“What is Influencer Marketing?”
Influencer marketing focuses on using key social media influencers, bloggers, and thought leaders who have a trusted voice to drive a brand’s message, inspiring action amongst a particular target audience through authentic storytelling and influencer generated content.
It also allows you to inspire engagement and sharing of your message by tapping into the relationships that have already been developed between the influencer and their audience.
Influencer marketing is a hugely powerful marketing tool and this is supported by some impressive stats such as:
- Influencer Marketing Campaigns Earn $6.50 for Every Dollar Spent.
- One in three consumers trust influencer opinions and recommendations when making purchase decisions.
- 94% of those who have used influencer marketing believe it to be effective.
- 83% of consumers take action because of trusted recommendations.
- 54% of purchasing decisions are caused by word of mouth and influencer marketing allows you to take advantage of this.
- Branded created ads are only trusted by 1% of millennials, meaning authentic content from social media influencers is essential.
The Key Components for a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign
1. Setting clear objectives and defining your target audience
Setting out clear objectives at the start of your influencer marketing campaign will allow you to build a strategy that will reach your goals. Outline what you want to achieve from your influencer marketing campaign e.g. more website traffic, brand awareness of a certain range, sales, downloads on an app etc? Then outline what’s your desired outputs from the influencer activity such as content types, social channels, tone of voice, messaging, information etc. Then outline how this influencer activity will affect your target audience and how will it impact your brand.
Another essential element at this stage is drawing out your target audience and ensuring you have a detailed picture of who they are and who influences them. Having a detailed picture of your perfect customer will allow you to better understand what influencers, content and channels will resonate with them best.
2. Research and validate
Identifying the right influencers is integral to your campaign, with 75% of marketers identifying it as their biggest challenge. Not all influencers are created equal, and knowing the difference between micro, power-middle, and top-tier influencers will help to determine who is right for your campaign.
It’s also essential to work out which influencers are most likely to resonate with your target audience. Don’t focus on quantity of followers and focus on the quality of an influencers community who demonstrate a proven ability to engage with their followers, and inspire them to take action. The effectiveness of influencers is determined by engagement, clicks and conversions, not by their follower count.
Ensure at this stage that you validate the influencers, ensuring they are delivering great content, they engage with their audience, they have a true following and fit with your brand.
3. Quality Content
When it comes to content creation, it’s essential that the influencers are fully briefed by the brand so they are aware of key product information, messaging, do’s, don’ts, objectives, deliverables, narrative etc. It is however vital to give the influencer space to produce content that resonates with their audience as they will know how best to curate and deliver this in an engaging way. Influencers are effective storytellers, having amassed their following as a result of their ability to emotionally connect with and understand their followers. Stories can affect consumers far more than billboards, statistics, or discount offerings. Information is better retained when its consumed in story-form.
Having a clear call-to-action (CTA) is essential when it comes to influencer marketing and it should be short, direct and actionable. A strong CTA compels consumers to take the further action desired of them, whether it’s visiting a landing page in order to learn more about the product or brand, signing up for a mailing list, a giveaway, a coupon, or making a purchase.
4. Amplify Content
Its important to understand that using influencers alone wont drive sales for your business and that they need to be used in conjunction with other marketing channels to convert your target audience into customers. An essential part of this is having social media re-marketing in place to educate the people who have shown an interest via the influencer activity into a purchase.
To get influencer content to a wider or more specific target audience, you can also put paid amplification in place across Facebook and Instagram. 51% of marketers that repurpose influencer content report that it outperforms brand-created content. High-impact recommendations, like those from a friend or trusted influencer, are 50 times more likely to trigger a purchase than low-impact recommendations, like ads in a magazine.
5. Tracking your ROI
It’s imperative when working with influencers to have a strong tracking mechanism in place such as:
· Trackable links so you can measure traffic, engagement and conversions
· Driving your audience through to a branded landing page
· Affiliate codes
· Hashtags
· Tie Influencer Activities To Performance Channels
· Social Media Analytics And Referrals
· Measure Campaign Engagement via Clicks, Likes, Reactions, and Shares
Are you struggling at making influencer and social media marketing work for your business?
We would love to show you how you can generate mass awareness, sales and leads for your business through our FREE audit and bespoke strategy! Schedule a call with us by emailing info@hoopla-marketing.com today to speak to an influencer marketing specialist.