We have all, no doubt, heard the term “social media influencer” over the past few years. It seems almost anyone can attach the tag influencer or content creator to their name. I’m almost certain many of us hear that label and see it as a term for someone who spends their days making TikTok videos or Instagram posts craving attention. To a degree, you’d be right. The number of people on TikTok claiming to be influencers is over 100,000, and many of them have relatively small followings.
It’s like they have a voice but pretty much nobody is listening. But then you have the elite level, those that can tap into the mindsets of hundreds of thousands of followers, many even break the million-follower benchmark. For a brand, reaching such numbers with a product launch or marketing campaign can cost huge sums when advertising on TV, radio or via billboards.
Instead, combining with an influencer puts the brand in front of a new audience for less cost, all the while still catering to the already established audience via its more traditional marketing methods. That’s not to say an influencer won’t help your current audience embrace your content and products even more, though. Even those who buck the trends of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and more can all be won over with a little influencer-led experiential marketing. In this blog, we look at why.
Why do experiential marketing agencies use social media influencers?
By bringing together the product quality, the skills of the marketing company, and the reach of the influencer, this combination can lead to a hugely successful campaign that helps improve sales, increase brand awareness, and establish new audiences. There is much more to it than that, though. We’ve picked five reasons why an experiential marketing agency London based and beyond looks to harness the power of the influencer alongside their own creative skills.
Enhanced engagement
Experiential marketing is all about creating memorable, immersive experiences that consumers not only enjoy and share “in the moment” but also share long after the event has happened. With an influencer relative to the brand on board, the brand benefits from how the social media star can help both their audience and the one already established to engage in content and activations through their natural talent in the space where their expertise is recognized.
Experiential experiences can be amplified, hyped, and promoted in a way unique to the influencer audience, luring in a new crowd to the established brand.
Authenticity and relatability
Influencers have an audience because those consuming their content enjoy, trust, and respect what they have to say. By having an influencer on board with an experiential marketing campaign, a degree of trust and respect filters down to the brand being promoted. The followers of the audience take on board the messages a lot more easily when it’s coming from someone they can relate to. The authentic and relatable narratives that the influencer becomes part of resonate much more than a more traditional form of advertising that may carry the same message but without the known voice behind it.
Content creation
Experiential marketing events are known for the creative elements behind them that make them memorable. Fuse this with the skills of the influencer, too, and you have a relationship that breeds new, innovative, and exciting content. The campaign devised by the experiential agency gives the influencer new and unique content to share on their platforms, whilst the brand benefits from the influencer’s creativity and personality being brought into the mix. Add in the reach that the influencer brings, and the created content now stands to deliver a much more desirable ROI.
Amplified word of mouth
As we touched upon earlier, influencers can have a huge reach, and in experiential marketing, this can be of vast benefit. Experiential marketing often relies on word of mouth, and with TikTok, for example, working as fast as it does with its algorithms, a few influencer-led posts about your event, the product, or the brand can suddenly be watched by thousands of people in just seconds. This can work on multiple levels and either bring people to the event in person or enjoy the live stream of it if they are not in the location. You can then reap the rewards of going viral as well as hosting a truly memorable event for those attending in person.
Measurable impact
Of course, any experiential marketing agency will be passionately measuring a host of metrics throughout the activation, and this cannot just be looked at on a brand level. The influencer’s own social accounts will also be able to provide valuable data relating to the marketing efforts. If their followers have risen since the event, if the event posts gained more engagement, or if there is specific event feedback flying into their inboxes, you can use this as a brand to further gauge the success of this latest marketing effort.
Balancing Experiential Marketing with Other Outreach Initiatives(Opens in a new browser tab)
Targeted reach
Influencers may be the voice you never knew you needed as they tune into demographics you may have previously missed or not fully engaged with. Organizing collaborations with influencers who hold a follower base that matches your target audience is vital. The marketing efforts will then tap into the right people and ensure the budget isn’t wasted.
Hiring an influencer can be expensive but it can be rewarding. Whether your aims of a marketing campaign are sales, brand building or product launches, having a voice on board that further expands your reach and reputation can be a huge benefit. An experiential marketing agency can help with this as their creative skills can curate the perfect activation that will only see increased impact once a suitable influencer is on board.
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