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In today's marketing landscape, influencer marketing is one of the most potent marketing methods for small businesses, brands, and enterprises.

According to Linqia's The State of Influencer Marketing Report, 57% of respondents said: "influencer content outperformed brand-created content" in 2019.

While influencer marketing is still a growing industry, and the statistics have risen since then.

Working with influencers can assist your small business in overcoming common barriers to promotion, such as the use of advertisements.

In this post, I'll discuss six advantages of influencer marketing for small businesses.

What Exactly Is Influencer Marketing?

Sprout Social defines influencer marketing as,

a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

(Source: What is influencer marketing: How to develop your strategy)

If you want a completely different take albeit interesting take on social media influencers be sure to check this episode of the podcast Nice to Meet You. In this episode, Professor Burkhead's Unifier beams a Meerkat and a Social Media Influencer to his space station. As silly as it sounds it is an interesting take on them and is entertaining in the least.

The bottom line is that influencer marketing focuses on employing influential individuals (aka influencers) to transmit a company's message to relevant, broader markets.

It combines the use of traditional and modern marketing tactics. It combines the concept of celebrity endorsement with exclusive content and internet promotions.

As a small business owner, you will most likely want to work directly with one or more influencers to convey your message across their social media accounts.

Influencers can help link customers to companies by influencing others' attitudes and motivating them to take action on a given topic.

Did you know that most business-to-business (B2B) researchers and buyers use the internet to acquire information about possible purchases; according to a report by Google, it is 89%! With so many prospective clients starting their search on the internet, businesses of all sizes need to push their sites to the top of search engines as quickly as possible. Of course, Google Ads provides an immediate solution as SEO efforts begin to take hold, but Google Ads also poses a unique challenge with its own set of considerations.

As part of your inbound marketing strategy, you may choose to run Google Ads. For the most part, inbound marketing focuses on organic traffic, whereas PPC offers an opportunity for instant gratification while your other strategies build.

Larry Kim of WordStream says this about PPC and Inbound Marketing:

PPC is absolutely a part of inbound marketing by my standards. My definition of inbound revolves around being somewhere with the answer when someone is looking for it, NOT sticking an advert for a product or service in front of their faces. That absolutely includes PPC!

(Source: News Flash: PPC Is Inbound Marketing )

Combining SEO and PPC will comprise approximately 90 percent of clicks across the web, so it’s no wonder that businesses are taking advantage of Google Ads!

While running and developing a Google Ads campaign is relatively straightforward. There are still great opportunities for mistakes. You must avoid them if you want your inbound marketing campaign to be successful. 

Building brand awareness and exposure is critical for small businesses. Your business may not be able to bring in more prospects if they don't know you exist. Search engine optimization (SEO) is part of a strong foundation for local small business success and is one of the most effective methods for increasing the visibility of your small business.

When your prospects are searching for a product or service on Google, you need to be visible to them. That’s where local small business SEO can help you. In layman's terms, it is a tactic that can help your website appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

Before I answer the question posed in the title of this post, think let me ask you, dear reader, a couple of questions. Do you check reviews before you visit or reach out to a business? Have you ever found yourself favoring one business over another due to their online reviews?

I am sure you could answer yes to both of these questions. Now back to the question I posed in the title of this post and its accompanying answer, which is overwhelming YES! Yes, Google Reviews will help your both general SEO and Local SEO.

Now, this begs the question of how do these local businesses show up on the search results pages (SERPs) in the first place? Well, that’s Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at work.

In this article, I will help you better understand what local SEO is and its benefits. I’ll also show you how to use Google reviews SEO to improve your local rankings.