Whenever you come across Beats by Dre, and you are wondering what makes it so popular? Well, this is because celebrities like The Kardashians and LeBron James have appeared on TV saying “you have to use these headphones, it’s pretty cool”. What just happened there is influencer marketing. Making use of influencers for brand awareness has become a norm in this global age. This is because they have a wide reach through a variety of social media platforms. They promote products either by storytelling, video, or pictures.
With influencer marketing, you can achieve the following:
- Drive sales
- Gain more leads in your business
- Grow your social media following
- Build a consumer’s trust
- Reach a larger audience
Most importantly, influencer marketing goes beyond gaining a wider reach or engagement. It is the ability to directly get through to consumers who want and who need to know about your business. Influencer marketing now drives up to 71% of sales for business because it is a powerful tactic.
Now is the time to leverage it for your brand. Those who have never used influencer marketing will have questions like; How much does it cost? How can I get the right influencer? How can I achieve a return on investment? Even though it may look confusing, it is not hard at all. Here are a few effective steps to help you with your campaign.
1. Have an End Goal
Before you even start looking for influencers, you need to identify the goal of your campaign. This will help you determine the overall success of it. What is your aim? Do you want to promote a new product? Do you want to drive sales? Or are you only trying to put your brand out there? Once you have an end goal, you can attach 3-4 Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for each of them. Maybe you want to increase your social media coverage; there should be an outline of these goals.
2. Pick the Right Social Media Platforms
Whichever social media channel you decide to use will depend on your goals. Social media platforms convey different feelings for their users. It is a known fact that beautiful pictures thrive on Instagram, while quality and interesting videos do well on Facebook. Each channel has its own pros and cons. It would help if you did extensive research into what platform your target audience spends most of their time.
3. Pick the Right Influencers
This is not as hard as it looks. You need to pick an influencer that has a solid following on social media. They must possess the credibility and expertise to recommend your product. Influencer marketing has gone beyond celebrity marketing. Consumers need to connect with your brand. Your focus should be on authentic, passionate, and sincere influencers with loyal followings who churn out beautiful content and engage their followers on a personal level.
While searching for brand influencers, you can use the following criteria:
Size of Audience: This is not the most important factor, but you can use it as a factor. In fact, there are situations where it will make more sense to collaborate with a content creator that has a following of 15,000 that it does to working with a celebrity that has up to 6 million following. This is because the former is likely to have more engagement with their audience. Brand influencers that really interact with their audience usually have between 15,000-120,000 followers not in the millions.
Target Audience: You need to be sure that their followers are your target audience
Relevancy: Your market has to be relevant to their audience to drive sales
Consistency: You need to choose an influencer that their tone, look, and feel are appropriate to promote your brand.
4. Let Your Brand Be an Experience
After choosing the best influencer for your brand, your brand needs to come alive. Attach an experience or emotion to your business. Let your influencers partake in the experience and share with all their followers by creating content around how to use your products.
5. Support a Social Cause with Your Influencers
Social cause marketing is an effective way of building customers’ trust, brand protection, and, boosting your brand perception. According to research by Cone Communications, 80% of consumers are willing to buy from a brand they do not know if they support a social cause or fulfill social responsibilities.
Combining this with influencer marketing will promote your business. Get your influencers to promote a cause that will resonate with your audience. A perfect example is GUESS Denim Day. It started in 2014 by a brand as a way to show support to survivors of sexual violence by wearing denim on April 27th. This is still in practice until today.
6. Collaborate
For brand growth, you can take your relationship with your influencers to the next level through effective collaboration. The truth is these influencers understand their audience better, so they know what interests them. An example is Kanye West’s collaboration with Adidas. This collaboration produced the popular Yeezy Sneakers. You can also achieve the same results.
7. Develop a Hashtag
You can get more people talking about your brand by developing a hashtag that your influencers will promote. Let your influencers promote and share them either through posts, giveaways, and contests. It will open a dialogue with consumers, and this will help your business get more recognition.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a great way of gaining exposure for your brand. You need to work with influencers that can help you achieve your business goals. However, don’t forget to measure your growth after launching your campaign
Authored by guest contributor Kathrin Garner
Kathrin Garner is an enthusiastic journalist and writes an article on social issues. As an activist, she takes part in the FV KASA program, which is a discussion platform on the relevant cannabis topics. So, if you want to know the best way to detox your body and hair follicles in a short time, feel free to contact her. Also, she is a volunteer at Marijuana Detox. She searches for current issues and writes about it to a wide range of readers.