Influencer Marketing

Perusal Tech Pvt Ltd

19 Jul, 2021

Influencer Marketing is a category of Social Media Marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from individuals who have large social followings and have built up a very loyal and engaged audience online. Influencer Marketing is estimated to be up to a 15 billion dollar industry in 2022 and this really works and comes down to one particular thing which is Trust. Influencers have gained a lot of trust with their audiences and they act as a form of social proof, which makes it really lucrative for brands to collaborate with them because the audiences are loyal, they trust what the influencer says, what sort of products that they're endorsing in order to have successful campaigns.

WHAT IS INFLUENCER MARKETING?

Influencer Marketing is when you leverage the influence of an individual in order to share your brand with a larger market. It's when you work directly with an influencer to create a campaign focused on highlighting your brand's message to the influencer's audience. Consumers are looking for a trusted voice to get to know your brand and working with influencers gives you that opportunity to do just that. Now, an Influencer Marketing campaign can be used to increase conversions, boost brand awareness, launch a product or improve your brand's SEO.

WHO IS AN INFLUENCER?

An influencer is a trusted thought leader who has an above-average impact on a specific niche. He/she is an individual who holds the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others as they have knowledge, authority, position as well as special kind of relationship with their audiences. Influencers often attract a loyal following by offering unique value through blog post videos and/or social media posts. They have built reputations for being experts in particular niches.

WHY INFLUENCER MARKETING?

(1) It attracts higher-quality customers to the business.

(2) Influencer Marketing generates a stronger ROI and boosts SEO.

(3) Marketers get best results from social media through Influencer Marketing.

(4) Influencer Marketing has shown proven growth faster than organic search.

(5) Influencer Marketing is tied for most cost-effective customer acquisition channel.

(6) Influencer Marketing helps in increasing brand awareness and reach by building credibility and trust.

(7) It drives purchasing decision which in turn increase sales.

HOW TO GET STARTED?

• When looking to start an Influencer Marketing campaign, an organization should really first and foremost understand their target audience and their goals for the specific campaign. From there, building out their audience personas is really important, so that the organization or the brand is able to align their target audience with influencers target audience as well.

• Understanding your influencers niche, what type of audiences that you're trying to reach and understanding if your goal is conversions or if your goal is simply brand awareness, will really be the first stepping stone to building an effective influencer marketing strategy. So, when looking to select influencers for your next campaign it's really important to first and foremost start with research and strategy.

• You want to understand what influencers will fit best for a specific campaign and which audiences will align with your target audience and target market as well. It's really also important to be aware of sponsorship saturation within influencers. It's very common to see influencers working with many different brands and products. This unfortunately causes a bit of a saturation in their feed and a following is less likely to actually purchase the products that these influencers are promoting because there's less loyalty to these specific products. It's really important to look out for that sponsorship saturation as well as engagement over following count.

• It's much more worthwhile to target a smaller scale influencer with really high engagement rather than a large influencer with a large following with really low engagement. A big following means nothing if the audience isn't engaged with the influencers content and therefore their offers. Instead maybe tapping into micro influencers anywhere from 5k - 25k followers on any social platforms might be a better strategy for your business. Generally speaking, this demographic of influencer has a much more engaged and loyal following that is willing to actually convert and therefore have a higher ROI for the brand.

• Good engagement generally means a higher level of trust, so when looking for the right influencer for your campaign, look out for things like likes, comments, shares, is this influencer providing value to their audience, is the audience actively engaging in their content rather than just seeing product promotions on their feed. It's really important to find the balance of both product promotions as well as providing value to an audience as an influencer. In turn when working with influencers we really want to find those longer term partnerships that will lead to a more successful campaign for both the influencer and the brand.

FINDING THE RIGHT INFLUENCERS:

• ORGANICALLY: Searching and building relationships with influencers in-house. This is the cheapest, but most time-consuming method.

• PLATFORMS: You pay to use one of the specialist online platforms to find your influencers. Many of the platforms provide systems, which make it simpler to manage your influencer campaigns.

• AGENCIES: You pay a specialist influencer marketing agency to help you with influencer selection and management.

TYPES OF INFLUENCERS:

(1) MEGA-INFLUENCERS: With a huge follower base of more than a million, mega-influencers are extremely visible on social media due to their celebrity status. They're highly active on social media platforms and tend to generate a ton of engagement, which is what makes them attractive to brands who wants to leverage the Influencer Marketing. Thus, making them super expensive.

(2) MACRO-INFLUENCERS: These kind of influencers have slightly smaller follower base ranging between 500,000 - 1 million. Macro-influencers may be TV personalities, celebrities, thought leaders or athletes. Since they can leverage their reputation to gain followers on social media, brands can expect a high price tag—though not as hefty as mega-influencers. Brands still get a large reach with this type of influencer but may not get the engagement rate they want due to the follower to engagement ratio.

(3) MID-TIER INFLUENCERS: This type may not carry celebrity status tag, yet are a powerful group of content creators trusted by their followers. Mid-tier has a follower base between 50K and 500K. This type of influencer offers brands a wide reach and slightly more engagement than macro- or mega-influencers. Content is polished but not out-of-touch, lending authenticity and familiarity to each post.

(4) MICRO-INFLUENCERS: Micro-influencers has a much smaller follower base as compared to mega-influencers. Brands generally consider this group to be much more effective in terms of engagement and trust as they have an intimate connection with their followers and tend to be more niche-focused. 82% of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a micro-influencer.

(5) NANO-INFLUENCERS: With the smallest follower count, nano-influencers offer brands a modest reach and probably a narrower one, too. However, what brands lose in reach they gain in engagement rates. Nano-influencers have the highest engagement rate of any influencer type, at 8.8 percent. Content is hyper-authentic and personalized for the audience, so brands working with this type of influencer can expect a different experience in this way.

HOW TO WORK WITH INFLUENCERS:

• Give free samples to your influencers.
• Deliberately ask influencers to review your product.
• Provide products for influencers to give away to their followers.
• Run a competition for your influencers.
• Pay a blogger to write a post about your product, also known as Sponsored Posts.
• Position yourself in front of the influencer’s audience by writing Guest Posts.

TYPES OF INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN:

(1) SOCIAL-MEDIA TAKEOVER: When an influencer takes over your social media channels and shares content during a set period, the agreement is called a social media takeover. The period usually lasts about a day. However, for some special events or occasions, some take around a week. This type of influencer marketing campaign requires a high level of trust since you have to give the influencer your security information, such as a password.

(2) AFFILIATE MARKETING: Affiliate Marketing is an online sales tactic of promoting businesses or products and earn commission as the reward. If you don’t have a big budget, an Affiliate Marketing campaign might help you out. It is a great way to work with multiple influencers at once at a low cost. The influencer earns a commission on all sales generated from their sources. An Affiliate marketer will promote a product onsite or redirect a customer to your website.

(3) SPONSORED SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT AND BLOG POSTS: Sponsored posts are classic and straightforward. It is the most popular influencer marketing campaign type. Even if your content is excellent, there is a significant risk that your content will never attract enough traction without influencers posting them. Sponsored posts work as brands sponsor the influencer to create promotional content for them. A brand should provide the guidelines, expectations, or themes from your brand, so the influencers will know what you want them to do.

(4) GIFTS, UNBOXING, AND REVIEWS: This type of influencer marketing campaign involves a brand giving influencers their products or services as a gift. In return, the influencer will, perhaps, voluntarily record an unboxing video or simply review their experiences on their social media channels, and it’s also called Product Seeding. After listening to influencers’ opinions and reviews, the audience can determine whether it is something they want to buy and try.

(5) GUEST BLOGGING: Through collaborating with influencers who also write blogs and accept blogs, Guest Blogging campaign might help you promote your brand uniquely and effectively. There are two ways to blog hosts. One is to accept the blog entries. The other is to post your content to websites and blogs that relate to your industry. Guest blogging is an authentic and simple way to improve your brand awareness. You might gain more traffic via blog posts on both influencers and your sites. The authority and reputation of your company will also increase, which attracts more potential new fans and consumers.

(6) HOST GIVEAWAYS, CONTESTS, SWEEPSTAKES AND EVENT ACTIVATIONS: Giveaway campaigns are one of the most common influencer marketing campaigns due to the simplicity and the mutual benefit it brings. It works by supplying influencers with a product or service that they can give away to their followers. Giveaways give a high degree of guaranteed growth as a follow-up, shares, retweets, and comments. If the influencer’s audience is similar to and larger than yours, they will potentially generate higher ROI.

(7) BRAND AMBASSADOR PROGRAMS: A brand ambassador is an influencer who shares content for a brand daily or regularly. Brand ambassadors usually have long-term partnerships with the brand. The period could be several months to a year or longer. A directly paid partnership is not the only way to access Brand Ambassadors. You can also try product rewards or other benefits that could lead to money, like Affiliate Marketing. Brand ambassadors are like the “Face” of a brand. They work like how celebrity spokespeople work in traditional advertising campaigns.

(8) PRE-RELEASE AND DISCOUNT CODES: The pre-release campaigns are not strange to brands nowadays. As there are millions of new products coming out every year, brands need to create excitement for the customers while they wait for the release. Pre-release campaigns are perfect for an Influencer Marketing campaign. Companies can maximize their benefits from this campaign by co-operating with influencers. The sense of exclusivity that this campaign brings back to influencers makes them feel incredibly proud to be the first to try the product.