How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for your Brand
Since the beginning of buying and selling, it takes a person to authentically market a product or service to an audience. As the most basic foundation of marketing – utilizing the personality behind the product – from the CEO to the front desk employee, it is crucial to show human qualities and emotion to build a powerful brand that people want to buy from.
In today’s day and age, we have seen company missions shared from presidents and CEOs and celebrities sharing their love of a product on commercials. Now, with the access available with social media and video sharing platforms like TikTok and YouTube, even the smallest of businesses can leverage the human connection to market their product or service. Meet: Influencer Marketing.
Basics You Should Know About Influencer Marketing
So what exactly makes Influencer Marketing different from you, a business owner or employee, creating a short-form video describing a product or service?
The biggest difference Influencer Marketing brings to the table is that these social media users already have thousands of followers just waiting to hear about your brand. In just one payment, whether it is a financial fee or a product trade with the influencer, a social media influencer exposes your product to their thousands of followers. They will share the benefits of your product, qualities of it that they admire most, and share new ways your product solves their problem with their followers.
These influencers are known as a variety of titles:
- Influencer
- Content Creator
- Social Media Influencer
- Micro / Macro Influencers
- Social Media Marketer
- Lifestyle Influencer
To incentivize the influencer and their followers to engage with your brand and ultimately make a purchase, it is common practice to give the influencer their unique discount code for their followers to use on your website. Not only does this give a sense of a “good deal” to your new customers, but the unique code is a sure and easy way to measure how many purchases are coming from this one influencer. Then, you can accurately measure the return of investment you have made in Influencer Marketing.
What Makes an Influencer Valuable to My Brand?
While some businesses (big or small) are still not sold on this new method of advertising, more than 80% of survey respondents intend to dedicate a budget to Influencer Marketing in 2023, according to Influencer Marketing Hub (2023). So, it is most certainly a business decision to make on whether or not to keep up with new marketing efforts and strategies. Keep reading for more benefits of Influencer Marketing and best practices to do.
Influencer marketing is a valuable tool to basically any brand of any type; whether you are just starting out or have been in the industry for decades. When you find an influencer that is best suited for your brand (more on that below), you automatically have access to their thousands of followers, a.k.a your potential customers; and since their audience is interested in them, they will be interested in you, too.
“37% of consumers trust social media influencers over brands.”
Social media influencers, primarily on Instagram and TikTok, act as a key to a door of a room full of people that would have been much more expensive to reach with another channel, for example a paid ad. When the influencer shares content with these followers about your brand and products or services, the followers will already develop a higher level of interest in your brand because they have an admiration and trust for the influencer. Since they hear about your brand from someone they are already interested in, your brand will prosper in awareness and ultimately sales online.
Relationship building with a new audience is highly bolstered when Influencer Marketing is implemented compared to if you tried to reach the audience directly with a paid ad or social media post.
Best Practices for Influencer Marketing
- Be sure to schedule time with the influencer to meet them and get a feel for their personality. Do they represent your company well and accurately align with your brand and business goals? As a quick reference, imaging if this influence falls in line with your ideal customer.
- Create an Influencer Marketing contract for you and the influencer to both agree upon and sign. What collateral and assets do you expect from the influencer and what can the influencer expect as compensation?
- Measure the impact of the influencer during each campaign you launch with them. Track conversions by dedicating unique discount codes to various influencers and measure on a regular basis to determine your success.
As a business, it is possible to tap into the audiences of highly popular social media users. These individuals hold an influence over their followers, so the marketing fundamental of building trust with your customers is already done when you work with an influencer. Reach new customers, build a brand community online, and drive more conversions with the success Influencer Marketing can bring you!