What is Organic Influencer Marketing & How Can Your Business Benefit From It?

Social media is used by millions of people around the world everyday, allowing individuals to freely interact with each other and offering companies multiple ways to reach and engage with consumers. 

According to Statista, an online marketing projector, in 2024 almost 5 million people will be using Social Media. That’s a 36% increase on today’s number. 

With user numbers steadily on the rise, it also makes sense that using these platforms to sell services and products will follow suit. In fact, a recent ODM Group study found that 74% of consumers already rely on social networks to help with their purchasing decisions, being persuaded by family, friends, companies and influencers. 

The rise of the social media influencer…

Influencer marketing has quickly become one of the most vital new tools for a business to run successful digital marketing campaigns.  

Influencers are defined as people or publications who have a large audience reach across social platforms and have built a lot of trust in a specific industry. Due to this trust, they are often able to ‘influence’ their followers to purchase products and services from brands they promote. 

While still considered a new and sometimes confusing approach for many, brands are already benefiting hugely from influencer marketing. In fact, more than 80% of marketing professionals believe that influencer marketing is an effective strategy for their business according to a 2019 study by Forbes. 

So why are influencers important to your business? 

Influencers have the power to drive people towards your product or service and, according to statistics, the return of investment on Influencers can be as high as 650%. This is because consumers (aka the people you want to buy your product or use your service) trust the recommendations made by an influencer they follow on social media. 

There are two distinct types of influencer led campaigns: paid and organic. 

While paid influencers expect to get money in exchange for their promotional services, organic influencers will work with you for free or in exchange for a sample of your product. This is because they already believe in what you do and want to be a part of your growth. We call these ‘brand advocates’!

How to find and engage your organic influencers?

As an agency who works with various B2C clients on their social media campaigns and platform performance, we know how much time can go into finding influencers who match a brand, have the type of followers said brand wants to attract and want to work with you. By reaching out to brand advocates rather than influencers who will want payment, you can save yourself hours of time. 

One of the best things about organic influencers is that they will usually be the ones tagging and messaging you on their social platforms, meaning a lot less time has to go into finding, outreaching and onboarding them with your brand! If they already love your product or service, then you can pretty much guarantee that a lot of their followers will too. 

The two most important tips we can give you while you are finding and engaging with your organic influencers are: 

1. Create a generic outreach message you can send to all your potential brand advocates to save time. This message should outline who you are, what you want from the influencer and what you can give them in return (e.g. free product samples which they can also use in promotional photos on their social media platforms).
2. Record all the information and progress of your outreach project in a centeralised location, like the example layout below.

How to use your organic influencers?

Once you have your assembly of organic influencers ready to be put to work, you now need to know how exactly to use them in order to get the best results.

The three best strategies you can implement to reap the best results from your organic influencer campaigns are:

1. Create a custom promotional code for your organic influencers. This will allow their followers a % off orders and means you can easily attribute conversions to a specific influencer who is offering their followers a discount as an incentive.
2. Generate an affiliate link for each influencer. This will allow you to track online sales made through the influencer’s blog and social media channels so you can see if working with them is effective for your overall business strategy.
3. Run organic influencer led giveaways. Select a specific product or service and promote it exclusively through a giveaway on one of your influencers social platforms for a period of time. Track engagement for the duration of the campaign.

All that’s left to do now is watch your uplifts and engagements roll in!