How influencer marketing solves most problems performance marketers face today

Influencer marketing is a great way to overcome the challenges performance marketers are facing in 2022 and beyond.

From shrinking budgets and changing buying behaviors to the rise of data privacy, influencer marketing helps you connect with the right audience at the right time in a trusted environment while saving your budget.

For example, if you have a product or service to promote, influencers have an audience that’s interested in what they have to say who are likely to be more receptive to your message. When someone sees an endorsement from an influencer, it seems like more than just a sales pitch — it feels like authentic advice from a trusted friend or family member.

Keep reading to understand how influencer marketing helps you address issues like rising paid media costs, ineffective ads, and BigTech privacy updates.

1. The increased use of Adblock

As marketers, we are aware that the use of ad blockers is on the rise.

I recently read an article from Forbes that stated that “47% of consumers are using some form of an ad blocker.”

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That is a lot of people who don’t want to see your ads!

This comes as no surprise when you consider how many ads we are seeing on a daily basis. It is getting harder and harder to find a website or blog post that doesn’t have ads on it.

However, this issue presents a challenge to marketers who rely on paid advertising on websites as their primary method of generating leads and sales — How do you reach these people who don’t want to be advertised to?

The answer? Influencer marketing!

Content creators have one thing that you don’t: trust by association.

And guess what? People with ad-blockers willingly scroll social media and consume creator’s content.

By partnering with influential creators and social media personalities, brands can create sponsored content that allows them to reach their ideal customers without having to pay for ads.

For instance, Tata Cliq, an e-commerce brand, wanted to deepen customer connections with a variety of gifting options while showing their loved ones that they know them well.

To do this, they launched a "Show Them You Know Them" campaign challenge that encouraged people to show their friends and family how much they know them by answering five questions about them.

To reach their target audience and generate word of mouth, they collaborated with some celebrities and 75 micro-influencers for this campaign – 25 of these influencers made a video doing the challenge, while others posted a story about it using Tata Cliq's template for answering the five questions about someone special.

The campaign was a huge success. It reached 3.2 million people and generated more than 70,000 actions and 3.48 million impressions.

2. The inefficiency associated with other forms of online advertising

Performance marketers that work for an established marketing agency use a variety of tactics to get their message in front of people. They use paid ads, email campaigns, search engine optimization, and more to drive traffic to their websites.

The problem with these methods is that they're not always as effective as they could be because they're not personalized, and they don't have the right content to keep users engaged once they arrive on your site.

With influencer marketing, you can work with people who already have a large list of followers and build trust with them before sending them traffic or asking them for a review of your product or service.

This way, you're reaching potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer because their favorite creators are talking about it — rather than random strangers who may or may not be interested in what you're selling.

In fact, the average ROI for PPC ads was just 200%. This means that for every dollar spent on PPC ads, you receive $2 back in clicks.

And this isn't even taking into account the time it takes to create an ad, manage your campaigns, and analyze results.

In contrast, Influencer Marketing solves these problems by:

• Reducing the cost of customer acquisition,

• Increasing brand awareness and engagement (which also makes your ads more effective)

• Increasing conversions.

Even when you examine the statistics, influencer marketing is more effective. As per a study, for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, businesses make about $5.20 in return on average. If that’s the average return, imagine what you could get by simply being slightly better than everyone else.

3. The visibility of ads in a saturated environment.

The average person sees hundreds of ads per day – on TV, the internet, billboards, and more – and each one competes for attention with all the others. As a result, most ads get lost in the clutter of our already-filled schedules.

The solution? Influencer marketing – which uses content that's naturally interesting as a way to build trust with potential customers before trying to sell them anything (or without even explicitly selling them anything).

This kind of relationship-building works especially well in influence-based marketing because it gives you access to an audience that wants something specific — like advice on how to improve their health or finances — so you can deliver value before asking for anything in return.

And let’s face it: customers don’t like being targeted.

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In contrast, 61% of consumers trust recommendations from influencers – and 41% of millennials even say their favorite creators understand them better than their friends do.

4. Consumer data and privacy is more protected than ever

As consumers, you and I can agree that this is a great thing!

Data is the lifeblood of any performance marketer, and it's getting harder to get.

The reasons are many: more sophisticated tools for blocking tracking and ad networks, a rise in ad-blocking software, and an increasingly privacy-conscious consumer base aware of malware and other threats they want to avoid.

There are also privacy concerns that came into play as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation law) approached, and consumers grew weary of the idea of having their personal information collected and shared by brands.

Brands can also implement multi-factor authentication, conduct regular security audits, and use an enterprise password manager to enforce strong security policies across their organization.

This means that marketers have to rely on alternative sources of information if they want to stay ahead of the competition. Influencer marketing is a great way to do this because it gives you access to trusted voices who can share your brand story directly with their followers.

It’s also more transparent than other types of digital advertising and even helps you avoid getting blocked by ad blockers.

5. Increased usage of social media

In the past few years, social media has become a major marketing channel for brands and advertisers. The numbers speak for themselves:

Facebook has about 1.98 billion daily active users (DAUs), and Instagram has 500 million DAUs.

Today, there are more than 4.5 billion people on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat combined — that’s more than half the world's population!

With so many people using these platforms every day, how can you make sure your brand stands out from the crowd?

The answer is influencer marketing.

Influencers have high engagement rates on social media because their posts are often tailored to their audience’s interests and preferences – which makes them great advocates for your brand!

For example, Nike, a leading manufacturer, and supplier of athletic wear and sports equipment, teamed up with the YouTube channel "What's Inside?"—a channel run by a father-son duo who cut open everyday objects to reveal their insides—to promote their Air Vapormax series.

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This promotional video by Nike has gained 3.6 million views and 32,000 likes. The campaign helped build excitement for the new line of products by creating a sense of community among consumers.

If you’re struggling to find creators who fit your brand, this article has some tips to help you incentivize creators to work with you.

6. The latent mistrust consumers feel for traditional ads

According to statistics, about 84% of millennials don't trust traditional ads. What's more, 37 percent of internet users feel that online ads are intrusive.

That's a problem for performance marketers who rely on those ads to drive traffic to their websites and convert leads into customers.

It's not just the consumers' fault. Traditional display ads aren't effective because they're usually too noisy, interruptive, and irrelevant to be effective.

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Yes, that’s me when I see those little ads that pop up on my screen while I’m reading.

Influencer marketing provides a solution to this problem because it allows you to reach your audience in a way they are already receptive to — through their favorite content creators.

We’ve already established it’s also a great way to build trust with your audience and deliver content that resonates with them — without being annoying or intrusive.

But it's not just about trust; it's also about how our brains work. Influencer marketing taps into natural human behavior by giving brands access to individuals who can spread their messages organically through their own channels.

For example, lifestyle blogger Kate Lavie uses her Instagram feed to promote Naked Juice products together with the outfit she wears for the day.

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Her audience knows that she doesn’t talk about how good the drink is; instead, she drinks it as anyone would.

7. iOS 14.5 and privacy changes

Apple's new operating system, iOS 14.5, removed a key feature: the ability for third-party apps to collect information about your contacts and location.

Here's why this matters:

The iOS 14.5 update means that third-party applications will no longer be able to access certain types of data without explicit user permission, including:

• Location data

• Contacts

• Calendar events

• Photos and videos

• Messages

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This is a big deal for performance marketers who use contact data from their customers' phones to target them with ads on Facebook or other platforms – and who use location data to target ads based on where they're going.

Again, influencer marketing is an easy fix.

Since most influencers are highly engaged with their audiences, they can offer valuable insight into customer preferences and behavior – without compromising user privacy in any way.

8. Problem of ad blindness

Ad blindness is a problem that performance marketers face when they pay for ad space on platforms like Facebook and Google.

It’s when consumers stop paying attention to ads because they're so commonplace in our daily lives. After all, an average person sees approximately 10,000 banner ads daily.

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It’s not that consumers are blind to ads. It’s that they don’t notice them anymore.

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Consumers: 1; Marketers; 0 😏

But wait! Influencer marketing can help you solve this problem.

Creators have built their audiences by creating content that people actually want to consume. And because of this, they have a way of reaching people who are actually interested in what they have to offer.

9. Rising cost of cheap clicks

The average cost per click (CPC) rate for Facebook ads is $1.35, $3.56 for Instagram ads, $0.67 for Google Ads (Search) CPC, and $2.32 for Google Ads (Display) CPC.

On the other hand, influencer marketing is cost-effective. As per research, 89% of brand marketers said that they get a higher ROI with influencer marketing than with other digital marketing channels.

The difference between those two numbers is due to the fact that influencer marketing is often done through micro-influencers – people with small but loyal followings. They usually don’t charge as much as big-name influencers, so they can afford to take lower commissions from advertisers who want access to their audiences.

For instance, in a case study of Health-ade—a Los Angeles-based company that makes cold-pressed kombucha—the company wanted to focus on their kombucha mothers and make them try their products.
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But they didn't want to invest in Facebook Ads, as they were too costly and risky for a brand that was just growing. So they partnered with creators who posted pictures of the product on Instagram 214 times.

With Instagram charging $7 for 1,000 impressions, they paid a tiny fraction of that amount to generate impressions worth $11,200 with influencer marketing. Not only that, they were able to get brand-specific content that can be used everywhere. Influencer marketing saved them money and got them the impressions they needed.

Let's solve your performance marketing problems—using influence.

We hope that this article has given you a deeper insight into the benefits of influencer marketing and how it can help performance marketers.

Influencer marketing allows marketers to go after the more "customer-ready" audience. The customers that visit the website and read about the product/service get exposed to the brand/message and instantly form a connection with it. This helps them take the next step toward making a purchase decision.

To summarize, influencer marketing doesn't just drive attention to a page in an ad format but also helps you achieve conversion rates by making people feel a part of your brand.

Whether you're only dipping your toes into influencer marketing or want to dive deep, it's an exciting time!

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