Influencer marketing is an important strategy to improve your business (or service) and to get more traffic on the website. With the rise of bloggers and influencers on social media platforms, companies have the opportunity to reach more people and strategically promote their business.
Although this method is the future of digital marketing, only a small number of enterprises decided to integrate it, according to the new report.
influencer Marketing Enterprises
Influencer management platform Traackr partnered up with Top Rank Marketing to evaluate the position of influencer marketing on a global scale. They also wanted to inspect how often enterprises integrate this marketing strategy to promote themselves.
The report also predicts the strategic evolution of the practice.
For the purpose of the research, Tracker and Top Rank Marketing polled 102 brand strategists and marketers from enterprises such as American Express, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, 3M, and Diageo. About 48% of poll respondents work in companies employing more than 10.000 people.
The results, summed up in a report called Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing outline what is working or failing in current influencer marketing for enterprise businesses.
So, what does the report say? The findings show that the current influencer marketing is tactical with a relatively low level of financial and resource investment. The report also points out that influencer marketing represents one of the most promising yet largely untapped opportunities for companies.
The low-level investments impair the performance and prevent the enterprises and other businesses from getting the most out of influencer marketing. Three key success factors of this practice include:
- Ongoing “always on” influencer relations programs
- Strong budget and resource allocation and planning
- Investment in sound IRM (influencer relationship manager) technology platform
The problem is that the current influencer marketing fails to recognize these three highly important factors. As a result, some enterprises fail with the strategy or don’t get the most out of it.
Despite the fact that 71% marketers rated this digital marketing method as a strategic or highly strategic marketing category, only 43% reported they did experiment with it. Also, 28% of these “experiments” only include influencers at the campaign level.
Entreprises Don’t Trust Influencer Marketing?
Based on the fact that less than half respondents experimented with influencer marketing, although a majority of all participants admitted it’s useful, one has to wonder if enterprises simply don’t trust this method enough to integrate it. That said, the report showed that 83% of poll respondents said their main priority was to identify and build strong one-on-one relationships with key influencers in their niche.
Engaging influencers in authentic long-term relationships is the key to a successful marketing strategy. According to the report, this is only achievable through investment in IRM technology platform that would unite all relationship-driven organizational functions.
Although 24% brands run an “always on” program and are leading the way to successful relationships with influencers in their niche, only 5% enterprises from this research have tried implementing influencer marketing across different business functions. This could be the result of lack of understanding or recognizing benefits of influencer marketing.
For example, influencer marketing is more than a way of promoting the company; it is a ProvenSEO strategy as well. How? It is because influencers make the company visible to a larger group of people, they add the diversity to the brand, and it is needless to mention they provide unique content thus improving a brand’s ranking on search engine results.
What Is The Problem?
Based on the findings, the budget is the main problem here. A vast majority of brands report small influencer marketing budgets compared to the finances for other marketing strategies. In fact, only 10% of total marketing budget accounts for this method.
Less than $100,000 annually is allocated to the influencer marketing, and more than half of respondents have this issue. The lower budget only limits the full potential of this powerful digital marketing strategy. However, budgetary projections for 2017 could change that because 55% respondents plan to invest more.
For companies that are already investing about $250,000 annually, the percentage jumps to 67%-77% clearly indicating that these brands are already experiencing benefits of influencing marketing, but they’re also willing to improve, evolve, and invest more.
Report Also Found
- 94% marketers want to explore how to improve brand advocacy
- 92% respondents want to implement influencer marketing to expand brand awareness
- 88% want to reach new highly targeted audience
- 86% want to achieve increased share of voice
- 74% aim to improve sales conversion
- 65% of companies report PR executing against influencer marketing strategy
- 57% believe influencer marketing will be integrated into all marketing activities in three years
- 47% believe influencer marketing is a cross-functional discipline that will expand beyond marketing
- 16% of companies cite PR as the owner of influencer marketing
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a practical and effective strategy to improve business and sales, while also serving other purposes like SEO. Unfortunately, only a small number of businesses implement this strategy across different functions.
The reason behind the low implementation of influencer marketing is budget, but it seems like we’re witnessing the shift as starting this year, companies plan to invest more in building long-term relationships with influencers.