How Do Marketing Agencies Use Instagram Influencers for Advertising?

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

The world of marketing agencies changes every day, and we should know about those changes if we want to gain an advantage in this industry. Experts in the marketing agency field have noticed a clear shift in consumer buying behavior: only 33% of shoppers trust advertisements, while the figure for recommendations from influencers reaches 90%. This shift leads us into the era of marketing with influencers. With this article, Markdao hopes to give you an overview of how advertising agencies and Instagram influencers work together.

Who Are Instagram Influencers? How Can Marketing Agencies Use Them?

Influencer is the term for people who have built a large, long-term following on social media. An influencer's following can come from many reasons — mostly because they are "idolized" in some aspect of life (lifestyle, career, hobbies, looks, fashion style), or because the stories they tell capture the public's interest, or because their opinions draw attention and agreement from many people.

The influencer community is growing in both size and diversity, which opens up ever more opportunities for any brand wanting to use Instagram influencers for marketing campaigns. What's more, the tiering within the influencer community helps marketing agencies better orient, filter, and target groups of potential customers.

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Why Have Marketing Agencies Favored Influencers Recently?

Influencer marketing lets brands and marketing agencies reach their target audiences in a way that feels far more authentic than traditional advertising. Instead of businesses marketing directly to consumers, they build relationships with influential people who can sell for them. Instagram influencers have strong, close bonds with their followers, because they share many aspects of their lives with everyone, and this attracts a certain amount of attention. This leads audiences to feel as if they personally know the influencer, so when an influencer wants to recommend something, the public is more easily inclined to listen and embrace the product.

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When Did Marketing Agencies Start Using Influencers?

In the early days, when Instagram influencer marketing was still a little-known concept and the market was still wide open, we saw the most primitive collaborations between Instagram users and brands: they would send celebrities their products as a gift, and in return the influencer would take and post photos and review or introduce the product on their page. But the rapid growth of the marketing world has pushed things much further — influencers today are far more proactive in seeking out marketing agencies or brands for collaboration opportunities in exchange for fees, rather than just free products or gifts as before.

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The Current State of Marketing Agencies Working in the Influencer Field

Valued as a 2-billion-dollar industry, Instagram influencer marketing is sweeping the social media world with the force of a storm. More than 800 million active users have made Instagram the promised land — a golden ticket taking you to the land of the most concentrated potential customer groups. 72% of users say they have made purchases of fashion, beauty, or lifestyle products after seeing posts on Instagram, proving the power of this social platform in the context of today's digital marketing services industry.

In recent years, Instagram users worldwide have become accustomed to paid posts — or more broadly, advertising campaigns combining brands/marketing agencies and celebrities — opening up fair competition opportunities for most businesses.

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Marketing Agency + Instagram Influencer = A Billion-Dollar Industry in the Years Ahead

This platform provides the perfect space for brand ambassadors — highly influential users who can introduce products and services to their own loyal audiences. Projected to reach growth of 5–10 billion dollars in 2020, this is clearly an opportunity for marketing agencies to reach any customer audience you desire.

The exceptional growth of Influencer Marketing advertising activities has brought with it the launch of a wave of technology platforms connecting brands and influencers, raising a question for the marketing and advertising industry: will they make the marketing agency "lose favor"?

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What Factors Matter Most for Marketing Agencies to Consider When Partnering With Influencers?

The amount an influencer can charge per post varies depending on several factors, including the size of their following, their engagement rate, and the industry or field they work in. Among these factors, the engagement rate is a very important metric that marketing agencies should seriously weigh when choosing influencers, because it ensures they are genuinely cared about by their followers and have real influence through their posts. The engagement rate is calculated as the number of likes and comments divided by the total number of followers, and ideally it should be 10–20%.

Another important quality of a good influencer is that they should be responsible about their partnership choices — genuinely considering their followers' interests and making sure they only do sponsored posts with brands they believe their audience will engage with.

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Influencer Solutions for Marketing Agencies and Brands

Generally speaking, the more followers and the more engagement someone has, the more it guarantees a campaign's success. That is why many brands decide to partner with famous artists. However, the price of stars is by no means small, and this seems out of reach for small and medium businesses. From this comes another extremely promising strategy: using Micro Influencers — people with more followers than an average person but fewer than famous stars. Although their followings are smaller, these people have fairly high engagement rates and are well suited to attracting certain customer groups.

This is a far more cost-effective option for small businesses and marketing agencies, and it is also more effective in terms of influencer performance for certain specific audiences. When you have a bigger budget, you can think about bigger influencers, but try not to be fooled by vanity metrics like follower counts — focus mainly on the engagement rate. To reach these Micro Influencers, a brand needs considerable time for market research and screening, so we recommend hiring marketing agencies for this work, since they clearly have the experience and professional knowledge to select the most promising candidates.

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What Should Marketing Agencies Do to Collaborate Effectively With Influencers?

Once you've found people you think are the perfect choice for your campaign, do some small research to make sure they have real followers (not fake followers) and a loyal, trustworthy community. Check whether they have previously worked with brands/marketing agencies on large, influential campaigns, and look at the types of products or brands they have promoted — this helps you make sure they are a good fit for your company.

Next, read their comments to see whether that influencer's audience demographics match your goals and engage with your core content. And finally, check the type of posts where they perform best (e.g., standard posts, stories, videos, photo-gallery posts) to understand their style.

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