With influencer marketing, companies instead of selling themselves directly turn to well-known celebrities or cultural icons, who are called “influencers,” to promote their product or message. Influencer marketing usually uses people who have a large number of followers on social media sites like Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. These famous people will make videos or live streams to promote your product. These videos can reach thousands or even millions of people who follow them.
This kind of advertising changed the way people thought about advertising right away. It shows how powerful Tony’s own business idea is: getting customers to love your brand so much that they will support it and spread the word to their followers. These people with huge audiences can help you stand out in a crowded advertising space and give your brand a lot of value.
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Word-of-mouth marketing was a form of marketing that was similar to influencer marketing before the Internet. But word-of-mouth marketing and marketing through influential people are not the same thing. Word-of-mouth marketing relies on customers telling their friends and family about the business. The business then waits for customers to come to them. Influencer marketing is a more ambitious strategy in which you hire a person or group directly to market for you.
HOW DOES INFLUENCER MARKETING LOOK LIKE?
Influencer marketing is all around us today, from product placement and promotion to paid videos. It’s used by many businesses to reach younger people they can’t reach with traditional advertising. Adidas has worked with Selena Gomez, Lionel Messi, and a lot of other famous people. Apple worked with “influencers” on YouTube to make “unboxing” videos. And Under Armour, Apple, and the Voss brand of bottled water have all sponsored Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
WHY IS INFLUENCER MARKETING IMPORTANT?
Now that we know what influencer marketing is, let’s take a look at why it’s so effective.
Authenticity
Being honest is hard to find, especially in advertising. Think about it: when you see a commercial for the “easiest way to lose weight in the world,” do you believe a single word? How likely are you to believe an ad for a shampoo that makes your hair thick and shiny? The use of exaggeration and photoshop has made consumers more cautious about where to spend their time and money, and rightly so. And this is exactly why marketing through influencers has become so successful.
Jay says that the best way to get raving fans is to have someone else tell everyone how great you are. Even though you can tell everyone yourself, it usually sounds like bragging and isn’t true. But if someone else says it, especially if they have a lot of fans and followers, it is much more likely to be true. Fans of that influencer may not know your name or anything about your company, but they trust the influencer. If the influencer is a fan, they can be, too.
Influencer marketing is more natural than traditional advertising, mostly because people look up to influencers as thought leaders and role models. These influencers have become trusted sources of information because they put time and effort into building their audiences and making instant connections with their followers.
In short, when an influential person talks about your product, people pay attention. So when an influencer talks about a product or service, it seems like a real recommendation. This level of sincerity is important for marketers who focus on digital and mobile, especially if they want to reach younger people who don’t like to feel like they’re being sold to. Customers want real things, and influencer marketing gives them that.
Cost Effective
When it comes to influencer marketing, there is no one standard way to set prices. Some influencers will work with your brand because it helps them build their own brand. Influencer marketing examples often include a vanity URL and a free product or experience that can be given instead of money.
Other influencers will agree to a performance-based pricing model, where the amount you pay depends on how many clicks and interactions (likes, shares, and retweets) your brand gets from their posts. Others will choose “flat rate” pricing, where you pay the same amount for each post or video.
There’s no reason why a little research can’t help you figure out why prices vary so much. Plus, this range lets you find what you are most comfortable with and what you think will be the best model for your brand.
Influencer marketing is always changing, but it’s quickly becoming one of the most cost-effective and conversion-boosting social strategies for businesses of all sizes. They’re cheap and getting more popular: Statistics on influencer marketing show that 57% of marketers increased their budgets for influencer marketing in 2020.
When you realise how powerful influencer marketing is, you’ll see that any costs you might have to pay are worth it. Jay says that influencer marketing and partnerships make a business owner’s new business instantly more productive, effective, and efficient. With the right influencer, you can build a business and a customer base without going through the normal stages of growth.
It helps your Brand Image
You already know how important it is to market on social media. Social media can bring a lot of people to your site, help you connect better with your customers, and get you coverage in the news.
But even more than that, when your brand is buzzing through the veins of social media, a certain amount of kinetic energy builds up around it. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat, if you’re popular on social media, you’re also popular with customers.
Influencers can help give your brand this kind of buzz. They can help you reach a more specific group of people, grow your social media following, improve your SEO, and add content that helps your brand reach more people.
What is “marketing to influencers”? At its core, it’s about using the influence of thought leaders, who people listen to and interact with when they talk about your product or service. This gives your brand a sense of community. This can be hard to do if you don’t have a strong offline presence in the area (like stores and industry events), so working with influencers can be a great idea if you don’t have stores. Then, everyone can experience the vision you’re putting forward as a group, and in some cases, they might even take it on as their own, making it a shared vision.
How to find an Influencer for your Brand
So why is it that influencer marketing is becoming more popular? And how do you get on the same page with a powerful influencer? Here is where you have to explain: How do I know what influencer marketing is?
1. STUDY THE RULES OF INFLUENCER MARKETING
Right now, influencer marketing is all the rage, but it’s still a bit like the Wild West. All the time, it changes. Here’s a story to show you what not to do: Remember how popular PewDiePie was on YouTube? He was one of the most influential people in the video world (he had more than 111 million subscribers), and when he posted videos that some people thought were anti-Semitic, Disney’s Maker Studios and Google’s Preferred advertising programme cut ties with him.
This is a good example of how, in the end, you can’t really control people who have a lot of power over you. When they started running ads on his page, the companies that worked with him didn’t know about these hateful messages. Influencers are people, so they can still post whatever they think is appropriate, even if you don’t understand what they mean by that. Other than the rules set by the social media platform, they don’t have to follow any other rules about how to act, and it’s hard to control what they post unless you put certain rules in your contract with them.
Make sure you do what you need to do to make sure that the influencer campaign follows FTC rules for full disclosure. It’s important to be clear. As influencer marketing becomes more common, the Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on paid endorsements and promotions that don’t make it clear to the audience that they are ads.
2. Find the Right Audience
There are a few ways to figure out if an influencer is a good fit for your brand when it comes to choosing someone to represent it. Find out who they are trying to reach. The goal is to reach out to a more specific group of people. But if you’re a company that makes organic clothes for babies and you work with an influencer whose audience is mostly teens and millennials, you’re missing the mark. That’s why it’s important to create user personas and then find an influencer who speaks to that audience. That way, you can reach a large number of customers who are actually interested in what you have to offer.
Next, look at how many people follow them. They aren’t really a thought leader if they only have a few thousand followers. You also need to make sure that those followers interact with the influencer’s posts by commenting, sharing, or retweeting them. In the end, what matters is quality, not quantity. Think about the influencer’s reach when deciding how much to pay them, and then scale up or down based on that. The next step is to look at how good the content is.
Do a thorough review of all the posts and videos they put up. What do they say, and do they fit with the values of your company? What do they sound like? Do they put out high-quality content all the time? And do you think they’d be a good person to talk to about your brand? For example, if you run a vegetarian restaurant, you probably don’t want someone who posts Instagram videos while wearing fur. Make sure that your values are the same and that you would be proud to have this person represent your brand.
3. Consider Partnerships
When people ask, “What is influencer marketing?” they usually think of people with a lot of social media followers. Jay explains, though, that influential people or businesses, which he calls “maximizer candidates,” don’t have to meet this criteria. He says there are different kinds of maximizer candidates, and some of the most powerful are big companies with which you can make “mega partnerships” to get your brand in front of a much bigger audience.
These companies could be good partners. They could be national or international, or they could be smaller limited companies that you can work with to help both of you. Maybe they can add your product to their line-up and you can give them a cut of the profits, or you can offer to promote their complementary business in your area while they promote yours in theirs. When you work with a company that already has a following and a group of loyal customers, your business gets the most exposure possible right away.
4. USE THE CORRECT TOOLS
There are also a number of tools and companies whose only goal is to help brands find their way around the influencer marketing world. For example, Klout is a website that uses a scale from 1 to 100 to rate people’s social reach. GroupHigh is another platform that helps brands find influential blogs, automate research, and measure engagement.
There are also a number of influencer marketing agencies that can give you a full one-on-one experience if you have the means. In other words, the agency will look at your brand and figure out who the best influencers are for your campaign. They can also help the influencers make content about your product or service. Ideally, they will go beyond impressions and clicks and help you see how the campaign fits in with your business’s long-term goals.
You can be sure that influencer marketing will help your brand reach its goals, whether you find and negotiate with influencers or mega partners on your own or work with an agency.
