Influencer Marketing vs Traditional Ads

Generally speaking, every advertisement is looking for a return on investment (ROI). This is how companies gather data on the success of a marketing campaign. Unfortunately, sales are one of the few ways that is measurable when it comes to ROI. What many brands are finding out in 2018 is that brand awareness and brand integrity are both parts of the investment when it comes to marketing a product or service. When working with traditional agencies, you can track conversions and click-through rates and determine the ROI on particular ad placement. When working with influencers, the advertisement goes so much deeper, often providing a new outlet and audience to view your brand. Influencers are like the cool girl in college; everyone wants to know the brands she is wearing, the skincare lines she is using, and the places she is visiting. They offer a trusted review on a company, kind of like asking your best friend for advice. Influencers not only provide clicks and conversions, but they provide brand awareness and integrity, too.

All that is really cool and all, but what about cost? We also all want to know the bottom line! The biggest thing to remember about Influencer Marketing is that you are hiring out one person. When you create an ad campaign through traditional marketing, you are hiring a photographer, a model, a copywriter, an editor, a content director, and often more. The two lists compared show us that you are going to be paying far less for an ad through an influencer than you would for an ad team. Influencers are known for their ability to wear multiple hats during the process of the advertisement construction. Roughly, you will spend $100 for every 10,000 followers that an influencer has, or $100 for every 5,000 page views they receive. At least, this is the starting point that many influencers are using to gauge the right price point for their work. This payment covers the cost of production and product placement. Often, influencers can be paid for the rights of their photos as well to lessen the burden on content creation for the company themselves.

When you are advertising, you always want to hit a target audience. Traditional advertising does a pretty good job of this because you can pick and choose the location of the ad or the type of print it goes on. Social media influencers bring an even more niche audience to the table. If a brand does their research and finds the right content creator, they can get a particular group of consumers fit for the ad. Social media trendsetters spend years building a specialized following that often shares their likes, beliefs, opinions, and aesthetic. If you want your ad to go straight to the right buyers, you need to be adding influencers to your marketing ammo.

Millennials and younger spend 5+ hours a day on their mobile phones– and that number continues to grow! The youthful generations aren’t the only ones using technology, either, as the market is penetrating everyone with the advancement of tech. Traditional ads are at a disadvantage when it comes to mobile phones and computers, though. Now there are apps and programs that provide ad blocking. This means you can be paying for your product to be seen online, but it may never even reach the customer. When influencers stepped into the picture, it changed the game. Ads became more organic and were incorporated into lifestyle feeds that could no longer be blocked by a program.

If you are running your business and brand correctly, you should have a mission statement. This message is the underlying reason for your company and why the target audience should buy from you! While traditional ads have a harder time promoting that declaration, influencers have opened brand messaging wide open! Once you hire the right content creator, the theme will be apparent throughout the campaign and will provide a story behind the subject. It’s well known that consumers buy products that offer them a why behind the label. Social media marketing has developed this skill and becomes experts at incorporating the ‘why’ of a product through visual storytelling and perfectly captioned photos. Along with that, the content creators have multiple platforms that they can push out the client’s message to, thus generating a wider viewership. In the words of Will Ferrel in Blades of Glory, “… It’s provocative; it gets the people going.”