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What Is the Impact of Influencer Marketing on Consumer Behavior?
Influencer Marketing
With any kind of marketing campaign, the brand’s goal is always to influence consumer behavior in some way.
Brands use marketing campaigns to make consumers more aware of their products and services, establish authority within an industry, or generate high-quality leads. Ultimately, it’s about using marketing efforts to make consumers more likely to become paying customers of the brands.
Many different types of influencer marketing can accomplish this goal, but one worth taking a close look at is influencer marketing. In this post, we’ll explore the impact of influencer marketing on consumer behavior and the ways your brand can use this to your advantage.
What Are the Major Influencers of Consumer Behavior?
The major influencers of consumer behavior break down into four main categories: psychological influencers, personal influencers, social influencers, and cultural influencers.
- Psychological influencers- Psychological influencers are rooted in a consumer’s subconscious. They include factors like motivation, perception, beliefs, learning, and experiences.
- Personal influencers- Personal influencers deal with factors that are specific to each consumer. Age, personality, occupation, economic situation, and lifestyle are all personal influencers.
- Social influencers- People are social by nature, so it’s no surprise social factors influence consumer behavior. Social influencers are all about people reacting to the opinions of their social group. Trends and fads fall into this category.
- Cultural influencers- Cultural influencers are similar to social factors, but they’re more ingrained and less subject to change. Think of cultural influencers as factors related to a consumer’s place in the broader group.
It’s important to keep in mind how all of these different influencers on consumer behavior relate to your target audience and the campaign you want to build. If you don’t understand the major influencers of consumer behavior, it will be much harder to create an effective marketing campaign.
How Does Social Media Marketing Affect Consumer Behavior?
Social media marketing — and specifically, influencer marketing — taps into these major influencers of consumer behavior.
Primarily, influencer marketing is based on social influencers. When consumers see an influencer post a picture with a brand’s product on Instagram, for example, the brand is hoping that the audience will be impacted by the influencer’s positive opinion of that brand.
Maybe those consumers will purchase the product. They might develop a more favorable view of the brand. Maybe they’ll talk about the brand with other people they know. These are all ways influencer marketing can and does affect consumer behavior.
What Impact Do Influencers Have On Consumers?
The rise of influencer marketing has prompted questions like “do social influencers affect your buying?” and “how do influencers affect consumer behavior?”
The answer is that influencer marketing definitely affects consumer behavior.
Nearly half of consumers depend on influencer recommendations for their purchasing decisions. This reliance on influencers’ opinions comes from the feeling of relatability and trust that influencers foster on their pages.
Close to 40% of Twitter users report purchasing a product as the direct result of an influencer Tweet.
How Does an Influencer Influence?
So how are influencers creating such a strong impact on consumer behavior?
An influencer’s influence comes down to creating a strong bond with their audience. The people who follow influencers trust them to be authentic, create relatable content, and provide reliable product recommendations.
This relationship between influencers and their audience is the foundation for the success of influencer marketing.
It’s also worth noting that consumers welcome posts, even sponsored posts, from influencers much more than traditional ads. More than 25% of internet users use an ad blocker that blocks traditional ads. Luckily, sponsored influencer posts get through ad blockers, so you can still get through to your audience.
How Do Brands Benefit From Influencers?
As a brand, you may be wondering — how can influencer marketing benefit your business?
You can take advantage of the ways social media affects consumer behavior to create more effective marketing campaigns. It all starts with finding the right influencers for your brand.
Influencers typically operate in a specific niche like fashion or tech. If you’re trying to promote a tech product with influencer marketing, it makes sense to work with tech influencers, for example.
When you partner with influencers, you benefit from their deep, trusting relationships with their audiences. Whether the influencers have 1,000 followers or one million followers, those audiences are full of people primed for your brand messaging.
How Lionize Can Help
Your sponsored posts can shape consumer behavior toward your brand. That’s why using influencer marketing is a must. And you don’t have to do it alone. Influencer marketing platforms can simplify the process.
Learn more about the power of influencer marketing with Lionize, a leading influencer marketing platform. Our software can sort through thousands of profiles to find the perfect influencer fits for your brand. Contact us today if you’re ready to implement an influencer marketing strategy. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.
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