Influencer marketing is the digital trend that seems to be outlasting every other digital marketing trend. This digital marketing strategy is here to stay and for good reasons too.
This is how influencer marketing works
– Find An influential person specific to your niche
– Leverage Them to market your brand.
Sounds simple right?
Well…it can be. But only if you are equipped with the right knowledge to navigate the influencer marketing scene for your brand.
There is a reason more businesses are tapping into the influencer marketing scene but, first let us understand what influencer marketing means.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves a partnership between a brand and an influencer. These influencers are normally social media users and content creators with community of different sizes and strengths .
The goal of influence marketing is to generally promote a brand / business.
5 Major Reasons Businesses Are Tapping Into The Influencer Marketing Scene
Competition
There is nothing that unsettles humans more than a little competition.
If the best brands are using it then that must say something right?
This is one of the major reasons more brands are using it. Every one wants to be on top of their games and be one step ahead or at least work in the same pace as their competitors. This means that businesses would want to use the same strategies that their competitors are using in hope that it works for their brands too.
Boosts business credibility
A majority of influencers have one major thing that bonds them to their followers or and trust and loyalty that exists between them and their followers. This is such a valuable asset. Building trust and credIbility in a business is often a difficulty process and will need longer to achieve it.
Influence marketing does the tough job for businesses because the audience of most influencers already see them as credible and trust worthy. Their guards are down, so, they will become more receptive to whatever products or services you’re trying to market to them.
Encourages Organic Traffic
As of last year, 615 million devices now use Adblock and it’s now mainstream across all ages, according to PageFair. This is where influencers come in. Working with credible influencers who are trusted amongst an audience allow brands to bypass the adblocking obstacle and better connect with buyers on social media. We can think of influencers as a form of “word of mouth” business mixed with native advertising. This combined with their massive social media followings allow companies to create organic traffic, engagement and grow their social followings.
Improve Business SEO rankings
There is more to influencer marketing than influencers marketing your product or services on their social media accounts.
You can also decide to partner with them and request that the influencer mentions your brand on their blog or post one of your articles.
This can help the business generate back links that have high authority. High quality backlinks is one of the key factors to improving your website’s SEO.
Search engines like Google are constantly changing their algorithms to filter out junk posts. Having natural links on an influencer’s page to your site or blog boosts your page in Google’s search results.
Influencers Help Boost Business sales
At the end of the day the goal of most businesses is to generate sales. Influencers can help your business access the targeted audience for your products or web by tailoring their messages to resonate strongly and drive conversions.
Businesses Need The Human Face
So many brands now seem impersonal and formal to a lot of people. How many brands do you see in a day? Come on! At some point they all start too look like each other.
It’s so easy for brands to lose their personal touch and become monotonous, flat and impersonal to people. Influencer marketing restores that personal touch again.
This is because influencers are humans and they have been able to build up trust and credibility over time with their followers, people naturally listen to them.
Influencers make the content of your brand more enjoyable to the users so much so that even if they don’t end up buying the product or service, they might feel the need to refer it to someone else.
Influencer Marketing is Cost Effective
Marketing for your brand can be an expensive process, using Influencers is one way for you to save some of your funds.
The key when starting out is to seek out micro influencers who have loyal followers base. They are more dedicated to working hard to help you achieve your brand goal.
You don’t have to spend all the money on paid ads and endorsements which do not look very promising.
How To Find The Right Influencers For Your Businesses
Finding the right influencer for your business can get pretty tricky easily. If you’re not careful, you can easily fall into the hands of the wrong influencer who only end up doing more damage to your business.
It is absolutely essential that the influencer you chose for your brand completely understands your brand message and can translate to their audience.
These Are 3 steps To Finding The Right Influencer For Your Brand
Identify the influencer traits you’re looking for
As beneficial as influence marketing is, it does come with its own risks like I earlier stated.
You have to be deliberate on chosing influenvers who already have brands that connect with yours. You see…influencers have their own brands to consider too and they can’t jeopardize it for your own which is why you have to make sure that your brand aligns with their brand message.
That’s why it’s important to ensure whoever you work with wholeheartedly believes in your brand’s values and will authentically represent your brand to their followers.
You need to talk to them on the lines to cross and the lines that are not okay to cross. They need to have a great grasp of the messsge you’re trying to pass to the audinece and you need to have an idea of the message that their brand in general consistently pushes out.
Do they have the same morals, values and ideals as your brand?
If it’s too far fetched, then it’s best you look for an influencer that fits in more comfortable forr your brand.
Example; if your brand is all inclusive and supports lgbtq, it would be wrong to look for an influencer whose brand does not support that movement.
What’s Their Follower Count And Engagement Rate?
The best influencers for your businesses might not necessarily be the ones with the most followers. But, the followers count still matter.
You definitely want to look for an influence that has at least 10k followers and above. You need the influencer to be able to get your brand in the faces of a lot of people.
The next thing to pay attention after a decent follower count is the engagement rate of the Influencer. There are people who have lots of followers but have very low emehagement, there are others who have pea sized amount but have very robust engagement.
The engagement rate will tell you just how much of an authority the influencer is to their specific target audience. If they’re engaging with the influence fiercely then that shows that they will also likely engage with your brand too.
How Credible Are They?
A background check is a necessity before collaborating with an influencer. What is their history with influencing for others?
Have they scammed people before?
Are they trustworthy?
Do they deliver on their promises?
A quick scroll through their timeline can give you the answer to most of these questions.
Better still, you can reach out privately to brand that they have previously worked with and ask them for a rundown of their expericne.
This will help you make a decision and prevent you from falling into the hands of the wrong influencer.
