Ad blocking – you’ve heard about it but are you changing your marketing strategy to ensure your message is actually being delivered? The loss of global revenue due to ad blockers in 2015 was estimated to be close to $22 billion – a staggering number that’s only going to increase.
A recent study showed that ad blocking in the US grew by 48%, to 45 million active users, between June 2014 and June 2015. And who do you think is leading the charge? Yep – it’s those pesky tech-savvy millennials. A staggering 41% of 18-29 year olds say they are using adblock software.
If these millennials make up part of your target audience and you’re still using banner advertising, you may not be reaching 41% of your millennial audience. And it’s not just the younger generation. 28% of US internet users across all age demographics have ad blocking software enabled. So how do you get around ad blockers? You don’t – at least not with banner advertising. Instead, you should turn to native advertising to deliver your message.
Done well, influencer marketing is a very effective native advertising technique that results in true engagement. When you work with the right influencers, they can blog, write about and photograph your product to get your message to your target audience in a much more natural way than your website or banner ads ever could.
It’s all about “marketing in the moment”. The influencer’s audience is consuming their content because they’re interested in it. They’ve already proven this by following, liking or subscribing to the influencer’s social media channel(s) or blog.
As we’ve noted before, reach (or an influencer’s number of followers) doesn’t necessarily correlate with influence. The most important ingredient is the quality of your content. It doesn’t matter how many people see the influencer’s post if it’s not relevant, authentic and original.
Audiences know when they’re getting a bunch of pre-prepared marketing jargon. Relevant, original content – well-written and presented blog posts, attractive images, informed articles – from an influencer your audience trusts will garner real engagement which, in turn gets it to a wider audience.
Where a banner ad may or may not have ever been seen by your target audience, influencer marketing campaigns generate true engagement with authentic, relatable content that comes with minimal creation cost and has limitless potential for reuse.
Influencer marketing should definitely be a part of your marketing strategy if you’re marketing to millennials (ad blockers don’t block content) and if you’re not marketing specifically to millennials but want to keep building relationships with your target audience (more on that in an upcoming blog post), you should start your influencer marketing today.
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