Marketing strategies change as our environment develops. In the old days hiring actors, musicians, sportspersons, and popular people on TV/radio/cinema to advertising your brand was the norm. With the age of social media, the list now includes influencers. Influencer marketing has proven to be the new trend thanks to the way influencers are effective in reaching millions of people.
Anyway, depending on your niche and the social media platform that most suits your business, having a top influencer, is a very wise marketing strategy. Millions of products have gained wide popularity and insane amounts of revenue (beauty products for example) thanks to the help of influencers.
Be it a product you have to sell, or a service you provide, keenly consider the help of influencer marketing to reach out to your customers. Let’s discover why you need an influencer and how that will influence (no pun intended) your business quite positively.
But first, Let’s define Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing, essentially, does the same thing as celebrity marketing (endorsement) — which is one of the most effective strategies to associate at brand with a person that everyone loves.
Instead of advertising on TV with a famous actor, influencer marketing relies on people on social media who have lots of followers. The influencer isn’t necessarily a celebrity.
For example, if you have a company that sells music gear/software, the best choice of influencer would be someone who makes music-related content on YouTube (music covers, gear/software reviews, music lessons, and so on…).
Another is clothes brands; in this case a top Instagram influencer would help you advertise probably better than any other strategy.
Who Is the Most Suitable Influencer for your Marketing Strategy?
The nature of your business determines the type of social media influencer you need in your marketing campaign.
For example, Lush Cosmetics used the help of Valentina Chirico, who’s an amazing social media influencer who does product reviews and recommendations in their influencer marketing strategy.
Things to Consider when Hiring an Influencer
Products like cosmetics, fitness, and fashion, to name a few, sell impressively with influencer marketing. People tend to trust the opinions of influencers because they see them as ordinary people who are simply presenting a product they love. Having influencers do product reviews of your product is a recommended marketing strategy.
Business services on the other hand might need another type of influencer, the kind that is seen as a thought leader. Thought leaders on social media (such as YouTube) have followers that trust them and respect their opinions.
You see that often influencers choose to promote products and services that they already use; that’s how audience trust is built.
You should aim to hire an influencer who is very likely to use your product or services occasionally or on regular basis, instead of competing ones.
Keep in mind to hire an influencer who is relevant to your business, who has a wide reach to your target people, and who resonates with followers positively, i.e. she/he has dedicated followers.
How to promote using influencer marketing?
Your business and budget play a huge role in determining who will be the influencer you need to hire. However, the procedure isn’t very complicated. One thing I recommend is to build a relationship with an influencer and getting to know their online presence better, and giving the influencer creative freedom.
Below are the 3 common steps that you need to follow.
1. Have the influencer do a review of your product or service.
The influencer can do a video or a blog on your product in which he expresses their opinions about it. It can be a social media post, a video on YouTube, an Instagram story…
2. Build a Long-Term Relationship with your influencer
The better and the longer the relationship with the influencer is the most likely it results in reachability to more clientele. Which means, if the influencer dedicates more social media posts to recommending your product, the more likely people who follow her/him get curious are the same product.
In influencers are also very likely to recommend you as an extra favor from them because you have a respectful long-term relationship.
3. You have to target your landing page
Provide the influencer with landing pages that they can share, which target the product they reviewed or more details about your business.
Your landing pages have to stand up to the high ideals that the influencer has built up in their recommendation.
Bottom line
Now that you know how influencers are necessary in your marketing strategy, make sure to do further research about it.
To help you start, see how the top Instagram Influencers use their profiles to help brands market their products.
You can also learn many info from this interview with Valentina Chirico where she talks about her experience as a beauty influencer.
