It’s September of 2020 and I’m sure you’ve heard of the term “Influencer Marketing”. If you’ve been thinking of trying your hand at including influencers into your marketing strategy or just want to learn more about this emerging trend, this is for you.
Influencer marketing is a tool that businesses have been using in their social media campaigns for the last few years. The strategy really took off in 2019, with small and large businesses implementing this marketing tactic. Influencer marketing focuses on finding existing leaders in a specific industry and teaming up with them to help drive your brands message. In fact, 89% of marketing professionals have found that their return on investment (ROI) is the same, if not better, than traditional marketing channels. (link article here with the words 89% of marketers.)
Influencer marketing goes hand in hand with social media marketing and content creation. Most campaigns have a designated amount of content that needs to be created and shared on social media. The main goal of using an influencer to market your brand is to leverage their existing community to create lifelong customers. The ideal influencer will change depending on the industry, goals of the campaign, niche of creator, and brand.
Why You Should Invest in Influencer Marketing
The power of exposure on social media is continuously growing; this includes how customers are making purchases. Reports have shown that conventional ads no longer lure in the customer; in fact, they’ve shown that 90% of Americans don’t even to click on digital ads anymore. Businesses must adapt to consumers buying behaviors because they now control the buyer’s journey.
Customers have reported that they are overwhelmed by the amount of digital ads they see each day. Some even go so far as to the avoiding the brand all together if they feel bombarded with ads. If you’re looking for the fix to “ad fatigue,” influencer marketing is it.
With traditional marketing techniques dying, brands have found that customers tend to trust peers, friends, and people they look up the most. These relationships are able to start and foster conversations about anything, including brands and products they love and use in their everyday life. These ongoing conversations start to build awareness for the brand and not only that, have shown to lead to more conversions and sales.
5 Positives Influencer Marketing Has on Brands
- Attracts new customers
- Increased customer loyalty
- Positive conversations regarding your brand from multiple authentic creators
- Increased repeat customers over time
- Capitalizes on word of mouth marketing and social proof
Micro vs. Macro Influencers
The two main types of influencers are known as micro and macro. This refers to how many followers the person has on a platform. A micro influencer is a social media personality that has 1,000-100,000 followers and a macro influencer is one who has more than 100,000. So how do you decide which type of influencer is right for your specific campaign goal? Let’s break down the positives of each type to help you better determine who is right for your brand.
5 Must Know Facts of Using Micro Influencers
- Very high engagement rates – 7x more than macro in fact
- More cost effective compared to macro influencers
- They are more likely to be industry experts with a high relevancy audience
- Deemed as more trustworthy than macro influencers
- The use of them are on the rise
5 Must Know Facts of Using Macro Influencers
- One post has the potential to reach thousands of customers. More followers = more reach
- Great for brand awareness campaigns
- Deemed as more trustworthy than celebrities by customers
- Can be expensive and put a strain on budgets
- Often seen promoting products that aren’t relevant to their niche
At the end of the day, the positives of using micro influencers far outweigh the lower number of followers that they have compared to macro influencers. If your budget allows and your marketing campaign goals are to grow brand awareness, macro influencers can definitely be used there.
Need a Celebrity Influencer? Not Anymore!
Along with micro and macro influencers, there are also celebrity influencers. When some people hear the phrase influencer marketing, they immediately think of the Kardashian family posting sponsored ads for skinny teas. This is no longer the norm. While influencer marketing started with the rise of celebrity sponsored content on Instagram, it has become much more in the recent years. At first companies thought that the number of followers was the most important in an influencer when in fact, that’s not the truth. The most powerful influencers are the people that have the ability to reach your target audience. Some bigger brands still include celebrities in their campaigns, but it is definitely not needed to be successful.
How to Get Started With Influencer Marketing?
Before you even get started in creating influencer-marketing campaigns, you need to make sure you know your audience and have clear and measurable goals set. Once you have these tasks completed, you’re ready to tackle the first step of influencer marketing; planning a strategy.
The first step of influencer marketing is the same as starting any other campaign, research. If you’re just starting out you want to make sure to focus in on one social media platform, hopefully one that you already have a presence on. Know the demographics on the platform that you consider to be your target audience in your industry. Another part of the research phrase is to know what industries thrive on what platforms. For example beauty and fashion shine on Instagram where video gaming does on Twitch.
Part of the research phrase also needs to be focused on budget. While influencer marketing is cost effective, some of the macro and celebrity influencers are quite expensive. If you don’t have a large budget, or want to try it out on a campaign before fully investing, you should look into micro influencers in that are already posting about topics in your industry. Some micro influencers will agree to posting about your brand in return for only free products or a small fee.
5 Quick Pricing Stats to Know When it Comes to Influencer Marketing
- On Facebook, the average charge is $25 per 1,000 followers
- Instagram has a average of $10 per 1,000 followers
- The average cost per post on Twitter is $2 per 1,000 followers
- YouTube influencers tend to charge an average of $20 per 1,000 followers
- The average cost per post is $10 per 1,000 followers on Snapchat
Now please keep in mind that these are averages and some larger influencers and celebrities often don’t follow this mold. Many will ask for much more so that’s why it’s important to research and find influencers that fit your particular budget.
How do you Find the Right Influencers for Your Marketing Campaign?
Now that you’ve decided that you want to implement influencers into your marketing campaign I’m sure you’re wondering how you find the right ones for you. There are 4 top tools for identifying the right influencer for you.
The first, and most common, outlet is Google. Here you can research individuals and browse their websites to find contact information for them and reach out directly to them.
If doing individual research is too time consuming you should use databases. These databases do the research for you and pull together a list of influencers. Be prepared to do your own vetting as well as communicate directly with the individuals. An example of a popular database is be Buzzsumo.
There are also influencer networks available to help you find the right person for the job. A network has existing relationships with vetted influencers, but you’ll have to go through them, kind of like an agency.
An influencer marketplace will take the best of a database research technique as well as removing the middleman from networks to give you access directly to the talent.
4 Questions to Ask While Researching Influencers
- Does the influencer already post about topics and products that are related to your brand?
- What is their engagement like and the ratio between followers and likes on posts? If they have thousands of followers but very low engagement on posts, they could be buying followers, which is not what you want.
- Have they worked with brands in the past and can show a successful track record?
- Can they provide you with a press kit that shows their portfolio from past campaigns?
How to Track Your Influencing Campaign
Just like ordinary marketing campaigns, you need to use metrics to track influencer campaigns. So now that you’ve found your influencers and are starting to roll out content, let’s discuss how to track the campaign and influencers success. Metrics for success far surpass just likes and impressions just like in traditional digital marketing.
5 Tips for Tracking Influencer Campaign Analytics
- Create a specific hashtag for a single campaign to track
- Have access to real time data from each social media platform
- Track individual reach and engagement for each influencer in the campaign
- Use an influencer tracking program, like NeoReach to monitor performance
- Have a very clear set of goals for the campaign that includes metrics you can track to determine the success
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is definitely an emerging trend for brands to reach their target audiences and build a loyal customer base. There are positives and negatives to everything in marketing, and this is no different. It all depends on what your goals are, what your budget is like, and finding the right person for your brand. Allow some trial and error when first starting out, because influencer marketing is here to stay and can be very beneficial to your overall ROI if done correctly.
I know that this post covered a lot of aspects of influencer marketing and might be overwhelming if you’re new to the trend. I hope we were able to answer some of your questions, but if not, reach out for a complimentary call with our CEO Kollin!
Written by Tessa Porter
