celebrity. 

Now, the lines between influencers and celebrities have become blurred. Reportedly, 69% of consumers on social media trust the recommendations provided by their favourite influencers/creators. This gives an opportunity for the businesses to make use of the customers who are ready to engage with a product/service, if only it comes from a specific voice that caters to them. 

Influencer market today

Using both content marketing and influencer marketing

There are 2 billion monthly active users on Instagram per month. Each one of them is a customer, the hard part is getting their attention. 

A business today needs to utilise both content and influencer marketing. Though, statistically influencer marketing outperforms content marketing by a huge margin, it is nevertheless important to building a brand image. To provide a more detailed explanation as to how: 

• An influencer promotes brand ‘X’ on their platform to their users. 

• This prompts some of those users to view the said brand and product. 

• This is where the product’s content marketing comes into play. Depending on how good the product is, how well is the content showcasing the product. 

• The merits of both these aspects will determine for the user if the product is worth their purchase or not. 

Businesses that market their products/services through social media, need to build a symbiotic relationship between their brand content and how their content reaches their audience. Hence, influencer endorsement bridges the gap between the two. Businesses should identify the following to use these two marketing strategies effectively:

• Who is their target audience?

• Who are their favoured creators?

• Do these creators have good outreach?

• Is their brand content catering to the target audience?

If a business is able to answer the above four questions affirmatively, then they will be able to replicate the following success stories. 

A few of many success stories

1. Iceland Foods- A frozen food brand that had the uphill task of making frozen food feel appealing. They partnered with 50 smaller influencers who would showcase how these same foods can be integrated into the lives of different kinds of people, Iceland foods managed to attain a 55% and 59% retention rate of Facebook and Youtube respectively. They used the campaign “Power of Frozen” to piggyback on this success and market their own content. 
2. Dyson- Dyson, an electronics brand, recognised that pet parents were their primary target for their Air ball Vacuum product. But, not many were aware of the same. To counter this, Dyson partnered with five influencers, who were pet owners and let them market the product using their own creativity. This found good success as their content resonated with the target audience leading to a 10% overall growth in user engagement and an average 1 million interactions with the product page. 

More success stories

If your business is trying to navigate in the jungle that is social media, we can help. Contact Marketing Eye today to have our dedicated team assist you in your success story.