5 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing is Important for Your PR Campaigns
By Cid Santillan, Director for TeamAsia PR
Summary:
- The increase in influencers and content creators online has given PR practitioners a new platform to utilize in reaching their target audience for the success of their campaigns.
- Influencer marketing offers various benefits that PR practitioners can consider to reach their communication objectives. With this, TeamAsia shares five ways in which influencer marketing can amplify PR campaigns.
With the increase of influencers and content creators online, public relations (PR) practitioners are now also considering diving into this new media for their marketing strategies. PR thrives in word of mouth and what better way to spread the word than with these personalities and their respective audiences who trust and seek their recommendations?
Here are five ways PR with influencer marketing can amplify your next campaign:
No need to worry about being ‘newsworthy’
Influencer marketing is among the powerful tools PR practitioners can leverage today in their strategies. Besides boosting their clients’ awareness and visibility, influencer marketing also plays a part in audiences’ consideration and conversion journey. With a lot going on around the world—economic crisis, the pandemic, wars–-it’s not easy to cut through the noise with just the traditional media.
While radio and TV interviews, press releases, and advertorials still hold their charm in reaching target audiences, it is often quite difficult to pitch stories. While some stories are not of national interest, what makes it a challenge, as well, is that here in the Philippines, we only have limited platforms and channels.
But with influencer marketing, anything goes depending on their niche. May it be food, gadgets, or beauty products, there’s the right mix of influencers out there who can meet your objectives without needing a news feature.
Personal and authentic
Consumers often rely on word of mouth when purchasing a product. A recent survey revealed that 30% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product endorsed by a non-celebrity blogger than a celebrity. They are more sensitive to a brand’s authenticity and credibility and have developed an eye to distinguish if what they are watching or reading is a paid engagement or not.
With that, it is important to note that people treat influencers as a friend to who they can relate to. When these influencers give a good review about certain products, their followers also see themselves buying or using the same ones as well.
For brands and marketers, apart from awareness and visibility, it is also vital that they gain the trust of their target audience, and this is something influencer marketing can do for them.
Reaching untapped territories
While influencers are known for their niche audience or communities, an article from Open Mic says an upcoming trend in influencer marketing is that niche influencers are becoming the new lifestyle influencers. PR practitioners and brands can be experimental in engaging with influencers to reach untapped audiences.
For example, if you’re working on a tech client launching a new phone product, you may consider tapping travel influencers to expand your reach and discover potential markets. This can increase your product’s mileage as something even ‘non-techy’ people can enjoy. For instance, travel influencers can highlight the phone’s excellent camera display and long battery life, which are essentials for traveling.
PR practitioners can consider as well a mix of nano, macro, and mega influencers to reach the nooks and crannies of your target audiences. This brings brands to untapped territories, further widening their reach. It can also provide insights on where else their product has potential. And with the increase of influencers online, new niches are also emerging, which both brands and PR practitioners can also consider in their future campaigns.
Increases potential for conversion
Have you ever noticed how at first, you’re not interested in buying a certain product but after weeks or even months of seeing multiple influencers post about it on social media, you suddenly budge and make that purchase? This is the magic of influencer marketing.
It helps accomplish one of the main goals of PR—to maintain visibility, captivate, and potentially convert audiences. What’s great about this is that there is no need to tap macro-influencers to make this possible. Macro-influencers can be costly and PR practitioners usually partner with them only during product launches for bigger impact and reach. However, it is the micro- and nano-influencers who keep the buzz going and provide effective lead generation.
Measurable KPIs
Like in PR, influencer marketing can also provide accurate measurements when it comes to your digital marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Since it’s digital and posted online, you can use a variety of engagement metrics such as likes, shares, brand mentions, clicks, referral traffic, time spent on the page, etc., to effectively measure the success of your campaign.
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter also have back-end data analytics that can help you in further calculating your KPIs for influencer marketing.
Similarly, KPIs are very important with influencer marketing as much as with PR. These measurements determine the impact of a campaign and its effectiveness. It is also among the determining factors if a brand will continue to engage with you or not.
Including influencer marketing in PR initiatives can do wonders for a brand’s campaign. However, PR practitioners must be strategic about it, especially in terms of budget. Working with influencers can be expensive, depending if you will collaborate with mega, macro, micro, and nano influencers. But with proper coordination, both parties can reach an agreement where all sides benefit and accomplish desired results.
Want to know more about PR and Influencer Marketing? Talk to the experts in TeamAsia, a professional PR Agency Philippines.
