Mediaboss Marketing

Influencer marketing is now an integral part of social marketing; it may even become an anchor for marketers trying to navigate around the scourge of ad blocking and bot fraud this year.

However, while influencer marketing has proven to yield excellent return on investment, rising costs have some experts asking how much is too muchto pay for influencer campaigns. Content discovery platform Bloglovin surveyed 100 marketing pros to get a sense of the current state of influencer marketing.

The marketers surveyed by Bloglovin take advantage of influencer marketing for a few main reasonsraising brand awareness, reaching target audiences and the original content created by social media influencers. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed said they werent working with influencers yet, but they planned to this year.

Marketers who sponsor influencer content on social have discovered that traditional advertising, such as display ad campaigns, simply cant impact audiences the way influencer campaigns can. The personalized and authentic content created by social influencers encourages audience loyalty. In fact, for 75 percent of marketers surveyed, quality/authenticity was the most important factor in choosing an influencer. 70 percent also selected for audience size, 64 percent for engagement and more than one-half for the influencers aesthetic.

The bottom line is that influencers provide real value to marketers. Aside from the essential boost in brand awareness and new audience reach, more than one-half of survey participants reported that influencers help grow their social following and increased sales, while still nearly one-half reported increases in website traffic.

For more information on the preferred ways to locate influencers, the best social sites for influencer content and investment growth data, download the full report.

Image on homepage courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Influencer Marketing Is Becoming an Essential Business Strategy (Survey) - Adweek