Influencer Marketing – Why Instagram and TikTok?

The influencer marketing industry has grown substantially in recent years. As social media users have grown to be more interested in what their favorite influencers do, what products they use, and even what causes they support, influencer marketing has become a hugely important tool for many companies. Instagram and TikTok have certainly emerged as the most successful platforms to implement influencer marketing, but it is important to know why in order to understand the industry and be successful in any endeavors of your own.

Instagram has over 500,000 users that are active on the app everyday and over 1 billion active users monthly. This alone gives Instagram a huge scope of people to market to through influencers. The posts and stories that users interact with on Instagram also typically resonate with them more so than on many other platforms. This is because the users that view a post from an influencer are their followers, and followers likely feel a personal connection to this person in some way. Because of this, they are more likely to trust the influencer which contributes to a very successful marketing campaign. Additionally, they often have similar interests or needs to the influencer, which likely means they may have the same interest in or need for a product or service that the influencer chooses to advertise.

It is important to get your content in front of the right people with influencer marketing, and Instagram provides many ways for users to discover niches that spark their interests and find influencer content within this. One way is through hashtags. Users can easily search for or click on a hashtag that they are interested in and find any content posted with that hashtag which unlocks a group of posts within a particular niche. This is just one more way that your content can be discovered with specific hashtags in any influencer created posts. Furthermore, the Instagram explore page is something that can be hugely beneficial. The explore page is curated directly towards the interests of the user based on their past activity. Any influencer posts that end up on this explore page are likely to get a lot of attention from the right audience. Not to mention the algorithm itself that displays content in users’ feeds based on what users have shown most interest in rather than chronologically.

These tools all help your influencer content to get in front of people that are truly interested in what you are marketing, provided that influencers that truly embody your brand are chosen. 

It’s clear that there are many aspects of Instagram that make it a great platform to implement influencer marketing. Most importantly, it has a large scope, personal connections between users and influencers, and a variety of ways to reach the right audience for your brand. With the perfect recipe for success, Instagram has also proven that it can sell. In a survey by Meta the following statistics were discovered of the people surveyed.

• 83% said they discover new products and services on Instagram
• 81% use the platform to research products or services
• 80% engage with Instagram content to decide whether to purchase a product or service

While these statistics are general, it is certain that influencer marketing had a huge impact on these numbers, showing the huge successes of influencer marketing through Instagram.

More recently, TikTok has emerged and become another very effective social media platform for influencer marketing. Much like Instagram, there are very specific nuances of TikTok as a platform that allow it to be the perfect avenue for this type of marketing.

TikTok has quickly built up a huge pool of users, currently at about 1 billion, with each of them spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the app. This provides access to a massive amount of people and potential for more as TikToks are sent around so often. Additionally, TikTok has an algorithm that is very different from most other social media platforms. Their app pushes any video that is performing well out to massive audiences on the For You page, which gives any single user potential to reach so many no matter how small their following is. Any single video is never restricted by the statistics of the user posting, so there are endless possibilities of who may see an influencer’s video.

Specific audiences that would be interested in your product or service are also very likely to be targeted by the platform based on the impressive algorithms. Content can be very accurately curated for any niche that the user expresses interest in after only 30 minutes of them scrolling through the app. This is a very organic way to find your target audience without having to invest money in collecting data.

It is also important to address the age range of users on TikTok. TikTok has a very young audience, in general. Almost 26% of users on the platform are between ages 18 and 24, and more than half are under 34. So if you are trying to appeal to younger people, influencer marketing on TikTok is definitely an obvious route. However, what you may not realize is that GenZ is expected to account for 40% of all consumers in the next few years. Along with Millennials who also make up a huge portion of TikTok’s user base, the two groups make up a large portion of the US consumer population. This makes TikTok a great tool to use for any brand.

Another very unique element is that TikTok really allows marketing to be casual and fun. Influencers each have their own style and way of doing things that allow them to integrate your brand into their usual content which keeps users engaged. It is a less traditional marketing strategy that definitely seems more genuine and authentic, providing a huge appeal for consumers. It can really make your brand a part of conversations and even cause it to go viral or even sell out or become a trend over just one video.

This industry of influencer marketing is still new, but it is important to capitalize on the impact it can have. Instagram and TikTok have truly taken over in the world of influencer marketing. Each has their own unique components that make them the ideal platforms for brands to reach consumers in this less traditional marketing strategy of influencer marketing.

Sources:

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/instagram-influencer-marketing/#where-can-i-find-influencers
https://www.pixlee.com/blog/3-reasons-why-tiktok-is-pivotal-for-influencer-marketing
https://www.tribegroup.co/blog/influencer-marketing-tiktok
https://later.com/blog/tiktok-influencer-marketing/