What is Influencer Marketing?

The type of social media marketing based on brand and partnerships with influencers is called influencer marketing. Influencer marketing involves endorsements and partners you work with are important components of the equation.

The collaboration between the brand and the influencer usually includes some sort of co-content creation or promotion of the brand by the influencer to their community.

Companies use social media platforms to reach out to their potential customers to promote their products or services. In order to do this, they run influencer marketing campaigns designed carefully to reach out the target audience.

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy and a marketing tactic which involves collaborating with social media users and other content creators. To be able to turn potential customers into purchase makers, companies benefit from the social media users and content creators who have influence over customers. They do this by endorsements.

Essentially, influencers who get endorsement are people with a highly engaged community of social media followers and the size of this community is quite significant. Although engagement rates of an influencer is quite important, we need to address that influencers are also subject-matter experts whose dedicated social media followers turn to their favourite influencers when they need more information or advice on a particular topic.

This topic might as well be directly related to a product or service which means that the influencer has the power to make an impact on the social media users. Social media accounts running influencer marketing activities are known as Opinion Leaders.

Influencers not only promote the products and services offered by brands, but also work on brand awareness and brand trust. They have a strong connection with their followers in which they express their own experience with the product and this can be an effective way of marketing.

Users tend to take the comments of the influencers seriously and act accordingly. If the focus of a company is on growth, working with an influencer marketing agency is the way to go simply because of the fact that business happens on social media in the time and day we live in. 

Developing a Influencer Marketing Strategy

Let’s first describe an influencer marketing strategy to understand how to develop a reliable one. A reliable influencer marketing strategy must involve leveraging digital creators. These digital creators are individuals who influence certain industries or target audiences to make purchase decisions.

Partnering with these individuals to promote your brand, product or service is possible with a successful strategy. A reliable influencer strategy and an efficient influencer marketing campaign build trust and credibility with the influencer’s fans.

When you develop an influencer marketing strategy, your brand awareness is boosted by sharing your story through valuable content. In order to achieve this, you need a solid influencer marketing plan. Following are a few steps to develop one:

• Define your goals and your budget. In order to make sure your strategy stays consistent during the campaign, your goals and your budget must be defined. Your goals might be about building brand identity or growing brand awareness. That way you will increase your brand’s social media account  following, earn more shares, likes and comments which will increase consumer purchases. 
• Pick a type of campaign and decide your key messaging. Once you have a grasp of your target audience and potential buyers, now it’s time to decide what type of campaigns you would like to go with. Your influencer campaigns should inspire people to learn more and engage with your content. A well-designed campaign includes sponsored contents, guest posting, giveaways and contests, takeovers, discount codes and affiliates. 
• Determine influencers and set off the outreach process. Regardless of industry -technology, gaming, fashion and beauty and more- there is someone out there building credibility and influencing purchase decisions. It’s important to find the perfect influential voice for your brand. Ideally, it’s more beneficial to work with an influencer who has a presence on multiple channels and who has high engagement rates. 
• Manage your influencer campaigns. Whether you’re starting with two influencers or 25, a critical part of your strategy involves managing the campaign details. You can directly interact with each influencer, hire an influencer marketing agency, or use an influencer marketing environment. In terms of your overall campaign success, you need to know how significant your influencers management is. If you micromanage the campaign process, you could risk ruining the partnership. And if your involvement is too little, you can lose sight of your brand messaging. So, the right balance is quite essential. 
• Track your results and refine your strategy. You have to monitor campaign performance in order to evaluate whether to keep working with the same influencers or change your designated strategy. In order to make sure your future campaigns are optimised, you should know how important it is to track the data deducted from each campaign so that you can evaluate what worked. 

In the sphere of influencer marketing, the most successful strategies and reliable tactics are evolving constantly. Bear in mind that you need a healthy influencer marketing plan and strategy to address the needs of your business.       

Best Examples in Influencer Marketing

Unlike the regular advertising practices, influencer marketing activities address the users by going through new generation social media trends. Social media accounts are the first place new generations look when they are interested in getting information about a product or a service. They tend to make purchases depending on the verified information they obtain from these platforms.

Social media accounts show the input of the influencers as they post reviews. Influencer posts are seriously effective on potential customers. Some influencers are present on multiple social media platforms.while some are engaged in only one platform, hence we hear the term Instagram influencer or Influencer on TikTok. Regardless of the platform they operate, increasing the impact of influencers is possible by a number of activities carried out by social media marketing teams.

Successful influencer marketing campaigns use these marketing activities. Here are some examples:

Picking The Right Influencer for The Brand

Point of interest of the target audience should be the main focus when picking an influencer. That way, the number of users who are interested in the product promoted by the influencer will increase. The influencer should be picked in accordance with the brand strategies and brand value.

Also, the potential customers are targeted in accordance with the connection between the influencer and the product or the service. When targeting a customer group, age, gender, cultural background and lifestyle choices should all be taken into consideration. For instance, when promoting a food product the influencer might be a well-known chef. But if the product you’d like to promote is a baby care item, you’re better off with an influencer mom.

Running Teaser Ads and Making the Brand Exclusive

Users tend to make purchases of the products that they are either interested in or they think the product is special. Original content plays a major role in leading the customers to make the purchase. Rather than using regular advertisement rhetoric, companies should consider using original and catchy content to get to their customers.

Logo, picking a particular figure, use of colours and including social messages are important aspects for your brand to compete with other brands. 

Special Offers for a Particular Influencer and The Followers

Influencers post news and information about special offers or drawings about the brand on their accounts. Increasing the interaction, these posts play a role in purchase decisions. For instance, you can run a sales campaign by using the influencer as the bridge between the products on sale and the customers. The followers of the influencer are provided with a promotion code through the influencer. Users feel exclusive and their brand awareness is increased.

Influencers reach out to millions of users by social media applications and establish a strong communication with their followers. The followers tend to pay attention to the material posted by the influencers. When the content posted by the influencers is original, interesting and marketing oriented, the followers are likely to show interest in the product and make a purchase.

For more information about our Influencer speakers, please check our website and meet Speaker Agency’s experts Timothy Armoo, Will Higham and Omar Johnson  on digital marketing.