How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Business

22 Mar How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Business

In recent years, influencer marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy for brands to reach their target audience. With the rise of social media, influencers have become powerful voices in the online world, with millions of followers tuning in to their every post. Let’s dive into the basics of influencer marketing, its benefits and how to execute a successful campaign.

What Actually is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing that involves collaborating with influential creators on social media platforms to promote a product or service. Influencers are individuals who have a following on social media, typically in a specific niche or industry. Brands partner with these influencers to create content that promotes their products to their followers.

As a small business you may not get Kim Kardashian recommending your products or services. Truth be told, you will be a lot better off using a nano or micro-influencer anyway! Nano influencers are those with anywhere up to 10K followers and micro influencers have between 10K-100K followers on instagram. Studies show that engagement rates are much higher with these types of influencers. One of the reasons for this is that they are hooked into a very specific niche (ie. food bloggers) and have a dedicated following.

The Benefits of Influencer Marketing

There are many benefits to using influencer marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy. Here are a few of the most important:

1. Increased Brand Awareness

Working with influencers can help increase your brand’s visibility and reach. Influencers have built a loyal following of engaged users, so partnering with them can introduce your brand to a wider audience and to ready made customers in your target market.

2. Targeted Marketing

Influencers often have a specific audience that they cater to, so partnering with the right influencer can help you reach your target audience more effectively. This is particularly useful if your brand is targeting a niche market.

3. Improved Trust and Credibility

Influencers have built a relationship of trust with their followers, so when they endorse a product or service, their followers are more likely to trust that endorsement. This can lead to increased credibility for your brand and improved brand perception in a less obvious, sales-y way.

4. Increased Engagement

Influencer marketing can also help increase engagement with your brand. Influencers often have a highly engaged audience, so partnering with them can help increase likes, comments and shares on your social media content.

How to Execute a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign

Now that you understand the benefits of influencer marketing, let’s discuss how to execute a successful campaign.

• Define Your Goals and KPIs

Before you start working with influencers, you need to define your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Your goals might include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, increasing follower numbers or increasing sales. Your KPIs should be SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and timely) goals. This will help you track the success of your campaign and make data-driven decisions.

• Identify Your Target Audience

Once you have defined your goals and KPIs, you need to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your influencer campaign? What are their interests and behaviours? This will help you identify the right influencers to partner with.

• Find the Right Influencers

When looking for influencers to partner with, it’s important to find the right fit for your brand. Consider factors like their audience size, engagement rate and relevance to your industry or niche. You should also look at their previous brand partnerships to ensure they align with your brand values and what kind of content they produce. Does it match with your brand?

• Set Clear Expectations

When working with influencers, it’s important to set clear expectations upfront. This includes the scope of the partnership, the type of content they will create, and any deadlines or deliverables. Don’t try and dictate what kind of content they should create – allowing the influencer to create original content in keeping with their own style will resonate better with their audience and achieve much better results in the long term. Clear communication is key to ensuring a successful partnership.

• Create Compelling Content

Influencer marketing is all about creating compelling content that resonates with your target audience. Work with your influencers to create content that showcases your product or service in a way that is authentic and engaging. This might include sponsored posts, reviews, or giveaways. (Pro tip: most influencers are expert at producing great videos. Use this to your advantage by being able to re-use the video content again over time)

• Track Your Results

It’s important to track your results and adjust your campaign as needed. Use your KPIs to measure the success of your campaign and identify areas for improvement. This might include tweaking your content strategy or partnering with different influencers.

How Much do Influencers Get Paid?

This is a tricky one! Some of the larger influencers may wish to be paid for any content as this is how they make their living. However there are many nano influencers out there who will create content and promote your product or service for in-kind payment. If you run a hospitality venue an offer of a free lunch or dinner with a friend in order for them to try your products may be enough (we did this recently for a client and the influencer was so happy to come in, try the products and give an authentic review. The resulting video reached over 8000 accounts that were not followers of the business and over 100 comments). If you are a product based business, offer to send the influencer a range of your products.

Be very clear with your communications right from the start to avoid any awkward conversations later!

Influencer marketing isn’t just for big business with big budgets – anyone can use it! Follow the tips above and spend some time thinking about what you really want to achieve before you dive in. If you need help, we are only a click away! Get in touch with us here.