From the Influencers

Influencer Marketing Yields Greater Value than Traditional Channels


October 04, 2016


Influencer marketing is increasingly being implemented by companies in all vertical markets, as a cost-effective and straightforward way to increase sales and improve customer engagement and retention rates. But just how influential is influencer marketing at the end of the day?


Sysomos, a company that specializes in building successful influencer programs for companies and brands, pulled together statistics from a variety of sources to measure the true value of influencer marketing. As it turns out, marketing based on word of mouth and influence directly results in twice the number of sales as paid advertising generates. And customers won over by influencer marketing have a 37percent higher retention rate than those garnered by more traditional sales and marketing methods.

Spending your marketing budget on influencers has a greater ROI and value than traditional channels as well. For instance, for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, organizations garnered $6.85 in earned media value – a pretty good value proposition. Consumers also tend to trust recommendations from influencers, i.e. known entities, over branded content.

If there is any doubt about exactly how popular influencer marketing has become, search engines and social media give a pretty accurate picture. For instance, the number of online searches for the term “influencer marketing” is growing by a whopping 5,000 percent each month. And influencers use their status and vast networks to amplify their message across social media, reaching billions of users. eMarketer puts the number of active Facebook users at 1.43 billion, while there are currently 286 million active Twitter users.

Finding the right influencers remains the biggest challenge for most marketing professionals. Social listening and monitoring software can go a long way toward pinpointing the best matches and ultimately reaching and engaging the most customers and prospects. The strategy certainly pays off in the long run, though, with 72 percent of U.S. social media users stating they make purchases based on the social media accounts of friends and family, while only 51 percent make purchasing decisions based on brands. The non-advertorial, non-sales approach of typical marketing influencers also generally has a positive impact on consumers, translating to a better likelihood that they will ultimately make a purchase.




Edited by Alicia Young

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