What is Influencer Marketing & How It Can Benefit Your Business?
As traditional marketing platforms continue to be superseded by social marketing strategies, any business owner (however experienced) needs to understand what influencer marketing is and the social media platforms that host these strategies. Here's everything you need to know about the world of influencer marketing as you consider adding it to your marketing toolbelt.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves tasking an influential individual to promote your goods and services. This may include a well-known actor, Youtube video star, TikTok dancer or Instagram model. If they have a significant following, they're an influencer.
This style of marketing is a paid partnership that guarantees thousands and possibly millions of views of your product PLUS a testimonial to back it up.
Social Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing
Before delving into how to use influencer marketing, let's consider the key differences between social and traditional marketing to identify why social marketing has become such a pervasive sales force.
Social Marketing:
- Is typically fluid
- Uses personalized messaging
- Provides local to global reach
- Budget-friendly
- Offers longer-lasting engagement
- Boasts easy to establish partnerships
- Is easily measured
Traditional Marketing:
- Is typically static
- Can have a broader reach
- Uses pre-internet strategies
- Usually more expensive
- Offers shorter engagement
- Often location-based
- Is difficult to measure
How to Effectively Utilize Influencer Marketing
Below, we discuss the key elements every influencer marketing strategy needs to succeed.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is absolutely crucial when choosing the right influencer to represent your business or product. What is the buyer persona of your audience? You need to recognize the intricate details that make up your demographic if you want to see satisfactory results when delving into influencer marketing. When choosing an influencer, the clear choice is to go with an individual who shares many of the same qualities as your buyer persona. Better yet, take time to ensure an observable overlap between the influencer's audience and your own. Check comments and other interactions to identify whether or not you find the influencer's audience is analogous to your established demographic.
Choose A Platform
Right now, Instagram is where the most significant instances of influencer marketing are occurring. Instagram launched in 2010 as media platforms like YouTube were buzzing with the emergence of influencer personas, video blogging, and lifestyle content. Instagram became the place for influencers to share the intimate parts of their lives – what products they use, which services they trust, and what foods they love.
So, it makes sense that Instagram is currently the top choice for influencers, but TikTok is quickly gaining popularity in this marketing department as well, with Facebook trailing in third place.
With this in mind, choose the platform and influencer to best increase your product's consideration. If you're in the food industry, images can matter more than hard sales techniques. Perhaps you provide a niche service or product to a small but engaged audience. In that case, a short, satisfying, and recurring video on TikTok might be the best option for you.
Choose An Influencer Based on Their Influence
This is where we talk about the different quantifiable categories of influencers. It's evident that the bigger the influencer, the broader the reach, but budgetary concerns mean we can't all pay The Rock a cool $1.5 million for him to sport our logo. Perhaps the more significant consideration should go to the level of audience engagement rather than just its size. Influencers, in terms of followers, are considered as follows:
- Nano-influencers (10,000 followers or fewer)
- Micro-influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers)
- Macro-influencers (100,000 to 1,000,000 followers)
- Mega-influencers (1,000,000+ followers)
If you're focused on increasing your popularity within your community, then a well-respected and locally-based nano-influencer may be the safe bet. But before you pick an influencer based on their followers alone, you should consider your own goals as you decide to pursue influencer marketing.
Know Your Goals
There are three primary aims of influencer marketing, and they are (in order of prevalence):
- Reaching new audiences
- Increasing consideration of product
- Driving sales
Considering this, you may recognize how each outcome could be affected by your chosen influencer. A pricier macro-influencer may mean you reach a wider audience, but the consideration of your product may not be positively reflected if the influencer's audience is too distinct from yours. A micro-influencer may be better for increasing consideration as these influencers are usually pretty niche, meaning that if your product is seen as necessary or advantageous in a niche market, you may increase consideration and drive sales.
This is not to say that these outcomes are exclusive, but we advise that you recognize these outcomes and consider them when choosing an influencer and platform to market with.
Work With a Professional Digital Marketing Agency Today
With these goals in mind and an understanding of influencer marketing, give the team at WEB ROI a call. We'll help you make the right choice for your business as you consider this growing means of marketing.
