With YouTube’s rise to fame back in 2005 came one of the trendiest words that has taken the world by storm: ✨ influencer ✨ and influencer marketing.
The age of the influencer began with a massive uptick in bloggers and YouTube stars in 2009, and with the birth of Instagram just one year later, the power of influencers has flourished to an all-time high.
There are no specific credentials needed for a person to become an influencer, as long as they have the skills to spark a conversation and inspire action amongst their peers.
An influencer can sway people’s decisions when it comes to their purchasing habits and this has much to do with their “social proof” – the power and expertise that they have, especially when it comes to the relationship that they hold with their audience.
It’s been proven that social consumers are influenced by what their peers think about certain products and services, especially influencers with specific niches who have a large online following, which is why Influencer Marketing has become so lucrative.
Imagine having the power to convince people to purchase something out of their own free will, simply because the opinion of an influencer matters to them.
Influencer Marketing as a method through which to grow one’s company and increase brand awareness is, therefore, a very powerful approach because it involves collaboration between brands and influencers.
Influencers are seen by their audiences as not only experts in their niche but also trustworthy.
Their recommendations or endorsements can as a result help to boost the reach of brands and generate significant leads.
4 Types of Influencers
Here’s a fun fact – influencers date back to the Roman era when Gladiators endorsed products.
Today, celebrities are the obvious choice when it comes to who can influence the masses; however, one needn’t be a celebrity to become an influencer.
Some influencers with smaller yet committed and niche follower bases may be more effective than those with a larger audience.
The different types of influencers based on audience size are as follows (get your pen ready for our quick rundown):
- Nano Influencers are seen as entry-level influencers on social media with between 1,000 to 10,000 followers. These influencers tend to have a more down-to-earth approach to their content and focus predominantly on relatable content. They also tend to charge less than others due to their reach.
- Micro Influencers have a slightly larger following than Nano Influencers but still have less than Macro Influencers – they typically have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers on their social media platforms, and they use their following to promote products and services that align with their niche.
- Macro Influencers are those who have a following of between 250,000 to 1,000,000 people. These are influencers who have good engagement rates and a large audience which makes them ideal for brand endorsements and awareness. They are also able to reach large numbers of people using a single post.
- Mega Influencers are people seen by the public as “famous” – either celebrities or social media personalities with a following of more than 1 million people. These are people who have strong popularity amongst various groups of people. They aren’t necessarily experts in a particular niche, but they do have a higher reach.
Being a successful influencer on social media platforms today very much depends on the relationship that has been built with their audience.
In light of this, it’s important to remember that while their audience might not necessarily care about your brand, they will care about what the influencer has to say about it.
8 Ways to Kickstart Your Influencer Marketing
To get started with your brand’s Influencer Marketing campaign, let’s have a look at various ways in which to prepare for your collaboration with an online influencer.
Remember: Influencer Marketing is a mixture of conventional and contemporary marketing techniques.
In essence, this approach borrows from the idea of celebrity endorsement, positioning this method within a content-driven and contemporary marketing campaign instead.
The main difference here is that when it comes to Influencer Marketing, the results of the campaign are produced through collaboration with influencers.
1. Determine Your Goals
The aim of Influencer Marketing is generally to boost brand awareness and increase sales.
These goals, however, are very broad and might not deliver the desired results for your brand.
The top goal for brands using Influencer Marketing is to reach new target customers.
How does one achieve this? With the help of an Influencer Campaign that extends your reach to that person’s followers.
The key here is to kickstart your strategy by identifying the demands of your business, followed by the strategy that is needed to meet those needs and contribute to the overall result.
Examples of business goals include whether you wish to hone in on a specific age group or niche, or whether you wish to introduce a new product or service to a particular demographic (i.e. gender, age group, income, education, employment).
Once you’ve identified your primary goals, you are then in a prime position to drive your business in the right direction.
However, it’s not all downhill from here – be sure to acknowledge that your Influencer Marketing strategy is only a portion of your Social Media Marketing strategy.
It is therefore crucial that this plan supports the overall strategy on social media so that your business can achieve measurable goals you can track and provide feedback on.
Pro Tip: identifying your goals can be daunting, so start simple and small. Identify one specific goal that you would wish to achieve and take it from there. Set realistic goals for your business – there’s nothing wrong with first learning to crawl.
2. Understand How Influencers Work
Before you approach an influencer with a plan to partner up with your brand, it is important to understand how influencers operate on social media.
Influencers have several tasks related to creating personal and promotional social media content for their followers.
Before they agree to start posting about your brand, the following regulations need to be covered:
- Ensure that disclosure guidelines are built into your brand’s agreement with an influencer before your collaboration.
- Verify that the influencer identifies Sponsored posts. This should not be done subtly; instead, they should be clear and upfront with their followers so that they are aware that the post is Sponsored by your brand.
- Written and verbal disclosure of the Paid Partnership between your brand and the influencer should be included in video content posts.
- The influencer should use #ad and #sponsored at the beginning of the post for transparency with their audience.
Built-in tools on social media platforms can be utilised by influencers to help ensure that each post is created according to these regulations.
For instance, social media platforms like Instagram have provided information on the rules to follow when an influencer creates a post for a Paid Partnership.
Therefore, it’s important to understand and follow the guidelines.
Pro Tip: to ensure that you’re not out of the loop, do your research on the requirements for Sponsored content on social media before entering an agreement with an influencer. That way you can ensure that they are adhering to these regulations as well.
3. Consider the 3 Rs of Influence
There are three pillars of influence, otherwise known as the 3 Rs, that are each equally important and carry the same weight when it comes to contributing to Influencer Marketing.
These include finding an influencer who is relevant to your brand, considering the influencer’s reach when it comes to marketing your product or service, and whether the campaign will successfully resonate with their niche or audience.
Relevance
The first step is to ask yourself whether or not the influencer has an audience that would be interested in your business or brand.
Selecting an influencer who has an audience that will relate to your business or brand is highly necessary because the success of this campaign ultimately depends on the relationship that they have with their audience along with their social proof.
Find an influencer who is passionate about the same interests and goals as your business – this will immediately ensure that what you have to offer will be relevant to their audience and therefore have more influence.
Reach
The next step is to consider the influencer’s reach, in other words, the size of their audience.
An influencer’s reach is an indication of how many people are interested in what they have to say and how often their content is seen on social media.
However, niche and expertise are also important to consider.
Quality can sometimes have a more effective outcome than quantity, especially if and when trying to tap into a particular niche.
Nevertheless, more often than not, the more followers see an influencer’s post about a brand’s products or services, the larger the brand awareness.
Resonance
And finally, consider whether your brand’s products or services will resonate with the influencer’s audience.
Resonance refers to the amount of engagement that an influencer could potentially gain with their audience.
There is no gain in your Influencer Marketing strategy if you aim to select an influencer purely based on their reach.
What you plan on marketing to an influencer’s audience needs to speak to their interests; without this mutual understanding, your products or services will have little to no impact.
Find an influencer who shares your brand’s philosophy and so too will their following.
4. Create a List of Similar Influencers
Once you have the basics figured out and you’re ready to select an influencer for your campaign who best embodies the essence of your brand and what it seeks to achieve, start by making a list of influencers who would best fit the role.
As discussed in the point above, it’s important to reach out to influencers who share similar interests and who are relevant to your brand, but not only that, to find influencers who appear to have an engaging audience.
Have a look to see whether the influencer you’re interested in partnering with has a decent amount of views, likes, shares, and comments on their social media platforms.
Loyal followers are more likely to interact with an influencer’s content as well as try the product or service themselves.
Be wary of influencers who have a massive following but poor engagement.
Followers can be purchased to draw attention for endorsements, but influencers with this approach often produce watered-down results for brands.
Why?
Because successful influencing depends on the relationship that has been built between the influencer and their audience.
5. Do Your Research
Influencer Marketing can generate remarkable benefits for brands that utilise it correctly.
This, however, has become a controversial topic due to the falsehood of influencers’ posts and dishonesty with their followers.
Not everything is as it seems, and social media is often a reflection of one’s life through rose-coloured glasses.
Doing your research before reaching out to an influencer is critical when planning your brand’s campaign.
Before contacting an influencer, ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you had a look at the influencer’s posts, and have they shared Sponsored content before? If so, how often do they post and do they follow the guidelines?
- Have you found an influencer who also shares organic, non-sponsored content to keep their audience engaged? Remember: the relationship that they have with their followers needs to be genuine.
- Do you know and understand how the influencer works? What do they like, who does their content appeal to, and what is their niche?
Researching to understand a potential influencer will not only ensure that you can pinpoint who your brand would work with best, but it also increases the appreciation that the influencer will have for your investment and interest in what they are passionate about.
Pro Tip: learn the ins and outs of a potential influencer by following their social media platforms and engaging with their content to gain exposure and brand recognition.
6. Reach Out Privately & Personally
If you’d like to partner with an influencer, you can start by interacting organically with their content, and then reach out to them via their preferred method (be sure to double-check their bio – sometimes they prefer for enquiries to be sent via email).
Be sincere when reaching out and try your best to approach them in a more personal manner.
What you want to avoid is sending them a long, essay-type message or email that can be easily glazed over and forgotten about.
Keep your pitch simple and to the point, providing only the necessary information about your brand.
When reaching out via Direct Message on social platforms, try to throw in an emoji or two to make your pitch feel less of a cold call.
With your introduction, allow the influencer to get a feel for your brand and what it is that you wish to achieve with your content and a potential partnership.
It’s important to paint a picture for them, allowing the influencer to see where they fit in with your brand and showing them how they can benefit from the partnership beyond receiving a paycheck.
Influencers see themselves as content creators; in other words, they feel that the creation of their content requires planning and attention to detail, thought and consideration.
Therefore, using the word “influencer” can have a negative connotation when connecting with potential partners.
Don’t allow them to feel undervalued; express your interest in what they do and your appreciation for how they go about creating content, and share with them why it is that your brand is eager to work with them specifically.
Pro Tip: avoid using words that will make your approach sound like a sales pitch; instead, be conversational and tap into your similarities so that you can work on a mutual bond.
7. Consider Content Collaborations
No matter the price you are willing to pay, if your Influencer Marketing strategy doesn’t align with an influencer’s brand identity, them accepting your partnership is oftentimes unlikely.
Therefore, it’s important to partner with someone who identifies with the ethos of your brand but also to grant them the opportunity to share that ethos with their content-creating skills.
At the end of the day, online influencers are experts at content creation.
It’s their passion, it’s their career, so while you may know your business better than anybody, an influencer can showcase your product or service to their audience in a manner that speaks to them best.
Influencers should know what kind of content their audience enjoys seeing and how to generate a conversation.
Therefore, collaborating with an influencer often provides the best return on investment because they know their audience and they get to add their unique flair to the marketing strategy.
Sure, you can provide them with the necessary guidelines about what you’d like to see for your brand, but allowing your partner to take initiative and exercise their creativity is a great approach and can oftentimes be the recipe for a successful campaign.
Pro Tip: teamwork can be considered the very essence of a successful partnership. Lean into this and try your best to be open to an influencer’s ideas.
8. Measure Your Results
Once your Influencer Campaign has commenced, the best way to determine whether you are on the right track is to measure the results.
The most important thing to keep in mind here is what’s worth measuring – sure, metrics such as increased engagement can allude to a successful campaign.
However, it’s what the follower does after they’ve engaged with the content that counts.
Understanding the value of your campaign in terms of your return on investment will ensure measuring the effectiveness of your campaign.
Influencer Marketing is a lot more fluid than traditional marketing strategies which makes measuring in numbers difficult.
We’ve compiled a list of ways to track and measure the success of your Influencer Marketing campaign.
- Set campaign goals: set realistic targets for your campaign, whether it be gaining a certain amount of followers or generating a certain amount of sales. It’s important to have clear expectations for what you wish the campaign to achieve.
- Request access: it doesn’t hurt to ask! See if the influencer you’re working with is willing to share access with you to their personal data and analytics once the campaign is complete. The more data sources, the better.
- Determine KPIs: a key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively your company is achieving your business objectives. These could include objectives like boosting brand awareness and website traffic.
- Add UTM parameters: a UTM parameter is a reliable, short text code that you add to links to track online traffic. Assign each influencer a unique link with UTM codes. This will help to gather the data needed to determine the success of your campaign.
- Create promo codes: promo codes can be used in the influencer’s posts. Through this method, you can draw in new customers and track sales by seeing how many people used the promo code at checkout during their purchase.
- Use affiliate links: this method allows you to create a URL that contains a unique code, identifying a person’s ID or username. Affiliate links will allow you to track purchases and clicks uniquely, so you can see analytics specific to each influencer.
- Monitor traffic before, during and after: a full record of your online traffic will allow you to compare results from various stages within the campaign. For social media, assess your number of followers and engagement to measure success later on.
- Track impressions: impressions show you exactly how many people saw the content posted for any amount of time. Keep an eye on the campaign’s impressions to see how many people have viewed the content.
- Track engagement: likes, comments, shares, retweets and reactions all count as forms of engagement. This data will indicate whether or not people are enjoying your content and whether they’ve found it interesting enough to share.
Pro Tip: when selecting an influencer to work with, you both must have a firm understanding of the campaign’s objectives. There are thousands of influencers to choose from, so make sure that you partner with the right one for your business.
Also read – 28 TikTok Strategies You Can Use Immediately To Grow Your Account
7 Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Did you know that there has been a 465% increase in Google Searches for the phrase “influencer marketing” since 2016?
Not only is this a marketing strategy that offers a fresh, new way to increase brand awareness, but it also provides marketers with real-time results.
If you have partnered with a loyal brand ambassador, you can expect great results.
Here’s a list of Influencer Marketing benefits to consider.
1. Increase Sales
Generating sales and conversions are one of the top three goals that marketers aim to achieve.
As previously mentioned, influencers can have a remarkable impact on the purchasing habits of their audience.
When followers see their favourite influencer using or promoting a brand, the chances are likely that they will try the product or service out for themselves.
An influencer can turn the tide for a brand with whom they identify.
2. Build Credibility & Trust
A successful influencer’s audience places a great deal of trust in their thoughts and recommendations.
This is an exceptional power unlike any other provided by traditional ads.
Influencers are real people, and they can be incredibly relatable.
Therefore, an influencer’s transparency when interacting with their followers ensures a sense of ease, convincing their followers to give your brand a chance.
3. Enrich Your Content Strategy
Influencers are content creation specialists, meaning that they know exactly how their audience thinks, what interests them most, and what kind of content will successfully keep them engaged.
Allowing an influencer to promote your brand’s product or service in their own way not only saves time and effort on your side but this approach also provides the opportunity for your brand to be seen through fresh eyes.
4. Increased Brand Awareness & Reach
Partnering with an influencer whose niche fits your brand will provide the ideal opportunity for you to reach a good amount of new and potential customers.
Influencer Marketing campaigns generally seek to increase the number of people that see and become aware of your brand via a trustworthy source – and influencer – and they also allow you to reach and appeal to a whole host of new people.
5. Cost-effective Advertising
In the digital marketing realm, a major concern is the ever-increasing cost of traditional paid advertising such as Google Ads.
However, Influencer Marketing is relatively cost-effective and is generally a once-off fee.
Some influencers are open to negotiating affiliate deals where they receive performance-based commissions.
However, the cost spent on Influencer Marketing is outweighed by what is gained.
6. Time-effective Advertising
Not only does Influencer Marketing save you money, but it also saves you time.
Collaborations with influencers are super time-effective because they give you access to their audience, and they are tasked with the responsibility of creating the campaign’s content for your brand.
Partnering with an influencer will, therefore, save you time planning due to their assistance with content strategy ideas and creation.
7. Boosted SEO
Influencers can also help to increase your brand’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Keywords are useful for SEO, but Google’s most important ranking criteria are links, something that every marketer should keep in mind when trying to boost their SEO.
Influencer Marketing can aid in increasing SEO due to increased chances of backlinks created as you reach a larger audience through an Influencer’s activities online.
Also read – Data Analytics: What It Is, Why It’s Important, and How We Can Help
How Can We Help You With Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns?
As you can tell, Influencer Marketing involves a great deal of admin, especially when it comes to setting up your campaign and keeping your finger on the pulse of tracking metrics and other performance data.
Arora Online ensures a smooth-running relationship between your brand and influencers.
We can assist with creating a cross-channel campaign that will immediately grab the viewer’s attention, keep them engaged, and ultimately, entice them to ride the waves of the latest viral trends.
At Arora Online, we use our expertise to establish a holistic understanding of how
Influencer Marketing ties into your marketing channels.
Through this, we can ensure that it informs and expands your greater marketing strategic goals.
Grab the opportunity to connect with our expert content creators and experience first-hand the product of effective Influencer Marketing.
Reach out to us at Arora Online and experience first-hand how you can promote your brand through Influencer Marketing.
Our Final Thoughts
Despite its rise in popularity, Influencer Marketing is yet to be discovered and explored by many businesses.
It will also continue to be a major marketing strategy in businesses for years to come.
Before reaching out to an influencer, start by defining the goals of your brand and how you’d like to utilise Influencer Marketing to boost your brand awareness.
Be it a Micro Influencer or a Mega Influencer, finding the right person to promote your brand and who has a suitable following is key to setting up a successful campaign.
By following these tips, you will be able to reap the benefits of Influencer Marketing by tapping into new audiences, generating loyal customers, and building credibility and trust with the help of the right influencer.
