Influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of advertising today. This is because it offers a wide range of benefits for both businesses and consumers alike. In this article, we will explore what influencer marketing is and why you should consider micro-influencers for your brand.
How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that uses social media influencers to promote products and services. The strategy is effective because it allows companies to target niche audiences with specific interests. It also helps companies reach their target audience affordably and efficiently.
Influencer marketing has evolved over the past few years because of the rise of social media influencers. The rise of influencers on social media platforms has given brands new opportunities to market their products and services.
Social Media Influencers (SMI)
According to “The Pyramid of Influence,” there are four different categories of Influencers
1. Mega-influencers – are celebrities with half a million or more followers, 2. Macro-Influencers – with 50,000 to 500,000 strong followers
3. Micro-Influencers – with 1,000 to 100,000 followers
4. Brand Advocates – who do not have dedicated followers but are passionate about sharing their favorite products.
Micro-Influencers Vs. Macro-Influencers
The game isn’t just getting eyeballs, but eyeballs that care. To put it simply, interaction is more valuable than exposure. While popular YouTubers with large followings can effectively promote a wide range of products, the goal is reaching a niche group of people who share an interest in the area of expertise of the enterprise.
Advantages of Micro-influencers over Macro-influencers
1. Companies can get recognition within the group of possible clients – Micro-influencers are usually experts in their niche. They can help introduce a product to people who share the same interests.
2. They have more engaged followers – Since micro-influencers are seen as trustworthy experts, their followers tend to be more involved with their posts and products than macro-influencers.
The goal is To find users whose content is not only passively viewed but also actively seen. That is why we focus on the audience’s engagement, which their reactions can observe.
Questions to Answer before deciding to contact an influencer:
1. Who is following the Influencer? Is the Influencer engaged with their audiences, and what are the characteristics of the audience community?
2. Does the audience of the Influencer align with your audience? How will you determine this based on your research using audience segmentation strategies?
3. What’s the Influencer’s history? Is the Influencer professional? How long have they been on social media? Which brands have the Influencer worked with previously on campaigns and initiatives?
4. What are your overall goals?
How to Identify Influencers Apps that might be helpful:
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a tool for finding influential people on Twitter. It finds the top Twitter users in a specific field, starts following them, and adds them to your list.
You can follow anywhere from three to four of the most influential personalities depending on your interests. You can also read their posts and materials to get a sense of what content they share online.
How to use Buzzsumo:
a. Sign up using Facebook
b. Enter a topic/keyword
c. Click Influencer, then choose a platform
d. Now that it is connected to your account on your chosen platform re-enter the keyword e. Sort by likes, then look for the accounts with 1000 – 10000 likes.
You can also filter the results by location and language.
Pitchbox
This tool can pinpoint influential people without manual input and immediately send them personalized emails. Those that do not reply to your communications will be followed up with.
Heepsy
- Find influencers in seconds.
- Instant access to Instagram and Youtube influencers by location and category
- Analyze their audience and contact them.
How to look for Micro-influencers manually
Instagram Hashtags
Finding users or influencers with a thousand to a hundred thousand followers is much simpler when you use hashtags. You may locate influencers about your brand by searching for relevant hashtags on the platform.
List of Followers
Your followers are users that most likely find your brand and niche interesting. You could quickly get a list of prospective influencers to hire from your follower list that is already posting content related to your brand.
Prospective Influencer’s following list
When you’ve found one potential Influencer for your brand, check out their following list too. You may find other worthy micro-influencers with the same niche as your brand.
The Influencer Identification Sheet
Deciding which Influencer to work with is a creative decision. The Influencer’s tone, content, genre, personality type, and other factors should align with the brand for the influencer campaign.
Personality type: The personality type and the tone of communication should be similar to the brand’s image and the campaign strategy. Inconsistency in the personality type of the Influencer and the brand can create negative sentiment for both the brand and the Influencer as users often protest an out-of-character promotion/ brand tie-up.
Genre: What is the genre of the Influencer (technology, entrepreneurship, fashion, marketing, travel, etc.), and does it align with the campaign content’s genre? Niche: What is the influencer niche, and does it align with the product niche?
Topics: Does the topic of the marketing message align with the topics that the Influencer has spoken about in the past.
Platform: What platform should the Influencer be active on, and what type of reach should the Influencer have?
Goals and Metrics: What is the purpose of the primary marketing campaign, and what role does the influencer play in the marketing strategy
How to Contact Influencers
Use video messages to contact influencers
Getting noticed by influencers is relatively challenging because they receive numerous messages, likes, and tweets from many of their followers and even entrepreneurs. It would be best if you thought out of the box to catch their attention. For instance, you can create a video message and send it through a direct tweet. Example: Aaron Orendorff, a respected social media influencer. He received thousands of messages daily, but a video tweet from an entrepreneur caught his eye, and they got talking.
Share and then tag an influencer in their content
You should find an influencer’s content and share it with your followers. Remember to tag the Influencer in the shared content. This is an effective way of catching their attention, yet only very few people use it.
Follow and engage an influencer regularly
A Twitter list is a great way to find users’ content and engage with influencers. You can easily create a checklist by going through their profiles and adding them to your list using the drop-down menu.
Common Content Formats for Partnering with Influencers
1. Content Featuring Products/ Services
2. Reviews/Unboxing
3. Custom URLs for Free Access
4. Unique Discount Codes
5. Giveaways
Awareness
To generate awareness in the social media space, brands can work closely with macro-influencers and micro-influencers who are relevant to their business. At this stage, influencers create inspirational content through storytelling to introduce new products and feature capabilities to followers. This will instantly elevate a brand’s image and foster strong brand affinity among fans.
Interest
Here, Influencers address frequently asked questions about the service or product. Usually, this entails conversations with the leads while giving them content that they find engaging, informative, and helpful. Still, it’s not easy to come up with quality material. It’s not simple for brands to figure out what kind of content is most suitable for their company, especially when they have to consider the value proposition of each Influencer they collaborate with.
Desire
Increased attention means more opportunities for businesses to develop promotions tailored to the influencers’ subscribers and followers. In this stage, brands might use reviews, testimonials, etc., to show that their products would indeed meet the needs of their target audience. They are more likely to purchase if the offer appeals to them (in terms of price and quality).
Action
At this point, influencers point their audiences in the right direction so they may either finalize a purchase or continue considering their options (measured in downloads, trials, demonstrations, inquiries, purchases, etc.) Successfully converting leads into customers proves that a brand’s social media efforts were worthwhile. Social media marketing’s ROI might include an increase in closed-loop sales. However, tracking the number of leads who become paying customers thanks to your influencers might be difficult. Promo codes are one of the most often used tools for measuring the influence of specific individuals.
Advocacy
In addition to focusing on AIDA, the underlying aspect that will turn a client into a brand champion is pleasing them throughout their customer journey. Using social media, you may prolong the sales process to the point where the customer becomes a brand ambassador. Involved and enthusiastic consumers become powerful brand advocates when they tell their friends about a company’s products or services. Advocates have an impact due to the word-of-mouth they propagate. The sooner one can minimize the cost-per-user acquisition through influencer marketing, the more advocates one will have acquired.
You will discover within this course the following:
- What is Influencer marketing and why it works so well for businesses
- Exactly how to find and contact Influencers who can bring huge results for your product or service
- Why you should avoid the 7 things that will kill your campaign
- How to strike and negotiate a great Influencer deal
- How to track and measure the results from your campaign
- Why having the right goal for your campaign is crucial to your success
- And Much Much More!
Final Thoughts
At the heart of influencer marketing is the understanding that people trust the opinions and recommendations of others more than they trust traditional marketing messages. Whether you are launching a new product or service, seeking to build brand awareness, or simply looking to drive sales, incorporating influencer marketing into your overall strategy can help you achieve your marketing goals.
