Have you ever seen an expert or leader in the engineering industry use a product or service? Perhaps you grew curious and ended up stalking through usernames, links, websites, and even phone numbers to find out how you can acquire that exact product? I’d call that successful marketing.
That’s the exact core of influencer marketing. With digitalisation being revolutionised in this era, influential spheres are no longer a big fragment of sales, but instead, thousands and millions of very small fragments that are broadcasted throughout various channels. When a person is influential in a platform, the power that person has to affect others and even a bigger audience is beyond traditional marketing.
When the right authority is built, influential marketing can do the work much faster, easier, and bolder than other marketing channels.
With marketing, you imagine a customer’s journey that walks from ‘interest’ to ‘action.’
There are several ways influencer marketing can help your business in the engineering, IT, or manufacturing industry.
- Authority – Having an ambassador (an influential figure that represents your brand), shows the capability and a clear vision of what your company does and how the influencer has the authority to boost the company’s message.
- Reputation – People rarely buy products, they buy brands, and they believe in reputation. When your customer purchases a product or service from your company, they want to be assured that they’re not at a place of disadvantage. By being involved with your company, they are paying for a better reputation and end-demand.
- Speed – Compare a real-time announcement with a traditional flyer or a post on a dead social media channel. Influencer marketing is a great way to capture leads FAST. The only thing you need to make sure of when choosing an influential figure is that they have the exact target audience that you want.
Although influencer marketing requires an investment, this is a much better way to build relationships with prospects, compared to a generic advertisement online that goes to people with no mutual connections, relationships, and trust. Endorsements, collaborations, and recommendations from a person that you like, trust, and engage with will automatically increase the chance and speed of action from the audience.
Through edutainment from the influencer’s content, people who relate or look up to the values, lifestyle, and preferences of the influencer will automatically develop a desire to also attain the product or services that are being showcased.
This is the key factor in creating and strengthening a brand image. Your customer must be given a vision of how the product/service can make their life better. Even if it’s a servo drive that they can’t wear in their body or eat for lunch, this doesn’t mean that it can’t make their lives better.
According to surveys:
- The influencer marketing industry is forecasted to grow up to $16.5 billion in 2022.
- 75% of brand marketers plan to invest in influencer marketing in 2022.
The above shows rapid growth in the market, as well as its potential. Not using this opportunity means giving a bigger share of the market to your rivals. Engineering companies have to consider influencer marketing to keep their position stable in the current market and ensure further growth and development of their business.
The only tricky part about influencer marketing is that you have to build trust and relationships with the influencer. The idea is that not only can they build your image, but they can also ruin your company’s image if not maintained properly with strong guidelines and personal lifestyle restrictions that may not be aligned with your business.
The growth of influencer marketing accelerated since COVID-19: research shows that people started to spend more time online throughout 2020-2021. Even us engineers can’t deny that we spend a guilty amount of time hanging around social media!
Conclusion
- An influencer marketing strategy can help strengthen engineering, IT, or manufacturing companies’ authority in the market. Focus on micro and nano influencers as well, they might not have millions of followers, but their relationships with their audience are of a closer bond. Analyse if they have a higher engagement rate with their followers.
- Collaborating with influencers is a great opportunity to reach a new audience. Most influencers work for years to build their name and make their voice heard in public. So collaborating with them is a win-win brand fusion process that benefits both parties. Not to say unlimited sharing potential is one of the greatest benefits of influencer marketing strategy. The key here is to focus on social media users that are relevant to the engineering companies. Learn more about why social media is beneficial for companies here.
- Remember that the goal here is to target the right audience. Don’t be fooled by the number of followers an influencer may have. Do your background check and find out if their followers are the exact persona you want.
- Get access to priceless data that you can use to better understand your audience’s needs and requests. Social media allows you to have detailed reports based on the audience’s engagement rate and interest in particular content. Collect it – Analyse it – Use it wisely!
- Influencer marketing has a great chance to enhance trust and credibility with both existing and potential clients.
Making sure your brand’s image is kept pristine and untouchable while boosting and enhancing your reputation through influencer marketing isn’t easy. This is why many companies in the industry work with an agency that handles all the processes from start to end. Contracts, brand guidelines, marketing strategy, influencer analysis and procurement, payment structures, all the way to public relations are a huge headache if you don’t know what to do!
AR & Associates have helped IT, Engineering, Automation, Manufacturing, and Energy companies all across Australia to generate leads, increase brand awareness, maintain reputable PR, as well as increase sales.
We focus on helping you spend less time in marketing, and more time serving your customers. Leave the matter to the respective experts. As engineers ourselves, we understand the core values and importance of marketing through trust and reliability.
We provide a full tailor-made solution that helps you build your company to the next level through digital and on-site marketing. With expertise in organic omnichannel marketing and on-site event or workshop planning, we offer a full turn-key marketing solution that gives you time, space, and freedom to focus on what you do best, which is to run your business.
Email us here or call us today at (+61) 02 8416 4442 to get more information or book a complimentary marketing consultation or strategy session.
Article inspired by bigcommerce, impulsedigital, influencermarketinghub, digitaluncovered, and AR.
