In today's world, social media plays a very important role in our lives. Apart from this, marketers have also figured out how to attract valuable customers through collaborations with various influencers on these social platforms.
Many brands around the world are now building consumer confidence and leveraging the influence of trend setters on their buying decisions.
What is influencer marketing and who are influencers?
Influencer marketing means working with influencers to promote your brand or specific products. Product promotion can be done in several ways.
An influencer is a person who has acquired a solid base of followers on social networks like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
What do influencers do?
How exactly can a trend setter help you? It really depends on the specific goals you are looking for. They can, for example, link to your landing page (capture) or write a blurb about you or your product.
Another way to benefit from working with an influencer is to contribute to your site/event/social media account or simply recommend your products to their audience.
Where to find the right influencers?
Hashtags
Try to search for hashtags relevant to what you do as a business. Think of at least 20 of them and review dozens or even hundreds of posts from different people. You should aim to find the one that best suits your niche. It may seem tedious, but it's a very effective way to find the right target audience.
Google Alerts
It's a great tool for finding relevant influencers by keywords.
Set up alerts for relevant terms (Google Alerts will preview results as you go). You will now start getting notifications when someone posts something related to what you are trying to promote. Choose from the list of influencers and contact them for a promotion.
Blogger Outreach Groups and Platforms
Facebook has plenty of groups organized by interests, from motorcycle enthusiasts to postcard collectors and the like. Join as many relevant groups as possible and build relationships with the most active members. The more groups you find, the better. Above all, don't forget to give back!
There are also special aggregation and outreach tools like Pitchbox or Buzzsumo that help you create campaigns to target specific influencers. Depending on the software, there will be different setup processes to find the right promoter. Just enter a few keywords and the tool will scan the internet, revealing leads with contact details and authority information. It is important to seek out influencers with high domain authority and engagement.
How to evaluate influencers?
When evaluating whether the influencer is going to bring you a positive ROI or not, keep the following in mind:
Followers
It could be tricky. On the one hand, you don't want to invest your money in creating content that only a handful of people will see, it's a waste of money. On the other hand, someone might have bought thousands of fake followers which are not even real and also will not bring any results. That's why you also need to check how many people are engaging with that influencer's content.
Commitment
How many likes on each post? How many people left comments? What is the number of shares per post? These are the questions you need answered to measure engagement.
Authenticity
Having tons of well-edited photos doesn't mean it's quality content. It must be unique and resonate with followers. Moreover, it must also reflect the personality of the influencer. Do you notice any trends in the posts he shares?
What are the types of influencer marketing campaigns?
Finally, let's highlight the different types of influencer marketing campaigns. Influencers can:
- Organize a giveaway with your product
- Post sponsored content to their feeds
- Become ambassadors of your brand and promote your products regularly
- Record an unboxing video of your product and share their ideas on how to use it
There are several key things to keep in mind when first working with influencer marketing. Even the smallest details must be correct. But how does influencer marketing work? In this blog post, we'll go through four fundamental steps, from start to finish, for a successful campaign.
How to Create a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign
When considering an influencer marketing strategy in-house or with the help of an influencer marketing company, it is important to know the fundamentals that will help you run an influencer marketing campaign successfully. Here are four key steps to creating a successful influencer marketing campaign that gets results:
Step 1 – Identify objectives and target audience
The first step, before you even start thinking about which influencers to collaborate with, is to identify the audience you want to reach. Who are they – and why should you target them? It is important to have defined clear objectives and KPIs, in order to measure and evaluate your campaign. After being exposed to your campaign, what actions do you want the audience to take – and how will you be able to gauge the results of their actions?
Step 2 – Find influencers
Once you've identified the goals and audience, it's time to find the right influencer. Who can best communicate your message and reach your audience? Is it one or two big influencers, or are there several smaller influencers ( called micro influencers) ? The number of subscribers is not the key factor for a successful campaign - the most important factor is their engagement. Greater reach can be achieved by collaborating with multiple smaller influencers in the campaign, which together reach more people. Also think about how the influencer aligns with your goals: is they an influencer who primarily inspires, or are they great at converting? Different influencers are good at different things – and that characterizes your campaign.
Step 3 – Contact the influencer and give a brief
When you've chosen influencers that match your target audience and goals, it's time to come up with a brief campaign description. Thereafter, it is time to establish contact and begin the collaboration. If you're doing it yourself, it's important to respect their time and have some foresight, and leave room for unforeseen events that may happen in their lives – before, during and after the campaign. For your brand to be credible and relevant to the influencer's followers, you need to let the influencer get the right campaign prerequisites.
Does influencer marketing work if you want to boost your brand? Influencer marketing on social networks
Step 4 – Publication and evaluation
The majority of engagements and clicks on an individual post often happen within the first few days after it's published, but it often takes time to see the true impact of an entire influencer marketing campaign. Two weeks after the article is published is an appropriate time to start evaluating the results. How many interactions and clicks did it get? Tracking links and the right measurement and analysis tools make it easy to get campaign statistics.
How does influencer marketing work in practice?
Influencer marketing is often time consuming and requires knowledge and experience to be successful. If you do everything yourself, from start to finish, you may need several weeks of dedicated work to put all the details in place. But there is great help available! An influencer agency has both the experience and the knowledge, as well as the contacts and analytical tools necessary for the success of your campaign.
Why Use Influencer Marketing
Efficiency
In my experience, influencers provide equal or better qualified leads than other marketing channels. Top performers tend to come from targeted or peer influencers, especially for niche products.
Industry studies confirm this. Tomoson, an influencer network, surveyed brands in 2015 about the quality of leads. Around 90% of respondents said customers generated by influencers were as good or better than other channels.
Additionally, influencer agency Mediakix surveyed US-based marketers in early 2019. 48% percent said influencer ROI was “better” or “much better” than that of the other digital channels. 41% percent said the ROI was comparable to other channels.
Trust
For 21 years, Edelman, the public relations agency, has published an annual “Trust Barometer Report”. The report measures global consumer confidence in information from government, business, media and other authoritative sources. The 2021 report was based on global consumer surveys conducted by Eddleman in the fall of 2020.
Edelman presented the findings of the 2021 report at the recent Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Overall, according to Edelman, global consumer trust in authoritative sources has plummeted in 2020, prompting the company to shift posts from celebrities and brands to micro-influencers. According to the report, consumers view micro-influencers as more realistic and trustworthy.
Edelman is not alone in his conclusions. Cassandra, a marketing research firm, found that 89% of Gen Z and Millennial shoppers are inspired by "reliable" influencers over celebrities.
Cost is the other reason many e-commerce businesses use influencers.
Affordability
The most successful marketing campaign is meaningless if the barrier to entry exceeds a brand's budget. According to a 2021 Influencer Marketing Hub survey, the cost of influencer engagement is very affordable at the level of nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (10,000-50,000 followers). Ignoring important variables such as network, niche, posting frequency, usage rights, turnaround time, agency layouts, and effort required, Influencer Marketing Hub focused on cost gross per post for different audience sizes.
On Instagram, which most e-commerce products tend to start with, the survey showed that nano- and micro-influencers charge as little as $10 per post and top out at around $500. Pricing was comparable on TikTok, with both audience sizes ranging from $5 to $125. Pricing on Facebook ranges from $25 to $1,250 per post. Twitters are $2 to $125. YouTube, which usually requires the most effort, had nano-influencers charging as little as $25 per video and micro-influencers as high as $1,000.
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