Influencer marketing has now become a new trend. These days, marketers are relying more on Influencer marketing and occupy a special place among the promotion trends for various reasons. Big as well as small business owners are doing great by collaborating with bloggers, influencers, publishers, etc., due to their extensive social media reach and impressive influential approach. The audience, platform, and approaches all these factors complement the influencer marketing strategies and help build a strong brand reputation online.Â
If we look deep into it, the factor on which influencer marketing and SEO services work, you will find that it is traced back to the 18th century. Earlier, companies and brand owners used to put their royal families’ names on the product packaging to increase their brand popularity and gain customer’s trust. We are still following the same concept while buying something.Â
We always rely on our most trusted friend, cousin, or family member’s opinion about a particular product or service before buying it. Influencer marketing is doing the same, and it helps convince people to buy products and services and makes you fall for the products by showing results. And surely, each one of us should trust a brand that was approved by our favorite celebrity on television or social media channels.
Therefore, today here we come up with a new topic in which we will tell you in-depth about influence marketing and how to use it in business. So let’s begin without any further delay!
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing advertising, approaching and promoting products or brands through influential people or celebrities on various social media platforms with a good number of followers and fan base. The most significant advantage of influencer marketing is that you will get a chance to reach a specific audience interested in your product. You can promote your products and brands among a particular set of audiences and get quality leads.
Another reason brands are moving towards influencer marketing is that they can directly interact with their potential customers, motivating them to visit their sites and products and services. It will help to build long-term relationships with your customers and earn profits.
Historically, influencers have been stars, but companies and brands are now looking for more real people with good reach. Social media influencers are more socially active and share their day-to-day life events, experiences, and good things with their followers. People love their content, trust them and try to do something with whom they get motivated. These real people can be anyone, including writers, fitness experts, storytellers, bloggers, lifestyle influencers, photographers, etc.. People follow them due to their popularity and quality work.
Companies or brands hire such people based on their daily social media reach and stats to promote their brand in return for payment or products.
When do Businesses need to Advertise with Influencers?
Launching a New Brand
When Mastercard launched Phone Pay, they used bloggers to reach the maximum audience and explain how easy it is.
Influencer marketing is the best and the most effective medium to reach the maximum audience, especially on new brand product launches who want to increase their brand awareness amongst people. Influencer marketers help brands reach maximum audiences through creative posts and stories to create buzz. This is a fast and relatively cheap audience reach that can be transformed into targeted actions, the reason why many brands are already using influencer marketing strategies to reach people.
Not even brands, many celebrities are taking advantage of influencer marketing to promote their new song launch, movies, and web shows on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Snapchat, etc.
Increasing brand awareness
Very similar to the previous point, but the brand has already earned a name in the market, and we need to remind the audience of our events or existence. The perfect example we can give here is “Nike by Phil Knight,” “Dior By Christian Dior,” etc. Some famous world brands use influencer marketing strategies to retain their brand name and increase brand awareness among users. These brands hire celebrities to promote their products, and small brand owners take help from micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers are social media influencers with a minimum of 20,000 to 10,0000 followers who share niche-based content on their social media profiles to empower brand visibility and credibility.
Boost sales of products and services
You’ve seen bloggers and influencers review a particular product and post a story with any product. This is similar to contextual advertising, with the only difference being that we target the campaign to an audience with specific interests. It will enhance brand awareness, increase brand credibility and boost sales too. Influencers do complete justice with the product and create creative content that helps attract more and more audiences to influencer’s profiles and brand’s profiles.
Influencers motivate their followers and try to reach new audiences to increase sales. Companies measure the number of orders received through influencer’s references and add the value of the order. They can also track the sales using UTM tags for links in stories or promo codes for posts.
Gain followers or subscribers
Social media profiles with followers are like celebrities without fans, so if you want to gain followers on your business profile, you can take help from influencers marketing. It’s a two-way process where influencers motivate their followers to follow or subscribe to a particular brand page. In return, brands pay them or offer their products and services. It helps strengthen the online presence and increase the credibility of both influencer and brand profiles.
Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok are the most common social media platforms influencers and brands use to promote their products. To get more followers and subscribers, you will have more marketing touches- a greater chance of getting an order.
Tips for choosing influencers for your marketing campaigns
Before you get into influencer marketing, it is essential to make sure you have the right foundation. When an influencer promotes a brand, the audience will open your site to learn more about the product or services. So, it is crucial to optimize your site to look relevant, load quickly, readable content, offer easy navigation, etc. the design of your website does not make users doubt your brand reputation. If you’re looking for ways to get the most out of influencer marketing to grow your business, then this 5-step guide will get you started right.
1.Define goals
Before you start searching for potential and the most relevant influencers, you need to have a clear marketing objective. Set a goal and start focusing on that. This is the basis for all further actions- from choosing an influencer to advertising. For example, if you want to promote your beauty products to gain more followers on your site, you will find beauty bloggers and influencers with a good number of followers. But if your goal is to generate more leads with the help of influencer marketing, then maybe
a small microblogging influencer with a niche of beauty and health might be a better fit for your marketing campaign.
2.Analyze the audience
Another most important thing you need to consider before moving further is the audience. Before looking for influencers, you understand who your audience is and what they like the most. Maybe the influencer you’re choosing has a good number of followers, but what if they speak to the wrong audience or post which is not engaging enough. So, before relying on someone’s fake results, just do a small research on your own. Here are few metrics to consider to know your audience:
- Analyze the demographics of your target audience, including age group, locations, family size, gender, etc.
- The online platform they use the most
- Channels do they subscribed to.
- The content they consume the most is videos, audio, posts, stories, podcasts, etc.
- See if they are actively interacting with their followers they are following via comments, likes, text messages, story replies, etc.
All these factors will help you understand your audience deeply and reach your marketing goals shortly. You can also ask for post and story stats and analyze the audience engagement, profile visits, posts views, etc.
3.Quality of the content
Content is the ultimate game-changer. Platforms like Instagram and youtube are the most trending platforms where you can grab the user’s attention in just one glance. These platforms offer space for more visual content, which is a plus point for brands where they can show their pictures and videos of their products.
If you’re listing the best influencers for your product’s promotion, just go through their content first. See the quality of the content they are posting or publishing and the frequency per post on their social media platforms. Consider only those profiles that best fit your business standards.
4.Find the right influencer
It would be best to consider some parameters when finalizing your influencers for your marketing campaign and bringing you closer to your marketing goals. One wrong decision will cost your business credibility and reputation. What to look at when choosing influencers:
- Relevancy: Business success will depend on the relevance of the influencer. Think about what impact that influencer will bring to the business. How much effort they put into benefitting your business and reaching your marketing goals—the effect of influencers on his followers, etc.
- Trustworthy: fake followers are now becoming the most common issue. So, while relying on someone, check their trustworthiness. Go through their list of followers and see if these are organic or fake.
- Budget: Budget sometimes can be the most significant issue when it comes to influencer marketing. Though it is the most budget-friendly marketing strategy, sometimes influencers demand an unfair amount, and this can make your pockets empty. So, you need to plan everything in budget and stick to the budget you want to spend on influencers.
5.Agree on mutual benefits
Influencer marketing is only effective if we think for mutual benefits. Everybody wants their own benefits, and when you’re betting with influencers for marketing, you will gain more followers, brand awareness, and increase sales. If you have decided to collaborate with influencers, offer them something that can value their efforts. You can provide aid collaborations where you need to pay influencers in return for your product promotions or ask them if they are ok with Barter collaboration. Brands offer free products in return for product review, post, story, or a video in barter collaborations.
- Before collaborating with them, discuss your marketing goal
- Show your brand value and explain more about your brand in detail
- Select the easy payment methods that are comfortable for everyone
- Give them the liberty to explore their creativity, but don’t let them distract from the goal
- Offer them long term partnerships and always stay in touch with them
6.Track the effect
How would you know the effects of influencer marketing campaigns? Tracking influencer marketing success is quite challenging because every company has a lot of individual goals. Some dream of boosting social media followers, and some want to create buzz among their followers, but the end goal of marketing campaigns is to generate potential leads.
So, if you’re investing in influencer marketing, you need to see if it’s successfully reaching your target audience. Have you started receiving desired responses and traffic on your website and social media page? If not, you need to upgrade your strategies and let your influencer know that you’re not getting the results. Follow these tips to track effects:
- Track stats of your social media pages and influencers posts where he mentioned your brand name.
- Analyze the before and after results
- Set a goal in measurable terms. Let’s say the number of followers you accepted and the total number of followers you’re receiving.
- Do not pressurize the influencer because they can’t give you a guarantee about a fixed result.
Final thought
Success with influencer marketing doesn’t come overnight. It may turn out that the audience of the best influencer is not very interested in your product. And sometimes, work with an influencer with a small but niche audience and get quality traffic. The main thing is to correctly define your goals and understand which influencer with an active audience can help your business.
