In the age of social media, influencer marketing is a surefire way to expand your brand’s reach on digital platforms. There are no one-size-fits-all approaches to executing this strategy for businesses, but proper planning and research can benefit. Let us look at how we can make an influencer plan work best for you!
What is Influencer Marketing?
Celebrity endorsements were the original form of influencer marketing. Influencers have a large following on social media or other platforms and can affect consumers’ buying decisions by promoting products/services with their personal brand.
Celebrities endorse companies to promote things like new clothing lines, makeup brands, etc. Meanwhile, micro-influencers (people with small followings) partner up for collaborations such as product reviews on YouTube channels. They post tutorials and vlogs about lifestyle topics related to beauty & fashion trends. Viewers purchase these items after watching them being used in videos.
In influencer marketing, that influential person collaborates with a brand to promote something. Celebrities are the original form of influencer endorser for brands and used since early times in product promotion.
Authentic influencers are modern-day celebrities. They have great relationships with their followers and always offer honest feedback about their endorsed product or service.
Types of social media influencers
There isn’t a strict cut-off for Instagram influencer audience size, but the general types of influencers are broken down as follows:
- Nano-influencers. This type of influencer has about 10,000 followers or less.
- Micro-influencers. This type of influencer has about 10,000 to 100,000 followers.
- Macro-influencer. This type of influencer has about 100,000 to 1 million followers.
- Mega-influencer. This type of influencer has about one million+ followers, and most of them are celebrities.
Cost of influencer marketing
Influencers with extensive reach rightly expect to be paid for their work. As a result, influencer campaigns require a budget, and large brands with celebrity influencers may have to allocate quite a lot of it! As a result, spending on influencer marketing will surpass $3 billion in 2021 and top out at over 4 billion dollars by 2022.
When creating a payment structure that will work for both you and an influencer, be willing to consider options other than flat fees or commissions. For example, offering a lower cost in exchange for the influencers committing to promote your brand regularly might make sense.
Micro-influencers and nano-influencers often have more flexible payment terms.
How to make a successful influencer marketing strategy
- Set your goals.
The most crucial goal of a brand’s influencer marketing campaign is to reach new target customers. This makes sense since an influencer campaign extends your reach to that person’s followers, thus achieving the people you hadn’t before.
However, it should be noted that simply reaching more people does not automatically translate into sales; in fact, it comes third on the list as driving revenue was only the fourth most popular outcome for brands involved with influencers.
- Study who you want to influence with your brand.
An effective influencer marketing strategy requires you to speak with the right people using the right tools—and reach them. Developing audience personas is an excellent way to ensure that you know who you’re talking to and how this could help your overall business goals.
- Know the rules.
One of the most important things to understand about influencer marketing is knowing how the rules surround it. In America, these are dictated by The Federal Trade Commission (FTC). For example, influencers must always disclose if a post was sponsored or not – however, they don’t always do this explicitly, and some disclosures can be complicated to notice.
To ensure that viewers understand when a post is sponsored, you should be clear and upfront about your content. The specific rules vary slightly by country, so make sure to check the requirements in your jurisdiction.
- Consider relevance, resonance, and reach.
Influencer marketing is a new, efficient way to get your brand in front of potential customers. Influencers need to have an audience that aligns with their target market, and they should be able to create a resonance that will increase engagement and reach 100k people or more through the influencer’s follower base.
The most important part of looking for an influencer is figuring out which relevant audience they can reach to resonate well with your brand. A small following may not be as effective if you’re trying to promote something. Still, it’s good enough when all you want the influencers’ help doing is engaging an interested and dedicated community on social media.
- Do extensive research.
To keep followers engaged, look for influencers who frequently post non-sponsored content as well. Without organic posts that users can interact with and engage with themselves, the follower count may not last long.