The Hype of Influencer Marketing

 

Understanding Influencer Marketing

 

Over the years, we have been seeing a lot of influencers on social media who are making an impact by showing off their stories, lifestyles, experiences, latest gifts, brands, partnerships, etc. As everyone knows, an influencer is a person who can influence other people. They are people who have spent time building their own platforms and are special for their niche, dedicated and engaged audiences, and followers on social media. These influencers can be celebrities, bloggers, fashionistas, journalists, artists, or just people who are highly looked upon in their circles or industries. 

 

As the American author John Maxwell says: “To be an influencer, you have to love people before you can try to lead them.”

 

Here, we bring on what is called Influencer Marketing. Influencer marketing is a type of “Digital Marketing” that links influential people or content creators with brands and businesses to collaborate for the sake of promoting products and services on the Internet. Influencer marketing is based on high levels of trust that influencers have built with their followers, therefore recommendations from them act as social proof to potential customers. 

 

Social media is considered a home to the majority of influencers from which it is becoming a career to earn a living, and Instagram remains the platform of choice for these influencers. The most effective influencer marketing techniques include ambassadorships, product reviews, brand mentions, testimonials, event coverage, and sponsored content. 

 

It is important to touch on the components of influence which include the relevance of the content that they share which aligns with the niche target audience, reach and resonates with the right follower base to create a high engagement rate and build trust, rapport, and reciprocity.

 

Know the Importance & Benefits of Influencer Marketing 

 

Influencer Marketing plays a vital role in achieving a variety of goals and benefits, such as:

 

• Building trust, credibility, and authority
• Enhancing reputation
• Expanding brand awareness
• Improving brand advocacy 
• Connecting brands to Millennials & Gen Z audiences
• Reaching a new target audience
• Enriching content strategy
• Winning long-term partnerships
• Increasing user-generated content
• Enhancing search engine optimization
• Increasing sales and conversions
• Driving lead generation

 

INFOGRAPHIC: Influencer marketing delivers 11X higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing. Nine out of 10 brands are using some form of influencer marketing. 94% of marketers who used influencer marketing believe the tactic to be effective. 

 

Build a Powerful Influencer Marketing Strategy

Just as with any marketing tactic, an influencer marketing campaign takes careful planning to be able to expand the reach of brands on social media. Bear in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to making strategy work, but with the right planning. Let’s check these 6 steps for building an influencer marketing strategy:

 

• Understand your Goals and Messages:

Your goals behind using influencer marketing depend on your brand’s needs. So, it might be to elevate brand awareness by having influencers talk about your brand, reach new target customers by expanding to the influencers’ audience, or even drive sales. Also, your message is important to identify what message you want to achieve through your influencer marketing campaign that features a conversational tone and personal narrative. 

 

• Decide on your Target Audience: 

It’s essential to decide what type of audience you want to reach through the influencer marketing campaign, and know their personas. Then, decide on a matching set of influencer personas to help you in looking for the right influencers.

 

• Research for the Suitable Influencers:

Decide on the platforms that you will use during your influencer marketing campaign. Then start searching for the most influential people that fit your criteria, so check what their channels are about, what they post about, who their audience is, their number of followers, and their engagement rate; then create a short list of influencers. Watch out for if they are legit, meaning that if they have an inflated follower count but a poor engagement ratio or spam-like comments.  

 

• Set a Budget:

Each influencer asks for a different compensation, some accept products but some ask for payments as well which vary widely. Also, some work independently while others work with an agency. This way you get an idea of what to pay influencers, and set your budget for the influencer marketing campaign, considering the time for planning, implementing, and reviewing the campaign. 

 

• Reach Out to Influencers: 

This is not the easiest task, as the differences between influencers lead to different communication styles. First, start interacting organically with their content through likes and comments, then start sending them direct personal messages. For micro-influencers, you can send them a private message on their social media accounts. For more famous influencers, you can check their profile for contact information, business inquiries, or a website link that displays brand partnerships. Try to give valuable information about your brand, tell them what you hope to accomplish from the campaign, and give them guidelines about what you want exactly.

 

• Measure your Results & Review your Strategy:

Finally, track your results and measure the progress of the campaign. This can happen by using specific hashtags, affiliate codes, discount codes, and tracking links. Also, you can request detailed reports from the influencers on the reach and engagement levels of their posts. And, most importantly, measure the effectiveness of the campaign through return on investment. 

 

Boost your Campaigns with Influencer Marketing Platforms

If you are ready and up to starting an influencer marketing campaign, here are 4 tools for you to make it easier:

1- Upfluence: find creators and manage all influencer relationships, campaigns, payments, and sales in one place.

2- Heepsy: find real Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch influencers, and access advanced reports of the influencers’ audience and authenticity analysis.

3- Tribe Dynamics: analyze the composition and impact of your influencer community, surface the right influencers, and measure influencer brand mentions, even on Instagram Stories and TikTok.

4- Activate: get a scope of influencers’ work and detailed filters, find suitable brand advocates, optimize relationships, and track influencers’ impact.

 

How to Become a Social Media Influencer?

Influencer marketing continues to grow as a real and effective way of marketing, and that’s the reason why it looks like everyone wants to become a social media influencer. So, here are the things that you should look at:

 

-Set a goal

-Choose a niche

-Decide on your main platform

-Settle your bio and profile

-Prepare a content calendar

-Create and post relevant content

-Generate traffic

-Engage with your audience

-Build a community

-Collaborate with other influencers

-Partnership with brands

 

Types of Social Media Influencers you Should Know

There’s no strict cut-off for audience size, but basically, the types of influencers are broken down as the following:

 

• Nano-influencers: 1k to 10k followers or fewer
• Micro-influencers: 10k to 100k followers 
• Macro-influencers: 100k to 1 million followers
• Mega-influencers: 1 million+ followers

 

If you don’t want your brand or business to be left behind, it’s the right time to start exploring the world of influencer marketing. It is a promising path that returns more than it costs, as long as you can see its potential in an effective digital marketing strategy.

Published on 2022-07-17
by Aya