Marketing strategies continue to evolve, and with the dominance of social media, the rise of the influencer-marketing campaign is more prevalent than ever. Because influencers are used to working with limited characters to promote products, they’re very familiar with tools like a word counter.
Today, brands are tapping influencers in hopes of broadening their brand reach and gaining more loyal customers. The question is: are influencers that influential?
From answering the basic question of what influencers do to how you can find the perfect influencer for your brand, here’s everything you need to know about the influencer marketing strategy.
Influencers: Who Are They?
Because influencers can come from different social media platforms and promote almost anything, it can get hard to clearly define who and what influencers are.
To make things simple, an influencer is an individual who has a significantly large audience in a particular niche. These influencers have the power to affect the purchase decisions of their followers because they actively engage with their audience through the use of social media.
Influencers are particularly effective in their industries because they’ve spent years building up a following as they grow their knowledge, reputation, and expertise on a particular topic. They’re so influential that they can set fashion trends or create a mob reaction from a single post.
While it can seem like the qualification of an influencer is the same as practically any famous person alive, influencers are no longer limited to celebrity status.
Being an influencer sounds like a way to make easy money, but establishing yourself as an authoritative entity in a saturated market of other influencers is hard work. It takes years for some of them to reach the status they have now.
What Influencers Do.
An influencer can do a lot of things, but the nature of their profession is similar to a native advertising editor. Influencers find a way to integrate a certain product into their everyday lifestyle to promote it without sounding like such a hard sell.
Through their creativity, they can create unique hashtags for your brand and expand your reach. Not only are you getting quality content from an influencer, it also improves your SEO rankings because partnering with someone who has a huge following is recognized by search engine algorithms.
Prioritize having a good relationship with influencers because they can help your brand earn consumer trust and loyalty. However, one subpar experience with your brand can be over-exaggerated by an influencer and negatively affect your reputation.
Finding The Right Influencer For Your Business.
Partnering with an influencer sounds mutually beneficial in theory, but it’s crucial to find the right influencer for your brand to boost sales and protect the reputation of your business. Here are some things you want to look at when finding influencers for your brand.
First, their audience should be the same as your target market. The reason why you’re using an influencer, to begin with, is to expand your brand reach and get more people aware of the existence of your company. To get the best results, go through the pages of these influencers and see if the products they’re promoting are products that your target demographic would use.
If you’re running a make-up line, partnering with an influencer who promotes baking appliances will not have the same effect as partnering with one who’s into skincare products. Try to find influencers who are working in the same industry as your business.
Next, their values should line up with yours because these influencers are not only promoting your brand but representing it. Don’t be afraid to scour through their previous posts to see if their image and identity resonate with yours.
How To Use Influencers For Your Brand.
Now that you know how to find the right influencer for you, you can use different strategies to promote your products through them.
For starters, don’t be afraid to use more than one influencer. Build your own influencer network because you need more than one for an effective increase in sales. Daniel Wellington was able to turn $15,000 into $220 million in four years through the influencer marketing strategy alone.
Influencers with over 100,000 followers can give you a wide reach, but sometimes tapping many micro-influencers (users with less than 10,000 followers) can give you the same boost for a cheaper price. This is because micro-influencers have more genuine engagement with their followers.
Another way to optimize influencers is to give them affiliate links with exclusive discount codes that their followers can use. Influencers can also sponsor giveaway contests to give consumers a sample of your product. Not only does it broaden your reach, but it also puts your brand in a good light because everyone loves free stuff!
If your partnership with an influencer has helped you reach your goals in record time, take it to the next level and create a product line with them. By attaching the influencer’s name to an official product, their followers will flock to your storefronts on the day it goes on sale. You’ll be sold out in no time!
Jayson Antonio is an Outreach Specialist at WordCountTool.com that offers useful tools such as Word Counter Tool, Character Counter Tool, Scrabble Word Finder, Pomodoro Timer and Mind Map Tool for your creative writing. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, writing and playing mobile games.
