Brands are coming to realize that average people have great potential to promote their products. People with a limited number of followers, known as micro-influencers, see more engagements from them than big players do from theirs. There’s an obvious reason for this – people are more likely to trust advice from someone they know when deciding to buy something over the advice from a celebrity, because a celebrity is paid to promote a certain product.
If you want to take advantage of the benefits influencer marketing has to offer, you need to think about the overall purpose. Are you launching a startup, a new brand, or a new product? Amplifying a special offer? Advertising an event? Promoting a contest? Begin by considering what your marketing needs are.
Objective Analysis
After you’ve set your campaign goal, you need to break it down into several smaller and measurable sub-goals. These targets can be really basic, like the number of shared tweets. You need to objectively check if you have the funds, time, and expertise to create an influencer marketing campaign and find people to lead it.
You also need to be familiar with social media analytics, at least in principle. You will have to collect and measure relevant data. It’s more efficient to hire consultants to do this as well as manage the influencers and do all the creative work, but it’s costlier than doing it on your own.
How you go about all these considerations depends on your budget, marketing needs, and influencer marketing campaign timing. If you want to hire a consultant, know that most need at least ten days of lead time.
Timing
Consider when you’d like your campaign to run. Will it coincide with a holiday? Is it seasonal? Is it connected to a promotional event? Let’s say you’re marketing a new holiday gift. It’s best to start promoting it in November, with the influencer marketing it in that whole period before the holiday shopping rush. You could capitalize on the Black Friday shopping rush if you’re in the U.S.
How Influencers Sell Themselves
In this section, we explain how to find influencers. They sell themselves by knowing their audience and brand or product and posting regularly on social media. They tag brands in their posts, use hashtags and geotags, and include contact info in their profiles.
Knowing your audience is crucial if you want a brand to work with you. This is why influencers collect basic information, such as the age group, gender, and geographical location of the target audience. They find out at which times of day they are most active and which of their posts have the most likes. This info helps them pitch partnerships. They know your brand will ask who it can reach through them, so they dispose of this information.
Another secret to influencer marketing is knowing where potential customers are and who is talking about your brand. If your company is present on social media, one way to find out is if you have a product that people share or tweet about. Explore by listening to conversations about your competitors, sector, or your own company and its products on social media.
Defined Niches
Influencers who can define their niche typically see the best engagement. Do you want to post fashion or food related content? An influencer’s image can be decisive because branding has a lot to do with aesthetics. What messaging style is used? A good influencer’s posts are unique and distinct. When a user is scrolling through social media feeds, they can stop and recognize a given influencer’s posts. As they keep seeing similar content, they will develop trust of the brand the influencer promotes as an expert in the area.
Users might stop trusting the content if the influencer randomly and suddenly changes course, so that’s worth keeping in mind. Creating a website with similar messaging and aesthetic is a good way to go about this.
They Post Often
According to data by CoSchedule, you should post at least once a day on social media. Ideally, you should post three times a day or more. The best times to post vary depending on the medium. On Instagram, they are from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. At any rate, an influencer will need to find out what works best for them and their target group. Maybe their audience will find posting three times a day to be too much.
The creative work on a brand’s campaign, including assets, goals, and influencer work scope, should be completed at least three weeks to a month in advance of influencer selection, assessment, and recruitment. This includes signing employment contracts. The process can take two extra weeks depending on the number of influencers you’re hiring, even if you get experienced staff to help you.
Get More Exposure
Instagram’s branded content ads are one good way to get big returns on your influencer marketing. The feature allows businesses to promote influencers’ organic posts as feed ads within the network. According to a recent press release by Instagram, businesses are able to scale sponsored content beyond the audience of a creator, target specific audiences, and use tools in the medium’s ads platform to measure performance.
More than two-thirds of users say they come to interact with influencers. It’s not hard to see why so many companies form partnerships with them to make branded content. Ideally, influencer marketing should be combined with neon signage and other highly effective offline marketing forms.
Lara Douglas is a young woman who loves interior designing and home decor. She is passionate about new trends and fashion forward home décor ideas. She regularly posts at Neon Signs Depot.
Sources
https://www.dummies.com/business/marketing/6-secrets-for-influencer-marketing-success/
https://later.com/blog/branded-content-ads/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-get-sponsored-instagram
https://coschedule.com/blog/how-often-to-post-on-social-media/
