Could Influencer Marketing be the missing piece of your marketing strategy? It can literally take you from being a “newbie” in your industry and becoming a household name. Find out the 6 step process we use at Ideapros to secure influencers
What’s Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that involves influential internet figures to get a company or a brand’s message across to their desired audience. In this age of social media, the use of popular internet personalities is used to promote companies. Influencer Marketing is no longer limited to celebrities that are often seen on print and television commercials. Anyone who has a huge following is being followed for their credibility, and expertise in specific industries are now considered an influencer.
Types of Influencers
There are 5 types of Influencers. Each influencer type is categorized by how many followers they have a certain social media platform.
You can see the different categories here:
- Mega – 1 million or more subscribers or followers
- Macro – 500,000 to 1 million subscribers or followers
- Mid-tier – 50,000 to 500,000 subscribers or followers
- Micro -10,000 to 50,000 subscribers or followers
- Nano – 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers or followers
If you’re wondering how powerful influencer marketing is, we have an infographic that can show you what happens every minute on the Internet.
Why is Influencer Marketing Important?
Influencer marketing is beneficial for a company to consider for a number of reasons. First, social media is no longer dominated by corporate brands. There are many startups on social media now trying to get their brand awareness. Social media is primarily used nowadays to connect with people. It is for this reason that influencers have become effective in persuading potential customers to purchase a given product. Second, influencer marketing may lead to results more amazing than you can imagine. A recent finding from MediaKix stated that influencer marketing is 11x more powerful than paid ads via social media.
The 6-Step Process to Secure Influencers
1. Do Research
The first thing that you need to know is that not all social media platforms can be effective in all industries. This means you have to identify where you can tap a large number of your target market. For example, Instagram and Facebook have different demographics compared to TikTok or Twitch. During your research, consider the right social media platform for your brand and influencers on the said app who have a good amount of followers.
2. Set a budget
For startup companies, micro-influencers might be a good option. However, if you have sufficient amount allotted for marketing needs, you can go for mid-tier to macro influencers. It is important to keep in mind that some influencers can get % through affiliate links or they can charge a certain rate for different deliverables. These deliverables can include anything from a written up blog post, images that include them or their own shots of the product, video and much more. Also when it comes what an influencer charges they take into consideration how many posts you want, the number of followers they have, and the amount of engagement they get in a post.
According to recent reports on the subject, they reported the following numbers on how much an average influencer will charge on this social media platform:
- Instagram Influencers: $1,000 per 100,000 followers
- Snapchat Influencers: Starts at $500 per campaign in 24 hours
- YouTube Influencers: Roughly $2,000 per 100,000 followers
It is hard to pinpoint a simple X amount of dollars per X amount posts. This is something that you will have to further research on what works best for your brand and goals.
3. Determine your goals
Influencers can help you to either increase brand awareness or increase sales. You have to identify your goals and the message that you want to convey before you reach out to any influencer. These factors must be considered when choosing the right influencers to approach and make sure that your message is concise and straight to the point.
Start with the end in mind
Once you have decided on the message, goals, and budget, be sure to set up the analytics. Typically you would need to set up Facebook Analytics (a tracking pixel) and Google Analytics which involves a bit of tracking code that goes in the header of your website. These tools will help you gauge how effective your marketing campaigns are and if you want to work with a particular influencer again.
4. Approach the right influencers
There are plenty of influencers out there. Here are some of the guidelines that can help you as you find the right influencers for your brand:
- Find influencers on different social media platforms. You can start by searching through hashtags related to your industry.
- Observe the recommendations. If you already have some influencers in mind, some social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook suggest relevant influencers that you may also want to look into.
- If you have zero idea about influencers you can do a simple Google search. There are several articles and blogs that offer lists of popular and credible social media personalities in different industries.
- Check what the influencer is mostly posting about. If you see some products or services that are related to yours, take it as a good sign and you can consider reaching out.
- Observe their engagement ratio. Having a huge number of followers is good but the number of followers who really engage (like, share and comment) on the influencer’s posts is more important than how many followers they have.
5. Negotiate
Once you have determined the influencers who are a good fit for your business then reach out to them to discuss your offer.
When we reach out to influencers at IdeaPros, our value is in experience, negotiation, and credibility. Influencers trust us. They want to work with us. If your business doesn’t have a lot of money to negotiate with, you may have to attract influencers by offering to send your product to them for free in exchange for certain coverage. Or you may find that paying the influencers is the best route. Regardless, be sure to list out the things that you want them to do so that it is super clear what their obligation is and what your obligation is.
6. Start the campaign
When the first 5 steps are done, you can now start your campaign. Be sure to follow the influencers and turn on the notifications for their account so you can be alerted right away. When they share something, you can reshare to your accounts and drive people to check out their post.
Remember, an influencer can offer the social proof that your product is great and that is what gets products (or services!) to virtually fly off the shelf. Check what influencers are posting here and there and try to measure the results. This information will be very useful as you move on to new campaigns in the future.
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