It’s a strategy where an influencer or someone who others look to for advice inspires or recommends a brand’s product or service. It’s important for influencers to have a wide reach, be trusted in the community and have good speaking skills. The higher the combination of these skills, the more influencing power they will have on others. In the last few years, this strategy has become very popular among marketing specialists as an alternative to traditional publicity tactics which are expensive and don’t have much influence on customers.
According to a report by Nielsen, around 92% of the consumers trust opinions and recommendations when they’re based on someone else’s experience also known as word-of-mouth marketing. This is where influencer marketing comes into play. If you use an influencer to promote your product, the message will come from someone that your target audience follows and admires. It’s someone that they have some kind of relationship with. So, if the recommendation comes from that person, they will be more receptive to it over a traditional ad.
In other words, how can you ignore an ad if you don’t even recognize it? That right there is the main advantage of influencer marketing. That messages don’t come across as imposed or false. The recommendations aren’t forced or unnatural and they come from someone that the audience trusts or respects. Keep in mind though that influencers should always disclose ad content and brand collaborations even if they share the same opinions on a personal level. So, now that it’s clear that influencer Marketing plays an important role
How can you make the most of collaborating with influencers for your marketing strategy?
First of all, you should choose the right influencer for your campaign. There are basically three types of profiles that work for influencer campaigns and brands must establish a different relationship with each type.
Brand ambassadors:
Brand ambassadors have a large follower base and their values are aligned with the brand’s values. Relationships between brand ambassadors and brands can be either medium or long term. They have many key PR actions. For example, invitations from the brand to events, festivals or trips and in return, the brand ambassador generates content for the brand throughout the duration of the commercial relationship.
Influencers:
Influencer on the other hand are not directly linked to a specific brand nor do they tend to establish long-term agreements but rather specific campaign collaborations. With influencer profiles, it’s important to distinguish between macro influencers whose public relevance may them appealing to brands due to their great potential impact, and micro influencers, profiles with a smaller follower base but with solid credibility and who stand out among specific audience segments as opinion leaders.
Advocates
and finally, we have advocates who are users who are satisfied with the brand and who don’t hesitate to recommend products on their own without any economic compensation. It’s important to define and efficiently manage these profiles in order to establish a fruitful relationship with the brand through some form of collaboration. Now, what’s the next step? You should research which influencers are in line with your brand and determine how much you’re comfortable spending. One of the most important things is that the influencer has an audience that matches your target audience. If you sell products for young women and you choose an influencer that has mainly middle-aged men as their audience, your actions won’t give you any results.
We highly recommend using an influencer marketing tool like Influencify which analyzes Influencer Metrics across every single social media form, spots fake influencers, identifies niches, and brand affinities for each one of them, and ultimately let’s you make the most informed, relevant decision for your campaign.
You’ll find a link to try it for free in the video description. So now that you’ve decided which influencer works best for you, which content should you create?
The keys to success in Influencer Marketing.
Post real and authentic content.
Organic content is one of the most powerful ways to influence your audience. Avoiding commercial content is key since strictly commercial campaigns don’t tend to perform well in modern marketing. Campaigns should be original in order to cause impact. It’s for this very reason that micro influencers are able to transmit a sense of security and trust to their audience. They know how to communicate their feelings and experiences in such a way that their content feels authentic. Despite not having as many followers as other big influencers, their audience is just as important and valuable because they truly trust the influencers content. This will lead to more results for both the brand and the influencers.
Engagement rate.
It’s important that your influencer marketing campaign is represented by influencers who have a good level of engagement across all their social networks. This is measured by the engagement rate.
Engagement rate is defined by the level of interaction and influencers post receives. The combination of likes, shares, and comments from an ad. The higher the engagement rate is, the more likely users are to buy from your brand.
Insta is undoubtedly the best social network for influencer marketing campaigns due to its wide range of features. Instagram stories for example are an effective way to immediately connect with an audience.
influencer relationships.
Your relationship with your influencer will determine your brand’s success. Brands should aim to reach a win-win agreement with their influencers and treat them as if they were a brand themselves with loyalty and professionalism. If your relationship with your influencer is negative, your campaign results will be negative. Hence why it’s so important to trust your influencer and try to make the collaboration as natural as possible.
How influencers can help your business grow?
Trust around your brand. Influencers maintain an authentic and trustworthy relationship with their audience. This means that if they recommend your product or service, their followers will put a high level of trust in it and this will help you to generate more loyal customers. Also, as they will have some relatability to your brand, it’s more probable that they buy your product or service.
Better reach.
On one hand, if your goal is to reach a bigger audience, influencers with millions of followers are the best way to reach a large audience. On the other hand, if you’re working on a highly targeted marketing campaign, finding your niche audience will be very easy as well. For example, if your brand is related to beauty products, identify influencers that work specifically on this topic. Most of their followers are interested in beauty products as well. So, clearly, it’s a great target for your brand.
Better SEO
In case the influencer has a blog or a website, it can help your SEO strategy. How? Every time your brand is mentioned by trusted influencers, it generates an opportunity to generate high-quality external links on your web. This can help boost your brand’s SEO and elevate your rank on Google searches which will lead to more visits to your website and probably more sales. Let’s see which ways influencer marketing can help your SEO:
Get links
As you may know, one of the important ranking factors that Google takes into consideration in searches is links. By collaborations such as guest posting or product reviews, you can get new links back to your website. This practice can be very helpful if your domain isn’t good enough to start ranking yet.
Brand awareness
It’s easier to get people to know about your brand if you partner with someone who’s already playing in the same topic field. This will not only help your SEO but also your social media presence. Your number of followers will undoubtedly be increased.
Now that you already know how influencers can help grow your business, let’s see which ways you can collaborate with them.
How to work with influencers?
There are multiple levels of help you can expect from influencers. These are some of them.
Give free samples to influencers
Although most experienced influencers will expect to receive economic compensation aside from the free product, other Influencers will be more than happy to share with their followers the free samples that you send them. To make it even more attractive, you can personalize the gift so it will generate an even better impact.
Ask for product reviews
This is an easy way to get an audience to know your product and take a closer look at its features. You must keep in mind though that a good influencer will make an honest review as its relationship with the audience is in play. So, don’t expect product reviews to always be positive in every sense.
Product reviews are great for promoting existing products but here’s an extra tip.
Why not involve influencers in the development of your product? You can ask an influencer to help design a new line of products as a limited edition. It’s sure to be well received by their followers.
Provide products to give away
Who doesn’t like giveaways? It’s proven that when influencers throw giveaway campaigns, the results are incredibly good. Your number of followers can be multiplied and it can also lead to new customers. Just make sure that you offer something valuable so followers want to participate and that the contest instructions are clear.
Pay for sponsored posts
This is one of the most common ways to collaborate with an influencer. A post with a picture or a video can do wonders for your brand. One tip is to ask influencers to use the same hashtags that your brand does.
Write guest posts
This practice can be very effective when you partner with influencers who operate a popular blog. Also, as said earlier, it helps to boost your SEO. So, consider writing a guest post and try to give useful and relevant content instead of just driving sales.
Now you know how influencers can help grow your business. We hope you find a successful way to get the most of it.
What are the types of influencers?
When you decide to recruit an influencer to promote your brand, you need to be sure that they are the right fit for your campaign. Otherwise, you’re unlikely to see any substantial results. However, with so many types of influencers out there, it can be difficult to know what you should be looking for.
Should you pick an influencer by the size of their following or by the area of interest or expertise? What about celebrities, rising stars, and key opinion leaders? Are they a must or will you get more bang for your buck with someone with a smaller, more modest following.
Let’s start by exploring the different types of influencers according to audience size to help you find the right influencers for your brand.
Remember, when it comes to influencer marketing, just because someone has a considerably sized audience doesn’t necessarily mean they will do the best job promoting your campaign.
Nano Influencer:
1,000 to 10,000 followers. Of all the types of influencers, Nano Influencers have the smallest audience. They usually have between 1000 and 10,000 followers on social media channels. Because of their reduced following, Nano Influencers are usually very vocal advocates of the brands and products they like and promote. They often have a very engaged social media following and because they don’t over saturate their channels with obvious campaigns, their followers tend to value their authentic reviews, recommendations, and commentary. They’re also able to maintain closer relationships with their followers as they take the time to respond to comments, engage with their audience, and nurture their relationships.
Micro Influencers:
are useful for any brand regardless of their company size and the use of one type or the other will depend on the strategy we want to focus on. For example, if you are a big brand, Nano and Micro Influencer are a very interesting option when used at scale leveraging your budget to create campaigns with 100 or more influencers. On the other hand, if you are a smaller brand with a limited marketing budget, Nano Influencers can also be a good option, keeping costs low but achieving results at the same time.
Micro Influencer:
10,000 to 100,000 followers. Micro Influencers have a larger audience than Nano Influencers, usually between 10, 000 and 100, 000 followers.
Although they have more followers to interact with, they still usually manage to maintain a relatively high level of engagement. They are also more likely to have a targeted audience focused on a particular niche such as travel or baking for example.
This makes it much easier to create specialized relevant sponsorships because their audience is more specialized. These types of influencers are best suited to brands that are looking to generate more focused leads. This is mainly because their audience is already expecting to receive targeted marketing messages within their niche.
For example, if you sell mixers than a micro influencer who specializes in baking could be a great option.
Macro Influencer:
100, 000 to 1 million followers. Macro Influencers, as you have probably guessed, have an even larger audience than micro influencers, usually between 100, 000 and 1 million followers. These types of influence have a much broader appeal and often include social media stars, bloggers, vloggers, or podcasters. These influencers also have a much greater reach. Plus, they are likely to have a well-developed audience made up of loyal followers. However, due to the sheer size of their audience, they are unlikely to have a high engagement rate.
Macro Influencers are best suited for brands that are looking to raise awareness of their products or services as you get instant access to a much larger audience. Macro Influencers are almost exclusively used for big brands since smaller businesses can’t afford the fees this type of influencer asks for.
Mega Influencer:
1 million or more followers. At the top of your pyramid, we find mega influencers. These are influencers with over one million followers and this category is usually made up of celebrities, rising stars, and KOLs or key opinion leaders.
For example, this category might include those specialized in TikTok Influencer Marketing because they have such a strong social status, their recommendations and opinions tend to be listened to. However, mega influencers are not likely to be very engaged with their followers or specialized in a particular niche or industry.
These types of influencers are best suited to brands with a considerable marketing budget as getting a mega influencer to promote your brand is more than likely going to be very expensive.
Influencers by niche and content type:
Another way to filter through the many types of influencers to pick the best person to promote your brand is by choosing an influencer who’s focused on a specific niche or content type. Here are a few examples of what we mean.
Sports and fitness influencers can be a great choice if you’re looking to promote sports brands or food and drink brands related to the health and wellness industry.
Travel influencers offer travel tips, tricks, and hacks as well as reviews on travel related this could be a great choice if you are looking to promote a holiday destination or food establishment.
Beauty influencers usually share beauty tips and product reviews so these types of influencers could be a great choice if you are looking to promote makeup or cosmetic products.
