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Influencer Marketing  Influencer Marketing  Influencer Marketing  Influencer Marketing 

A guide to influencer marketing

If you seek a way to grab the attention of your customers, you shouldn’t look beyond someone who already has their attention. In short, you need influencers who can convey the image of your brand to the larger public of your potential target groups.

Any brand that uses endorsements and product placements from influencers is applying the influencer marketing tactic. The collaboration between a brand and an influencer is what indirectly helps the brand expand its community. An influencer does not necessarily mean a celebrity; he/she can be any one the following:

  • A person who has expertise in the field.
  • A blogger who may have thousands of followers.
  • A person with a niche audience
  • A celebrity
  • A social media influencer

Brands no longer have the centre stage; consumers do. To make it more interesting for the audience, there has been a shift from faceless sales executive to an authentic, familiar voice. A successful influencer can build authority, drive traffic to the sites, increase brand exposure and help connect with new audience groups.

Benefits of influencer marketing –

  1. Possibility for high ROI – The influencer chosen by the brand has an audience that aligns with your product, therefore having a high chance of conversion, which leads to higher return on investment.
  2. Higher reach – When the influencer recommends or mentions your product, it increases the brand’s visibility. With an interesting enough creative approach, more people might share it with their friends and your content can go viral, which results in higher reach.
  3. Build trust and credibility  – People follow certain influencers who they find interesting and relevant, so any recommendation from them is trustworthy and credible. In some cases, people are persuaded to buy whatever the influencer tells them to.
  4. Beats advertising blindness – People hate ads, they don’t like to be interrupted. However, when they follow certain influencers, they like hearing things from them and want to try the products that they suggest. This subsequently helps the brands, as they don’t have to push their product onto people’s faces, but the influencer pulls the audience towards them.
  5. Cheaper and more effective – Keeping celebrities aside, you pay a certain amount to the influencer who can produce similar, or sometimes better results. Most advertising tactics put a limit to your reach, but not with influencer marketing. It has the potential to be shared with a larger group than you expected.
  6. Enriches your content strategy – When you partner your brand with an influencer, both the influencer and the brand can co-create the content. If you fall short of ideas they can often help you, as they know what will attract users’ attention.

Most of the success from your influencer marketing campaign depends on the choice of influencers. If you make the right selection, the rewards are immense. Here is what you have to consider while choosing an influencer:

  • LOYAL FOLLOWERS – In order to advertise on an influencer marketing platform, it is not necessary to be a big brand. You don’t need influencers like Priyanka Chopra or Virat Kohli for your brand. The important metric to consider is follower loyalty. If you choose a person who has millions of followers but very few likes and comments, it means their followers aren’t loyal. When such an influencer says “buy this product or use this service,” very few will listen. However, if you choose a person who has loyal followers who genuinely show interest in what they say, there’s a higher chance of conversion. Always choose loyal following over larger following numbers when it comes to influencers. Do not decide based on how much they charge, but purely on the engagement they are getting.
  • RELATABLE – Choose people who are in tune with your brand. Mapping out the relevant context for your brand is essential to improve relevance in the target audience. A makeup brand looking for an influencer to create content for their social platforms must ensure that the influencer’s visual look suits their brand guidelines appropriately. A footballer cannot do it, the influencer has to be someone who already has an expertise in that field, and whom people look up to.
  • RESEARCH – It’s not just about choosing the best influencer, but it is essential to research about the person’s likes and dislikes. If an influencer has already mentioned that he/she doesn’t like chocolates, it is not accurate to take them as an influencer for a chocolate brand.

Success parameters to check whether influencer marketing is working for you:

  • Website Traffic – It is the most important KPI (key performance indicator) that can determine the success of your campaign. Measure the number of new users, how much time they spend on the site, visits from referrals and total page reviews.
  • Engagement Rates – Engagement is the actual interaction your content gets. To measure influencer engagement rates, keep a track of clicks, likes, shares, comments, reactions and brand mentions.
  • Conversion Rates – It’s not enough that people are visiting your site, it is important how many are actually converting into sales. Keep a track of all the conversions from your influencer engagement.
  • Sales – It is the basic yet the most important KPI of all. If your sales aren’t increasing, all of it will go in vain. There are multiple ways to increase the sales – such as discount coupons, referral links, promo codes and more.

We live in a time where choices are abundant and time is sparse. All the advertisements out there aren’t getting your customers attention. People want true stories from authentic people, for which influencers are the perfect choice. Influencer marketing opens up endless opportunities for brands to amplify their content, connect with customers and build relationships more organically. Always make sure to select the right influencers for your brand and focus on building long term relationships with them.