Tellscore, an automated one-stop platform that joins micro-influencers with brands, has identified five brand shifts that marketers need to know about to create successful content strategies for the future.
Tellscore co-founder Suvita Charanwong said influencers are the new marketing superheroes. They are real consumers who communicate in a genuine way with other consumers, their followers, about brands. They engage consumers because they are part of the same mindset.
Tellscore creates connectivity between brands and influencers as part of a performance-monitored marketing strategy.
According to Tellscore, marketing is less about what brands are saying about themselves and more about how they are perceived by consumers.
While digital advertising has experienced an unprecedented rise, it has failed to deliver the expected return on investment because ad-blocking stands in the way of digital advertising penetration.
The use of influencers can significantly boost engagement.
Content is still king, with the biggest consumer group, millennials, wanting to learn about products via content, not advertising, amid a shift towards mass one-to-one communication.
Consumers are responding more actively to peer-to-peer content, with a recent Forrester survey finding that 70% of buyers trust the recommendations of their friends and family.
The power of influence is shifting toward micro-influencers. From bloggers and YouTube stars, micro-influencers with anywhere from 10 to 300,000 followers can generate a greater engagement rate percentage compared with bigger players such as celebrities with a million-plus followers.
The market working with these larger macro-influencers is saturated, and the power of micro-influencers reflects untapped potential.
"Influencers impact consumers and the market at the most challenging part of the process, initiating a successful call to action to purchase, sparking interest and engagement that turns into lead conversions, sign-ups, subscriptions, increased traffic, app downloads and sales," Ms Suvita said.
Part of successfully working with micro-influencers, she said, is considering resources such as budget and the time to find and employ micro-influencers.