Ketchup’s guide to influencer marketing

It’s easy to dismiss influencer marketing as just a load of young people posing on Tiktok with free merchandise, but it’s actually an extremely profitable method of brand advertising. In fact, the global influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $16.4 billion in 2022.

We’ve put together a guide to this exciting and dynamic form of marketing, and how it can help your brand to attract new customers and strengthen brand awareness.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements or recommendations from brand ambassadors. They are found on just about every social media platform, but are particularly prevalent on Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok.

Ideally, these promotions should feel more like a personal recommendation than an advert, leveraging the existing bond of trust between the influencer and their followers. That means it’s important to choose an influencer who gels with your brand ideals, and whose demographic represents your target audience.

What are the benefits of influencer marketing?

More than 75% of brand marketers intend to include influencer marketing in their 2022 budgets, which is testament to the effectiveness of this form of advertising.

Influencer marketing differs from other types of digital marketing by allowing brands to tap into an existing audience to promote a product or service in a way that feels more organic. By putting your brand in front of a new and receptive audience, you can boost brand awareness without the need to build your own social media presence.

Influencers are so called because they have a certain amount of sway over their followers. A recommendation from someone a user knows and trusts is much more powerful and persuasive than a business simply telling them to buy their product.

What are influencer marketing platforms?

Influencer marketing platforms make it easier for brands and marketers to discover suitable ambassadors to partner with.

A good influencer marketing strategy should be about creating mutually beneficial partnerships. For brands, this may mean focusing on a worthwhile return on their investment, while influencers often put stock into their integrity, only working with brands they believe in and feel good about representing.

Using this type of platform makes the whole process much more efficient than simply browsing through social media and reaching out to influencers. They often include verification measures to weed out follower fraud and inflated reach metrics, giving brands greater trust in their influencers.

Should I work with an influencer marketing agency?

Despite the wealth of influencer marketing platforms available, there’s still a lot of work involved in putting together and executing a successful influencer marketing strategy.

When done well, this type of advertising can yield a staggering 500% ROI for your brand, so if you’re going to do it, it’s worth doing well. To that end, you might consider working with an influencer marketing agency. From planning the overall strategy to connecting with influencers and monitoring the results, your agency will take care of all the hard work.

Using an influencer marketing service offered by an experienced agency will get you better results than trying to wing it if you don’t know what you’re doing. This is important to avoid negative PR stemming from a social media influencer fail. It also leaves you and the rest of your team free to focus on the rest of the business.

Benefit from Ketchup’s influence

If you’re looking for an influencer marketing solution that will help you to build your brand and boost your profits, you’ve come to the right place.

Ketchup’s experts are on hand to craft an influencer marketing strategy designed to meet your business goals. From selecting suitable brand ambassadors to monitoring the outcome of each partnership, we’re here to deliver great results for you.