Sometimes these product recommendations are sponsored and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes the images or videos or live feeds are official and obvious testimonials, and sometimes they are subtle product placements or mentions. Influencer marketing works just the way the name says it does: products or services are marketed by those who have an influence over the market. If you follow a foodie who proclaims that you must try a dish at a restaurant that happens to be in your town, chances are you’ll probably do just that. If you follow a fashion blogger who raves about a pair of shoes that are on sale, you’ll probably check them out. If a well-known gamer tests out a new video game console and gives it a terrible review, it probably means you aren’t going to buy it.

Just as HubSpot reported in their 2017 State of Inbound report, these influencers have already been disrupting the traditional world of marketing. One single influencer can have five, ten or fifteen million followers — which can be more powerful than advertisers trying to use print ads, billboards, or TV or radio commercials to try and reach the same numbers.

In fact, in addition to influencers being able to easily reach the masses, advertisers are finding other huge advantages to working with this new form of marketing.

1. It’s relatively low-cost: at least in comparison to other more traditional forms of advertising. Branded YouTube videos or Instagram posts by influencers with a lot of exposure can cost in the tens of thousands — but still a deal in comparison to the production cost and advertising slot purchase for a TV commercial.
2. Word-of-mouth marketing has big results: in a study done by McKinsey, they found that “word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions”, and “marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising”.
3. Influencers can’t get ad-blocked: social influencer posts won’t be affected by ad-blockers like some other pop-up ads or websites may be. In a day when consumers are sick of seeing in-your-face paid advertisements, subtle product placements by people they enjoy following is a welcome change.
4. It’s highly targeted: people have trust in the YouTube and Instagram influencers they follow, which means they’ll usually like the same products and brands that these influencers are promoting. However, influencers stil need to stay authentic to their own brand while promoting others’; nothing will turn off followers more than a product recommendation that just doesn’t fit with the image that influencer usually portrays.
5. It helps your SEO: when influencers or other followers tag your company or include your company or product name in their hashtags, this will help your SEO ranking. The more people talking about your brand on social media, the more popular you’ll be on Google’s SERPs as well.
6. Your results can be tracked: whether it’s counting website traffic via Google Analytics, likes on a post or picture, followers on your social media accounts, or impressions on a YouTube video, results from your influencer marketing campaigns can be easily tracked, analyzed, and enhanced for future projects.

According to Mediakix, this new influencer marketing industry, despite seeming to have grown in popularity overnight, will grow to reach $5 to 10 billion over the next 5 years.

As we rapidly fly through the last half of 2017, we’ll continue to see an increase in collaborations happening between big brands and big influencers and we’ll all need to start planning for how our own marketing strategies can adapt. To find out more about social influencers and other “disruptors” in the marketing world, we have a free copy of HubSpot’s annual State of Inbound that you can check out: