Influencer marketing has grown in popularity in recent years, and it’s for a good cause. This marketing technique is one of the most successful strategies at your disposal for broadening your company's impact, boosting your industry's legitimacy, and promoting yourself as a thought leader in your niche market.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is the practice of leveraging a popular individual's status to promote your brand online. Many influencers use their power and prestige to start their own enterprises, as well.
Simply put, an influencer is someone who can have an impact on others. In influencer marketing, a celebrity or authority figure works with a company to spread the word about its product or service.
The very first type of influencer marketing was celebrity endorsements. These influencers would use social media to convey a marketing message to their followers.
On the other hand, social content creators with specialty audiences can often provide greater value to brands in today's digital age. Since these social media personalities have dedicated and active groups of followers, leveraging influencer marketing can be an excellent way to build brand awareness and convert customers.
How did influencer marketing become a staple form of promotion?
Using influencers as a marketing strategy can produce scalable results for small and medium-sized businesses alike, which explains why it's been taking the digital marketing world by storm. Nowadays, influencers are among social media's most powerful and persuasive forces, so to speak.
But getting it right — let alone getting started in the first place — is easier said than done. You might think influencer marketing is simply about selecting popular personalities and sending them your products for promotion, but that is not the case. Influencer marketing requires careful planning, proactive strategizing, monitoring, and measuring of performance, just like any other type of marketing.
It’s also vital that your chosen social media
influencer shares your brand values. When done right, influencer marketing –
also called branded content or artist collaboration – can be a sure-fire way of
increasing your brand’s market reach on social media.
8
Strategies in Launching Social Media Influencer Campaigns Efficiently
1.
Identify
influencers that suit your brand
Knowing the movers and shakers in your market can go
a long way in the influencer marketing space. It would be in your best interest
to find and follow these key personalities, and the easiest approach to be on
the radar of notable influencers is through social media.
Search by topic to find out who is participating in
conversations and who is making their voice heard. Check out who
these influential individuals follow and gather relevant information from
them. Participate in industry-related conversations, too. You can do this by
engaging in Twitter discussions, Facebook live streaming, scheduled Zoom
conferences, and more.
You may also utilize free web tools such as BuzzSumo
and Topsy to discover who's sharing your content (or anyone else's) and how
relevant they are. You can filter the results by page and domain authority,
followers, retweet ratio, and average retweets, among other factors.
There are many methods for identifying
influencers in your field. Look for events that are relevant to your business
and look at the speaker lineup. Even a little research will immediately
render a list of influencers you should pay attention to and follow.
2.
Organize
live discussions and advocate for a new cause
It’s crucial to understand the difference between
simply supporting a generic cause and being proactively influential before you
can become efficient in influencer marketing. You can be the world's biggest
supporter of content marketing, but that doesn't make you a content marketing
influencer.
No one sets the trend in any industry by being a conformist who just goes with the flow. You need to step up and shape the conversation, not just advocate for whatever is being addressed already. Aim to be recognized as a game-changer in your field.
Ask yourself: Am
I raising issues and concerns that no one else has considered yet (or
dared to express), or am I simply rehashing what others have resolved in the
past? Is my perspective on a topic truly unique, or am I simply repeating what
everyone else has said? Do my thoughts and opinions about the industry
challenge current conventions, or do they get lost in the shuffle?
3.
Establish
a reputation in your niche
You must strive to be on top of your game if you
want to become an authority in your industry. Knowing a lot about various
aspects is not enough; specializing in an area is what will make it easy for
you to be heard and to stand out from the crowd. The public gives credit to
whom it is due and raises them to the status of influencer. That's all there
is to it.
Reliable and respected influencers are extremely
cautious about what they put out on their platforms since it
takes time to successfully develop trust and only one badly
thought-out statement to destroy it. They make a huge difference because they've
demonstrated time and time again that their voice is worth listening
to and their advice is worth considering.
4.
Reach
and engage your target audience
It is imperative to determine your ideal demographic
to make your local influencer marketing campaign work. You may identify your
target audience by conducting research on your area of specialization or by
surveying the local population that your rivals are actively pursuing.
Getting to know the potential pain points of
consumers, who they follow, and what they talk about on social media are all
essential to fully understanding their requirements and preferences as a whole.
This will also lead you to find the relevant influencers you should partner
with to engage your audience.
5.
Get
in touch with your preferred influencers
It's now time to send your pitch to the influencers
you've shortlisted. Sending an email remains the most professional approach to
contacting key influencers. Keep your email concise and to the point, with a
brief introduction about your brand.
Outline your expectations to them as part of your
local influencer marketing effort, as well as what you will compensate them
with in exchange for their role in the partnership. Include all important
partnership information in the first email you send them to avoid several
back-and-forth emails with your target influencers.
6.
Collaborate
in content creation
For the most part, influencers are true experts when
it comes to the creation and presentation of high-quality content that produces
results. The fact that they’ve climbed to the top of the popularity ladder is
solid proof of their strong skills in generating posts that not only engage the
audience but also expand their follower count.
Local influencer marketing capitalizes on the
tremendous power of influencers by having them participate in conceptualizing
interesting ideas for your campaigns. When your marketing team and chosen
influencers work together on a campaign, it is highly essential to equip them
with all of the creative parameters they require to achieve your desired
results and avoid influencer fatigue, which may only drive your target audience
away.
For certain brands, it works when they choose to launch "social media takeover" campaigns in which influencers post on the brand's social media pages and directly connect with their following. Whatever type of campaign you go with, keep in mind that the material should strike the perfect balance between your brand's identity and the influencer's unique touch.
7.
Get
started and promote your campaign
When it comes to launching your local influencer marketing campaign, the best practice is to follow a basic pre-launch checklist to ensure all the necessary details and objectives are covered. Equally important is determining the perfect time to kickstart your campaign, as well as considering all the platforms where your target audience spends the most time.
As soon as the campaign is live, actively share and repost the influencer’s content to your brand's associated accounts, exclusive groups, and even your personal social media profile to help your local influencer marketing campaign reach even more people.
8.
Evaluate
the results
After the influencers have posted branded content for your company, there are still many things you can do. One of which is to carefully evaluate and keep track of your progress toward the goals you established at the outset. Use the applicable key performance indicators to assess how well your campaign met its intended purposes.
If your goal is to raise brand awareness, you could use the number of content views you have received to gauge your campaign's performance. Track the number of clicks and website visits the campaign generated to estimate the amount of traffic it generated.
If the results you're aiming for are not met, look for areas of improvement and work on them. Examine the data and make the necessary changes to optimize your approach for future campaigns.
Get Ready for Your Next Influencer Marketing Campaign!
Influencer marketing can be both thrilling and demanding, and marketers and organizations have recognized the huge potential of this marketing strategy in helping them attain their company’s goals.
Your business must focus on discovering the right influencers and crafting content that excites your target audience. This way, you can execute successful influencer marketing initiatives that you can scale to grow your business.
Instead of patterning your methods to established
processes, work on personalizing your campaign to suit your brand. And don’t
just stop at giving quality material to your usual audience: strive for
captivating, original content that is tailored to entice leading industry
influencers. Once you strike the right balance of all the aspects discussed,
you should be able to execute influencer marketing campaigns like a pro.
Name: David Williams
Position: Marketing Manager
Background:
David is the Marketing Manager of Intermedia Print Solutions, a print media and packaging solutions company in Princeton, NJ notable for its high-end print quality printing and on-time delivery. A mixture of technology and creativity is what makes David enthusiastic about his work. He likes to spend his free time reading books, watching sci-fi films, and writing articles.