There’s little doubt that the rise of the digital age has changed our approach to marketing. Digital marketing is just so much better than traditional marketing options. There are a variety of platforms to works with, success rates are easy to measure, and you can make adjustments and fix mistakes in an instant.
There are lots of places to buy advertising in the digital space such as social media, search engines, podcasts, and mobile apps. Just as the platforms have evolved, so has the content. In recent times people have developed a slight distrust toward traditional methods of branded advertising. Instead, they have started to gravitate toward the opinions of their peers and like-minded people in the realm of social media when making decisions about products and brands.
This trend has necessitated a change in our approach to digital marketing. Marketers have had to adjust their strategies accordingly. As a result, we have a lot of brands using real people and social media as part of their primary marketing campaigns.
The Cost Of Influencer Marketing
Using real people in digital marketing can be a somewhat complicated strategy. Some companies hire bloggers to help tell their stories, while others seek the help of social influencers in their niche to subtly promote their brand. Larger companies may adopt a different approach to celebrity endorsements. They do this by getting a popular star to take over their social media platform for a day (a trend which is very popular at the moment).
Whether you call it brand advocacy or influencer marketing, this type of marketing resonates with customers the world over because of its unique and relatable feel. The success rate of this new approach to marketing is growing at a steady pace.
The use of social influencers is one of the most popular forms of pay to play marketing. Here’s why.
Pay to Play Marketing?
Instagram has a substantial user base. It can often be difficult for brands to reach their particular niche audience due to the sheer volume of content on the platform. It’s also challenging to build a following if you’re new to social media. But there are thousands of established Instagram users with large audiences, a strong influence and a massive reach in fashion, fitness, travel, and more who can get the word out about a brand.
With the growing popularity of this trend in marketing, brands have started to allocate a more significant portion of their marketing budget toward influencer marketing and social media take-overs. And over time the cost adds up, but don’t let that fool you since investing in services like https://nitreo.com does bring in results. What was once an easy way to get the word out about your brand has become a multimillion-dollar industry with brands paying thousands in influencer sponsorships.
Another aspect to consider is obtaining the right balance of creative control between brand and influencer. The content needs to align with your brand’s message and marketing objectives but also has to be authentic in the eyes of the Influencers audience.
The Cost Of Social Media Marketing
Social media has been a great addition to digital marketing and it’s definitely one of the greatest digital marketing tools you can get. It’s easy to set up, simple to use, and is a significant update to existing customers and attract new ones. But over time, the fantastic opportunity for organic reach has started to slip away. Brands have realized that paying for adverts is the way to go if they want to engage with their target audience more effectively.
The reality is that some social media platforms have changed the way their algorithms work. This is effectively making social media a pay to play method of digital marketing.
What does this mean for brands? Unless you’re able to pay for an advert or sponsored post, there is a chance that your posts may not appear in the newsfeed of your followers in real-time (or in some instances, at all).
The apparent aim of the new social media algorithm is to improve user experience. But the dwindling organic reach means that brands can longer fully benefit from having followers when most of their content never reaches its intended audience.
Organic social media reach isn’t entirely dead yet. The workaround is knowing how many posts to share in a specific time frame. Some platforms flag more than ten posts a day as “spam” and filter them out of the algorithm.
However, if doing the math is too much trouble, you can get individual posts sponsored or get help from a marketing agency in STL. This type of pay to play option is a little less costly than an entire advertising campaign.
In Summary
Pay-to-play digital marketing has always been a complex, complicated, and sometimes controversial issue. But it’s just a part of the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing. If you’re careful and savvy, you will be able to reap the benefits without incurring too much of the cost.