There is no denying that influencer marketing is extremely popular right now, as you cannot browse social media platforms without coming across influencers promoting goods and services from one brand or another to their followers.
Social media platforms are also updating their algorithms and trying to become more interactive to attract influencers, marketers, and businesses. However, with more than 500,000 active Instagram influencers and 1.4 billion active users, Instagram is one of the go-to platforms for marketers.
Studies indicate that 90% of all Instagram users follow at least one business account on the platform. Moreover, 83% of Instagram users conveyed that they have learned about new products and services on social media sites.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that using Instagram influencer marketing to build brand awareness and increase customer trust has become a key strategy for businesses. In this article, we will discuss the top 5 benefits of Instagram influencer marketing for brands of all sizes.
SIXPAD’s Campaign With Cristiano Ronaldo
Let’s start with an example of how successful Instagram influencer marketing can be. The Japanese tech firm, MTG Co., Ltd., has had a partnership with one of the most famous football superstars of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo, since 2015. Hence, the celebrity is often seen posting about the EMS gears of the company, SIXPAD.
On February 8, 2019, Ronaldo promoted SIXPAD on his Instagram account by posting a picture where he was wearing ab-belts. He also mentioned that he uses the gear regularly as his workout supplement and suggested his fans try the products by SIXPAD.
The post by Ronaldo gained massive reach and engagement, resulting in the brand getting a lot of exposure. Currently, the post has 4.8M likes and 33.5K comments. In another post from May 15, 2020, Ronaldo mentioned the brand again and shared a picture of him training where he was wearing the EMS training gear.
This post has 8.4M likes and more than 72K comments. This not only helped the company gain brand awareness but also boosted its sales and profits. Following the Ronaldo endorsement deal, MTG sold over one million SIXPAD products in just three years, and the company’s revenue doubled in the process. Currently, the brand has a market cap of over $58 billion.
Top 5 Benefits of Instagram Influencer Marketing
From the example above, it is clear that Instagram influencer marketing is a very effective marketing strategy for brands. In the following section, we are going to point out the 5 benefits of Instagram influencer marketing that you must know and discuss them briefly.
Vast Visibility & Reach
Visibility and reach are crucial for relatively new or smaller brands to gain a good return on investment (ROI). Through Instagram influencer marketing, brands can easily achieve that. Currently, there is around 1.393 billion active users on Instagram, but it is rumored that this number is actually much higher than that.
Moreover, half a billion people use Instagram every day. So you get the point about how big the audience base is. As mentioned earlier, there are approximately 500,000 influencers on Instagram who are specialists in their own niches. If they introduce a brand or new product to their followers through their content, then that can create massive brand awareness.
As each influencer works on his/her own niche, they garner a very distinctive fan base interested in that specific topic. Thus, brands can choose an influencer who aligns with their product or service category, and thus, they can reach their target audience through them.
Although Instagram is a very popular website across the world, it attracts the youth more. Statistics show that 64% of Instagram users are under 34 years old. So, if you are targeting people from the Millennial or Gen Z demographic, Instagram is the best platform for promotion.
Build Trust And Engagement
Influencers are knowledgeable in their fields, and their audience tends to have faith in their suggestions. If an Instagram influencer of the same niche as your business talks about your brand and promotes your product, their followers are more likely to buy it. You can see it in the above case study. When Christiano Ronaldo talked about SIXPAD, it sold over one million units within only 3 years.
Moreover, Instagram stands out for having an excellent average engagement rate, which is also another reason why you should invest in Instagram influence marketing. The platform generates 23% more engagement than Facebook, according to a Hubspot article, despite Instagram having less than half of the monthly users of Facebook. Posts on Instagram get 4.2 billion likes each day. As a result, it’s the top choice for most social media marketers.
Effective Marketing
Instagram influencer marketing is one of the most effective and efficient strategies of digital marketing because of its high Return on Investment (ROI). Compared to conventional advertisements, influencer marketing costs are much lower.
That is because people have a negative impression of traditional means of advertisements, which causes a low conversion rate. On the other hand, influencer endorsements are appreciated by consumers, and as they trust the influencers, they show interest in the product. As a result, you will observe a spike in sales, resulting in a good return on your marketing investment.
Shopify’s research indicates that the conversion rate of Instagram users is 1.08% for eCommerce companies. It’s not just that 130 million users click on shopping posts each month, and an average order value of $65 is generated by Instagram referral traffic.
Rich Content Categories
Unlike YouTube or some other social media platforms, Instagram features multiple types of interesting and engaging content that can benefit your brand and drive sales. Starting from posting pictures, videos, and stories, uploading reels, and hashtagging videos on IGTV, an Instagram influencer can support your brand in many ways.
All these segments have different engagement rates. For example, there are more than 500 million daily active viewers of Instagram Stories alone. What’s more, 100 million Instagram users watch live videos or go live daily.
Influencers continue to post fresh, trendy, and evergreen content that their audience base likes. They clearly understand the behavior of their viewers and know how to make them interact with their videos. Hence, their content usually gets a lot of responses from their audience and becomes a point of discussion.
So, when influencers promote your brand or product with good quality content, there is a high chance of it going viral. Sometimes, hashtags used by celebrities also become a trend that benefits companies by raising brand awareness. Moreover, the content will remain on the influencers’ profiles, which may garner further traffic for your business even after the campaign has ended.
Strong Partnerships
It is observed that when an influencer marketing campaign goes well, the partnership between the brand and the influencer lasts longer. Successful and prominent influencers working with the same brand for a long time can have a very positive impact on the brand’s image.
A strong partnership will eliminate the hassle of contacting new influencers to collaborate with every time a new project is in hand. On top of that, if you have a strong partnership with the influencer, when they grow in popularity and authority in their respective field, your brand will gain more reach as well.
Our Thoughts On Instagram Influencer Marketing
If you are planning on promoting your brand through influencer marketing, selecting Instagram as your platform of choice may be a wise decision, as Instagram offers the highest reach and engagement with a promising conversion rate.
Furthermore, you can post various types of content on the platform that will attract more potential customers and increase brand awareness. And if you are launching a campaign targeting people from Gen Z, then Instagram Influencer Marketing is the best possible approach you can take to reach them.
