Over the last decade, the importance of influencer marketing has grown exponentially. Business Insider estimates that influencer marketing will be a $15 billion industry by 2022. According to LaunchMetrics’ “The State of Influencer Marketing 2020” report, 94% of marketers found influencer marketing effective for driving sales.

These numbers show that influencer marketing has become a formidable force within marketing itself. However, how does it directly benefit small businesses?

3 Reasons to Invest in Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses

1. Increase in Brand Awareness

Influencers with even a hundred thousand subscribers represent a niche audience that you can invest in capturing. Influencers from Tech vloggers to beauty gurus to fitness junkies tend to have extremely varied audiences. They are united by a single interest or their love for the influencer themselves.

Hence, influencer marketing for small businesses can increase brand awareness beyond the normal demographics and niches. With influencers, they can tap into audiences that would’ve possibly been oblivious to their existence before.

Also, influencers represent niches that brands can identify as similar to their own already. As identified earlier, influencers can indulge in activities like tech reviews, beauty tutorials, vlogging, etc. These activities often compare to what a brand or a business is already doing.

2. Trust Building with Customers

Influencers are seen to be authentic. They work hard to build their audiences on different social media and creative platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc. Hence, when they promote a product or a service, their endorsement is seen as more trustworthy than a 30-second ad.

47% of all internet users that employ ad-blockers do so since ads are “irrelevant and annoying” according to a GlobalWebIndex survey. This makes influencer marketing all the more valuable for small businesses.

The trust that an influencer’s audience has in them translates to trustworthiness for whatever they’re promoting. Since their audience has grown with them, they don’t see the influencers as shameless promoters. Instead, the audience tends to believe influencers when they say a product is right for them.

However, perhaps what makes influencer marketing for small businesses most important with regards to trust is relatability. Influencers aren’t generally seen as towering above their audience like celebrities. That’s why their audiences see them as regular people.

3. Influencers are Flexible and Affordable

The importance of influencer marketing extends beyond finding niches and trust. There’s a very objective advantage to investing in influencer marketing, which is affordability. Influencers, while having access to the ears and eyes of hundreds of thousands, or millions of subscribers, aren’t full-fledged celebrities. Hence, small businesses can afford to hire them for a fraction of the cost.

In return, the ROI can be the same as when a product is endorsed by a celebrity if the subscriber count is large enough. That can be incredibly beneficial for any small business.

Any small business today should invest smartly in influencer marketing to reach new audiences quickly. It’s not only economical, but one of the most important marketing techniques in use today.