75% of brands today use influencer marketing in some capacity.
And it’s not just because of its immediate results. While brands certainly love seeing engagement and awareness spike during a live program, they’re also excited about the continued value influencer programs deliver after conclusion. Here are three major benefits that continue to roll in the following months:
Extended Long-tail Clicks
Unlike a paid ad campaign, user-generated content on the Internet doesn’t turn off or disappear on a specific end date. For example, content from Linqia influencers (also known as Storytellers) lives on long after the program’s end, enabling interested individuals to find the content days, months, or even years later. And because the content is often evergreen, it remains valuable and interesting to Storyteller audiences.
In fact, in the year following a Linqia influencer marketing program, an additional 4,000 visitors on average are driven to brand destination pages. And because Google optimizes blog content, the more people discover and share the influencer-generated content, the more people are driven to brand pages, which increases the return on Storyteller investment as cost per click or conversion drops day by day.
Long-tail clicks and visits are equally as valuable as the ones during the live program so make sure there is a content duration agreement in place with the influencers before a program kicks off.
Treasure Troves of Content
50% of B2C companies say content creation is their biggest headache, particularly because it is time consuming and expensive to create quality content. It can takes weeks, or even months, to produce engaging content when you consider the time spent on the brainstorming, researching, drafting, and approvals processes. The content shortage often leads brands to recycle the same tired messages and images on their websites and social media platforms.
In response to this wide swept content bottleneck, brands are turning to influencer marketing. In a matter of days, a single influencer marketing program can create targeted, original content on a mass scale. And because Storyteller content mimics user-generated content (UGC), it retains the power to effectively convert customers, as UGC increases conversions by 10% when included in the online purchase path.
When the influencer program ends, catalog all of the content to create a library of vetted materials that can be repurposed when the internal content workflow backs up. Remember to also make note of the content’s engagement performance – knowing what kind of response the content yields empowers brands to position it strategically.
SEO Superiority
It is no longer enough to stuff content with keywords simply because they previously sent a significant amount of traffic to websites. Back in 2011, digital marketers began to notice their keywords were increasingly listed as “not provided” by Google. Today, nearly 78% of all keywords are “not provided” by the world’s largest search engine, rendering many traditional SEO tactics ineffective.
Rather than simply counting the basic placement and frequency of keywords, Google now looks for keyword relevance within the context of the page’s content. In order to rank highly on search results for a particularly topic, you need many pieces of supporting relevant content, which an influencer program can quickly generate.
Influencer marketing programs are so effective because influencer-generated content is evergreen and authentic, delivering extended results over time and optimizing SEO. Establish a logical keyword for the influencer program and ask influencers to incorporate it whenever it feels natural.
The benefits of an influencer marketing program are innumerable.
Rather than investing budget on display ads that return a measly 0.06% click-through rate or paying individual influencers set fees for a single post, seek influencer marketing programs to deliver a multitude of original content that continues to drive action over time. The positive after-effects of residual traffic, repurposable content, and SEO boosts make influencer programs well worth the initial investment. Get in touch with our team today to learn how you can build an influencer strategy that gives more than it gets.
