Influencer Marketing – How To Leverage This Digital Opportunity

Influencer Marketing is a new type of online marketing where businesses use key industry leaders or personal brands to share your message to their audience. These influencers are a trusted voice to their followers and have a much higher return on investment, and purchases made. Here’s a breakdown of what it is and see if it’s right for your business.

Fidget Spinners & Shaq

What is Influencer Marketing?

In the past, posting online would reach a broad audience and is a gamble on the return. Today, social influencers carved themselves out a niche of followers who share the same interests and passions. Marketing directly to their niche, which would be more interested in your product, is a smarter way to use your marketing dollar and see a larger return.

How does it work?

There are a lot of moving parts in a successful marketing campaign with influencers. Simply put, the steps to setting up an agreement with influencers are:

1. Define your audience. Dial in exactly what type of person you feel will be the best for your brand and will promote it in a way you’ll be proud.
2. Find your top influencers, and on which platforms. Some personal brands are popular on Twitter, others on Instagram, others on Snapchat. Find the top influencers in their channels and mix it up a bit. This way you’ll reach more people in a similar niche.
3. Build a partnership. Create a contract that benefits you and your influencer. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but a legal agreement is key!
4. Compensation. This doesn’t have to be a flat rate. Think about affiliate programs (where the influencer will receive commission on each item of yours sold through them), giveaways, shout outs, and other creative methods that help each other out.

 GAP & Judith Hill

Why is it important?

Data shows us why it’s important to consider influencer marketing. Both small businesses and startups can greatly benefit from simple exposure with influencers.

• Businesses make $6.50 for every dollar invested in influencer marketing (Tomoson)
• Engagements through influencers are 16x higher than other paid media (Visually)
• 40% of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine, or YouTube (Annalect)
• 47% of online consumers use ad blockers, giving brands and businesses even more reason to put their dollars behind influencers instead. Influencers are the ones holding everyone’s attention. (Forbes.com) 

When should I do Influencer Marketing?

As a small business, it’s best to implement influencer marketing when you plan to push something hard. A new product launch, having or sponsoring an event, or you’re a seasonal service are all great examples of when influencers would be beneficial.

Larger companies such like L’Oreal have a five member beauty squad with a high count of followers on Youtube promoting their events and products. Boxed Water also leverages the use of influencers on Instagram to help raise awareness of their philanthropic campaign. Even cities are starting to use influencers to bring their followers to their cities and boost local economies.

Naked & Kate.Lavie