How Influencer Marketing Can Help You Better Relate to Your Customers

In today’s ad-saturated digital culture, consumers crave authenticity. When it comes to millennials, brand authenticity comes in second, right behind loyalty discounts, in terms of choosing which companies to support.

So, how do you make your brand more authentic?

Being authentic means talking to your customers like one real human being to another. Instead of using your logo as the face of your company, use a human being that your customers can relate to. Influencers are essentially real people with large followings on social media. They’ve made a career out of being relatable and authentic, so why not put them to work for your company?

Learn how influencer marketing can help you humanize your brand and strike the right note with consumers.

What Does It Mean to Be Authentic?

The dictionary defines “authentic” as: “relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life.”

Being authentic really means being human, caring about other people, showing emotion, and doing right by your fellow citizens. Your brand shouldn’t be just a mass of tweets, blogs, and product descriptions. It needs to be a living, breathing person.

• Invest in issues and topics that matter to your company, such as protecting the environment, healthy living, and corporate responsibility.
• Show off the human assets behind your business with employee photos and videos.
• Add photos of your team and the CEO to your website.
• Ask your employees to share and retweet your posts on social media.

Human beings make up the inner workings of your company, so use them to show off the human side of your brand.

How Influencer Marketing can Help

While showing off the human side of your team can help your brand appear more authentic, there are people in addition to your employees who can be great spokespeople for your company.

One of the best ways to humanize your brand is to use an “average Joe” in your marketing campaigns. Instead of investing in costly celebrity endorsements, hire social media influencers who represent the “common consumer” to be the face of your brand.

Influencers are known for being authentic and engaging with their fans online. Collaborating with these people and inserting your products into some of their posts is an easy way to show your customers that you’re not a faceless corporation.

Consumers essentially view influencers as their peers, instead of celebrities beyond their reach. They feel like they have more in common with these influencers and when that happens, they honor the opinions of those people more. In fact, 70% of millennial consumers value peer endorsements over celebrity endorsements.

This is why influencer marketing is so effective. Some studies show the ROI can be as high as $6.50 for every $1 spent.

Instead of just hiring an influencer to give a shout-out to your brand, collaborate with them and tell a sincere story that will resonate with your target audience.

If you’re new to the ideas of influencer marketing, attend a digital marketing convention to learn more about this growing trend.

With so many products and brands to choose from, consumers want to create a lasting, meaningful connection with the brands they support. Your customers can’t relate to a logo; they need a human face. Use influencer marketing to humanize your brand and build up a loyal following of customers.