Everything You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing

Everything You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing

A rising star in the marketing vocabulary, the ‘influencer’ is a marketing tool that is growing in prominence across the marketing landscape. However, everyone’s interpretation of this particular marketing technique has taken very different turns in most cases.

An influencer is a multifaceted being; as one brand’s influencer will not look or act anything like another’s. Indeed, even one brand’s various campaigns can have startlingly different influencers at the head.

So, with so many different facets and avenues to take when considering influencer marketing, and how can you use it effectively for your campaigns?

Rise of the Influencers

Word of mouth is one of the fastest ways to raise brand awareness, especially in a world where this word of mouth can reach a mass audience instantly thanks to the internet. In this wild jungle of likes, tweets and commenting an influencer is someone who is active on these platforms and has gathered a large audience as a result. Many of their social media platforms and blogs are dedicated to one niche or another. This means they are a valuable resource for targeting your ideal audience.

Targeting such a specific audience is a great way to actually drive conversions through access, rather than simply growing brand awareness. You could choose any influencer with a significant follower count if you simply wished to increase your overall brand awareness. However, if you want to convert on a smaller, but richer, scale then these niche influencers are much more effective.

In a world where 92% of people trust recommendations from people, rather than from brands, is it any wonder why influencer marketing has risen to such heights?

How to Determine Your Brand’s Influencers

Knowing you want to target niche influencers and actually doing so, however, are two very different kettles of fish.

Your first port of call might, obviously, be through extensive social media monitoring. Look in the common channels which you know your audience traverse – through extensive research – to find the most likely candidates. They will be loud and proud on their niche subjects, which also means they will be so when helping to push your brand. Look for valuable engagement, frequent updating and someone who fits your company values well.

Hashtags can be a goldmine of influencers, as you will see a lot of engagement on Twitter and Instagram through people searching for specific terms.

However, if you want to go for a more traditional influencing platform rather than rely on social media then you can look to blogger outreach. It is the exact same concept, except it involves longer and richer content being exposed to your brand rather than a simple social media shout-out. You can find these blogging influencers through a simple Google search in most cases.

Manually sorting through these many Google results can be very difficult. Thankfully, the internet is full of valuable blogger outreach tools which you can use to sift through the potential bloggers for you.

Downside

Yet, there are some downsides to the influencer approach. For one, is all of the effort actually worth the reward? For hours of hunting down your influencers and getting them on board, you may only get a few solid conversions in return. Is this a solid enough return on investment, in the long run? This is a question you have to weigh out before starting on an influencer campaign.

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