How Influencer Marketing Boosts SEO and Grows Sales

Posted by Eti Natchum

Bloggers, vloggers, Twitter personalities, Instagram stars, and other types of influencers are great at spreading buzz and getting thousands of eyeballs on your brand.

But how exactly can brands benefit from influencer marketing? Can this type of marketing really improve SEO and even influence sales?

The proof is in the (statistical) pudding.

The Staying Power of Influencer Marketing

According to 81% of marketers who have tried it, influencer marketing works as a way to boost your search performance and benefit your business.

Why is this the case? If your chosen influencer is a blogger (and they usually are), the effect on SEO is two fold.

Firstly, by creating a blog post on your product, the blogger ensures a permanent page for your product on the web. Tweets and Facebook reviews, for example, are not searchable on Google in the same way. The blog post will stay to gather views long after the campaign is complete.

Occasionally, blog posts blow up way later than expected and end up gathering views long after the end of the campaign. Think of it as a long-term investment.

Secondly, people often search for reviews of products by their favourite bloggers. If they see a tweet stating that one of their favourites has posted a review about a certain brand, they may remember it and look it up later.

Christine Mielke’s Temptalia is one of the most popular beauty blogs around, averaging over 8 million views per month.

How much clout would a blog post on this site get with your customers if you sold beauty products?

Influencer Marketing Brings Credibility

Loyal followers develop a connection and a sense of trust in the blogger, which reflects the general trend in marketing audiences of seeking out trustworthiness.

Melissa Rosenthal, Vice President of Creative Services for Buzzfeed, summarizes what brands can anticipate in the future:

Consumers will expect even more from advertising. The content will need to be increasingly honest, relatable, and contextually relevant in order to help shift perceptions.

This type of content depends heavily on word of mouth, which is essentially what influencer marketing is all about.

The research supports this argument; according to a McKinsey study, marketing that relies on word of mouth wins over paid advertising with 37% greater customer retention and double the sales numbers.

It’s Non-Disruptive Advertising

Affiliate links and giveaways that benefit the blogger, and the audience are also effective. Giving bloggers keywords is another option but keep it low – people follow bloggers for their unique writing style and honest opinion. Stuffing their content with keywords undermines the whole idea of a blogger campaign.

Sponsored posts by bloggers are not always welcomed by their readers but offering a discount certainly softens the knee-jerk negative reaction advertising can garner in the consumer.

Some YouTubers discuss sponsored content with their viewers, garnering generally positive responses. Below is a selection of comments from beauty vlogger kathleenlights’ video on sponsored content:

This is particularly important in light of the fact that advertising in general is unpopular, evidenced by the popularity of ad block. From 2010 to 2015 alone, users of ad blocking software increased from 21 million to a whopping 181 million. The message is clear: internet users do not like advertisements disrupting their web experience, which is something brands need to keep in mind before investing in banner ads and pop ups. Millions of potential consumers will never see or click on them because they automatically block all ad content. However, marketing content that is seamlessly integrated into a blogger’s post or video succeeds not only in evading ad blockers, but in building on a generic ad and making it into a shareable content piece.

Influencer Marketing Offers Targeted Market Selection

Bloggers allow companies to tap into very specific markets, and not just in terms of geography, age, and gender. Targeting ‘niche’ markets and topics through influencers is a tried and true tactic for many brands.

A good example is NatWest’s #mysaverstory campaign, which had parenting bloggers write about their experience with money and how they would teach their children about savings. NatWest avoided the obvious choice for a blogger campaign – finance bloggers – and instead opted for a more relatable audience that was more likely to make the campaign go viral and appeal to their target demographic directly.

Key Takeaways

• Posts by bloggers are a surefire way to boost SEO and ensure your brand has a permanent presence online.
• Brands gain credibility through the trust an audience has already established with the blogger and spread it through word of mouth.
• Marketers are experiencing the success of influencer campaigns and are planning to invest more in them.
• Blogger reviews and other types of influencer campaigns will not be made invisible by adblocking software.
• Creative brands can reach out to unexpected niche influencers to increase brand exposure.

If you need any more convincing of the efficacy of influencer marketing, consider this factoid: the ROI for influencer marketing is nearly $7 for every $1 spent.

With the digital landscape expanding and influencers popping up on various platforms, more opportunities are being made daily for brands to hop on the influencer marketing train and create organic word of mouth for their products.

About Eti Natchum

Eti Nachum is the CEO of BlogsRelease, the #1 marketplace where brands can get product reviews from bloggers worldwide. Eti is a marketing professional with 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing. She likes to follow influential bloggers and works hard on bringing the blogosphere a visible platform to find the latest blogger campaigns in diverse industries. Connect with the team on Twitter @BlogsRelease, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Bonus 33 Free Templates

Download the 33 free templates from Toby and Adam’s book.