Let’s talk about the new marketing trends such as social media marketing and influencer marketing. Now if we ask someone what is the difference between these two, the answer would be “both are same“ but that’s not true.
There is a huge difference between these two. In other words we can say that influencer marketing is basically a part of social media marketing.
Let us try to understand them step by step more deeply:
What is Social Media Marketing??
If we say social media marketing, everyone has an idea that it is basically done through the social media platforms like: instagram, facebook, linkedIn etc. But the question is how it’s been done?
So, here is the simplest answer:
Social media marketing = Brand ⟶ People
In social media marketing, brands directly post them in their social accounts.They either use paid ads to reach many people or use several hashtags or different techniques to reach people/audience without any intermediate.
Benefits of social media marketing:
- Increases sales efficiently
- Easy to approach people
- Sales are not bounded to a certain area or region
- Helps track people using analytics
Influencer Marketing:
Despite the fact that with social media marketing you can approach your audience easily however, sometimes it is difficult to gain people’s trust and convince them to buy your product just by uploading photos or videos of your brand or products. This is the time when you require an intermediate to gain people’s trust and make them believe in your brand. That intermediate is known as the “Influencer” and this whole process is known as “influencer marketing”.
Now how influencer marketing works??
Influencer marketing = Brand ⟶ Influencer ⟶ People
Let us try to understand this with an example: Your friend started a new restaurant and advertised it via pamphlets in your area. Now, your neighbors who actually don’t know your friend might not show interest in that restaurant.
But if you tell your neighbors about the good food quality and your relationship with the restaurant owner then they might consider going to that restaurant and try their food.
Now in this case you yourself acted as the influencer between your friend and your neighbor and helped him promote his business.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing:
- Builds credibility and trust.
- Companies don’t need to have a social media account
- Increases brand awareness
- Helps in increasing sales.
- Cost effective and time saver
- Suitable for any business
Let us try to understand above points :-
Build credibility and trust: If you are starting a new business then to win people’s trust and to increase your sales, it will take months or even years to make this possible. However, if you consult an influencer who has a good reach and has already won people’s heart then it will be very easy to make people believe in your brand.
Increases brand awareness: It takes years to win people’s trust and an influencer is the one who knows deeply about its audience that what are the things they are going to like and how it is going to happen. So, if a right influencer is chosen it is then their job to make people aware about the brand.
Helps in increasing sales: If the audience has trust in influencer and the brand is also good then with both these factors the sales will increase.
Cost effective and time saver: As mentioned above, you just have to find an influencer and rest all the work will be done by them so you don’t have to wait for months or years for the perfect audience. Also, you don’t have to pay to anybody else but the influencer. You can either offer money for your work or can provide monthly free gifts to influencers.
Suitable for any business: There is no boundation of what you are selling. There are expert influencers in almost every field, for example, fitness, beauty, health and E-commerce etc. Businesses might use different influencer strategies to increase their growth.
What is best ???? Social media marketing or Influencer marketing:
Both the marketings have their respective benefits. In simpler words we can say that growing businesses on social media marketing is a time consuming process specially for new brands. But with the enhanced form of social media marketing, for example, influencer marketing people actually get the chance to interact with other people in the form of comments and share their feedback about the products makes it easy to trust that brand and eventually helps in increasing sales.
Social media marketing is basically product oriented however, on the other hand influencer marketing is a people oriented approach.
At last, per the recent analysis it has been seen that influencer marketing is on boom and as a result people are making their career in influencer marketing and becoming influencers. So, this is not wrong if we say that influencer marketing has a bright future than social media marketing.
