Influencer Marketing: The What, Why, and Hows

In recent years influencer marketing gained momentum over traditional digital marketing, and it is a hot topic for everybody these days. To promote their products, prestigious advertisers spend fortunes on influencer marketing. 

It is the known fact that running influencer marketing campaigns consume plenty of resources, including significant budgets alongside with a small-size separate team. However, what if you are a company with a limited budget, a startup, or you simply do not have the money to pay an agency to start an influencer marketing campaign for you. You cannot afford celebrities, but you also want to be promoted in social media efficiently. Firsts are always harder than seconds, but Keepface makes every step of the process easier for you. 

Sure you have already heard about influencer marketing but let’s briefly sum it up now. Influencer marketing goes conjointly with two other types of marketing which are probably more familiar to you: social media marketing and content marketing. Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is a type of marketing that content creators- influencers- that have a unique relationship with a particular audience to promote a brand through social media. 

Word of mouth marketing has always been the most dominant form of marketing, from the first time when people start to sell their products, the verbal message still stands valid today. So influencer marketing is based on the fact that consumers trust other consumers more than they believe advertisers.

Here is the list of key steps to make influencer marketing work for your business.

#1 Set Your Goals

This will help you to find the right influencer for your brand. Why would you like to work with influencers? What are your goals? What are you looking for? Impressions? Clicks? Conversions? All these metrics serve to measure the performance of your campaign. 

Awareness

Awareness is your main goal if it is your first promotion or you are promoting a new product. It is better to advertise your brand through influencers from a specific niche. Impressions are key metrics for measuring awareness.

Community Engagement

You may grow awareness about your brand or products in multiple ways, but this one is the greatest and favorable. Engagement helps to see the customer attitude towards your brand. Trigger responses from a specific community, through vouchers, contests, and targeted campaigns. This helps your content reach new users, and gives the influencer something unique to offer their followers.

“It’s important to gain trust initially rather than focus entirely on how you’re going to earn. It can take time, but ultimately worth it,” comments Ruban Selvanayagam of UK homebuying company / group, Property Solvers.

Sales

The sale is the ultimate goal of any project. But if it is your primary goal, you need to focus on click and conversions. The niche community you target may prove to be a good and reliable source of customers.

Business Fit

Along with social media metrics you need to pay attention to other qualities like niche and brand fit. The importance of the influencer niche is laid on a coherent base because you need to be sure that it aligns with yours. In other words, any influencer you choose needs to be in accordance with your particular audience. 

Reputation is another crucial factor to consider when finding an influencer even though some influencers have a loyal following but alienate many others. If the influencer you want to engage in is not an authentic person, consider the fact that you may forfeit your potential or existing customers.

Once you know what you aim to achieve, you can set a budget to pay an influencer for your brand. This also lets you think about how to reward influencers. For example, you may consider an upfront payment in addition to the commission for any sales made.

#2 Identify Your Channels

Before all else, your audience has to be your first concern. What do your potential clients or customers like? Where do they spend their time? Then think about yourself: what is the most estimable thing for your brand? Which channel do you want to grow and which one would be the place you can thrive? By knowing your consumers well you will easily incorporate those data to your influencer marketing. 

First, determine which social media platforms you should use based on your business. You can grow your website through influencers on specific niches or just through specific bloggers who generate a lot of traffic and write about things comparable to your technique or you can go with social media platforms.

Instagram

Now an almost $2 billion industry, Instagram influencer marketing has taken the social media world by storm. The app offers the perfect space for the brand ambassadorship, with influential users authentically recommending products and services to their loyal audience. With the influencer space estimated to grow to a $5-10 billion industry by 2021, it’s a marketing force that isn’t going anywhere.

Youtube

YouTube is swiftly becoming one of the most popular influencer marketing channels. With recent advancements in internet speeds, video content has become the most preferred content for online activities. While you will find videos on most social networks now, and Instagram has even created a competing long-form video platform – IGTV, YouTube is still the de-facto place for people to come to get their video fix. 

Facebook

In many ways, Instagram has grown to be the star of the Facebook stable of social media apps. It may no longer be the social network of choice for adolescents, but it can even claim dominance of the social market, with over 2.32 billion active users at the end of 2018.

We don’t talk about Facebook influencer marketing as much as we do marketing on Instagram. But if your target demographic uses Facebook, it is where your influencer marketing should be.  

Twitter

As of 2019, there are approximately 330 million active monthly users on Twitter, making it one of the biggest social networks globally. Consider the steady growth in the number of active monthly users on Twitter for the past few years. 

TikTok

As with all influencer and social media marketing, you have to avoid coming across as too salesy on TikTok. This is particularly the case because of TikTok’s youthful demographic – advertisers find Generation Z notoriously difficult to reach because of their total disdain for anything that resembles a traditional advertisement. As with all influencer marketing, the key to success on TikTok is working with influencers whose followers match your target market. 

#3 Find Your Influencers

After doing numerous research the next thing is finding the influencers to work with you and to create compelling campaigns around your brand. And to roll with your campaign, you have to make sure that you have a perfect influencer brief. 

But, you shouldn’t be a hundred percent sure that they’ll work with you. Sometimes it’s unlikely that they’re accessible from a financial or logistical viewpoint. Also, it’s worth knowing that the influencers you’ve picked might not be in your niche, that means they won’t help you to spread your business’s message to the right people.

At Keepface Influencer Discovery you can easily find the right influencers for your brand without spending extra time and money. If you truly want a successful marketing campaign, you’ll need professionals to do the tasks for you. 

There are no strict rules to prevent you from getting creative or let your influencer be the one. If you use the opportunities social media presents for you to connect with your audience and rely on your influences to act on behalf of you, all those efforts will yield fruitful results.

#4 Manage the Relationship

After hiring influencers for your campaign, you need to nurture the relationship with them for further collaborations. Keep in mind that influencers are business people just like you, with a job to do and a reputation to uphold. 

#5 Measure the Results

You’ve concluded your influencer marketing campaign, now time to measure the results versus your original goals to put a figure on whether it’s worth repeating. Did you get more followers, impressions, leads, clicks, or sales? Calculate your ROI too. What results did you get for the time and money?

Ready to Roll Out Your Influencer Campaign?

Once you’ve assessed your results, then you’ll have an idea of what worked and how to proceed next time to do your utmost. Rinse and repeat the steps for the upcoming campaign. You will have a clear picture of who you’ll work with during your next campaign, and it will help you to refine your strategy. Keepface provides advertisers with all the necessary information they need for influencer marketing. 

Nevertheless, if you are not getting desired results, try a different approach to your influencer marketing. The marketing business changes in a blink of an eye, but these main concepts will mostly hold. Now it’s time to go out there and make the most out of influencer marketing!

Visit keepface.io to learn more.