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Marketing strategies always require creative and newer forms of tactics to be effective in the scenario.
To get a more targeted audience, business owners are trying various sorts of marketing strategies and one of them is influencer marketing.
So, there are certain ways by which we know how to build an influencer marketing strategy to give more advantage than any other marketing strategy. Before diving into the sea let’s get some basic knowledge of influencers and their marketing.
Who Are Influencers?
Before jumping into what influencer marketing really means, first let’s have a look at the issue of who these influencers are and what are their capabilities.
Basically influencers are people who are not necessarily considered to be celebrities. They are particularly specialised in something and share their content online.
And people find some knowledge from there and they become fans of their content as well that person.
The first thing is, they possess a certain type of power, and the purchasing decisions of lots of people can be affected by that power and also by the authority, knowledge, relationship and position that they hold or have with the audience.
That’s not all, they regularly engage with this audience and remain active in communication with them.
Of course, the size of the audience is not going to be the same in every case. However, one common thing is that this audience is really interested in a particular influencer and would highly like to get suggestions regarding various issues, lifestyles and many other things.
We have to keep in mind the fact that there are always reasons for which an influencer can actually be an influencer, having an audience with him/her.
The audience just don’t follow them for no reason, rather they highly care about the opinions the influencer makes.
While doing marketing in affiliation with influencers, we cannot just foist rules and business practices onto them. Because we have to keep in mind that they can just walk away from us, the marketers, taking their followers with them as well.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Now that we know who the influencers are, let’s get back to what influencer marketing really is.
So, to put it in a very simple way, it’s actually nothing but collaborating with an influencer, mostly an online one who will be assisting to market a product or service of a particular brand or company.
As it has already been mentioned, an influencer will always have an audience, comprising hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.
However, what is really interesting here is the fact that, in spite of having a specific type of reputation.
They might not really seem to be like celebrities, rather they might appear just as a normal human being.
However, remember that this influencer who might be a photographer or a chef, an instagram model or a well-read cybersecurity blogger, or a respected marketing executive on linkedIn, he/she is an influential person.
That’s because his/her audience always depends on this influencer’s opinions or statements regarding a particular issue.
Influencer Marketing Statistic:
The recent trend that has been started regarding the influencer marketing stuff, is not something to be surprised at all.
Because the surveys and data collected from many sources show, it is very clear how important influencer marketing really is.
Considering the ongoing trends and competitiveness prevailing in the current business world.
For example, 80% marketers reported that they think influencer marketing is really effective, while 89% said that they believe this type of marketing works just as well, if not better, than the other marketing channels.
Also, 71% marketers think that the customers and traffic that they get from influencer marketing is better than the other sources, based on quality factors.
Not only do marketers think of influencer marketing as a significant aspect, the customers are also really into influencer marketing.
For instance, 49% of customers today depend on the recommendation of the influencers for their purchase decisions, and 60% reported that they have already been influenced by some influencers while shopping on-store in one way or the other.
Here’s another thing, in the last three years, the Google search for influencer marketing increased up to 1500%.
Researches show that influencer marketing strategies that are focused on either branding or engagement, generate an 8x return on investments.
Do keep in mind that, there are top three goals of influencer marketing, increasing the brand awareness (85%), reaching out to new audiences (71%), and finally generating new sales and conversions (64%).
How to Build An Influencer Marketing Strategy With 7 Steps
While trying to implement this influencer marketing in our own business, we must create our own strategy so that it works out ultimately as a beneficial thing.
Otherwise, we might not be able to effectively utilise it, without having a certain type of plan.
1. Determining The Campaign Goals
The first step is to create definite goals for the influencer marketing strategies so that we can measure the success of our various campaigns.
While doing this, we must stick to thinking about our objectives in terms of SMART goals. There are basically three factors to keep in mind, reach, relevance and resonance.
Reach is all about if we are being able to deliver our product or service to our targeted customers through the assistance of the influencer.
As it improves the brand awareness as well as product reputation, it’s a significant factor.
Relevance is basically the extent to which the potential or existing customers will feel connected to your product due to particular activities done by the influencer.
It helps to figure out how to increase brand loyalty.
For example, when a person sees that the influencer he/she follows uses a product for skin care, chances are there that the person himself/herself might start feeling interested or a strong connection to use the product as well.
Finally, resonance is the ability to drive the people belonging to the audience of an influencer. To undertake a specific action with the help of the influencer’s content, it’s all about the memorability and impact.
Resonance will help to increase the number of your customers and followers of your product, drive more traffic to your website and boost conversations to a great extent if done properly.
2. Defining The Campaign Audience
It doesn’t matter which type of influencer we are working with, ultimately the target audience of ours are going to be basically the same.
Of course different influencers will connect to the audience by following different ways, but our business’s buyer persona and overall marketing goals are not going to be changed.
So before we start communicating with the influencer, first we have to get to know our ultimate target who are our customers.
We have to conduct thorough research done by our marketing team to develop and learn about the buyer persona correctly.
The reason why we should do it properly is that it will contribute to identifying the exact features of our customers.
And only after knowing that we will be able to make a decision about what kind of influencer might be best suitable to be effective to influence them to buy our products.
In addition, what kind of content presented by the influencers might feel most appealing to them.
3. Setting The Budget and Choosing The Influencer Type
There are different types of influencers out there, like micro influencer, celebrity influencer, blog influencer, social media influencer, KOL.
Now which type of these is going to be the best for your business depends on the fact that in which stage your business is.
For example, if it’s a start-up that you’ve just started with a low budget, you might want not to spend a lot of money after influencer marketing and choose to work with a micro influencer in the scenario.
4. Choosing The Influencer and Reviewing His/Her Work
So till now, we know which type of influencer we are going to work with.
Now the time has come to choose the right type of influencer to serve the ultimate purpose.
While trying to search for the influencer who is going to be the best, we have to consider some factors.
For example, analyse the fact that if the lifestyle and personality image of the influencer has really gone along with our own brand image or not.
Also, we have to ask ourselves some questions.
- If the influencer previously worked with any of our competitors or not?
- Who are the influencer’s existing followers?
- the target audience of ours?
- if they are active on the same channel as the influencer or not?
- Does the budget actually fit in to work with that influencer?
- What are the expectations that the influencer has from us? etc.
While trying to find the answers to these questions, it’s pretty much sure that finally the right type of influencer will be found by us.
5. Developing the Campaign Messaging For Your Influencer:
After choosing the influencer, now it’s time to sit with the marketing team and finalise what the message is going to be like.
That message you will try to be shared by the influencer, or what kind of content the influencer should or should not publish.
So that the influencer can remain on-brand with your content.
You have to provide him/her with your brand guideline which will include various stuff like brand voice, tag lines, and the types of languages that should be avoided and so on.
No matter how many times the influencer posts about your product or service.
You cannot forget that, after all, it’s your own brand that is being represented.
So you must ensure that it is being done rightfully and to help the influencer do so.
You have to make sure that he/she has all the necessary tools.
6. Finalizing Campaign Expectations with Our Influencer
You have to make an overview of all the expectations that you have from the influencer to be able to successfully advertise our product, and also the expectations that the influencer might have from you.
We cannot forget the fact that the influencer could have worked with other businesses previously and might have his/her own ways to do stuff.
As some general points that you might want to put some focus on could be like:
- How are you going to pay or reward the influencer?
- How long are you planning to work with him/her?
- What is going to be the mode of communication between you and the influence?
- Are there any other terms of contract necessary for your particular business to review?
7. Rewarding Our Influencers:
Influencers are not going to work for free, of course, you must pay them for the effort they are going to put in.
While discussing it with them, decide which type of mode would be convenient for them.
Whether it’s money, swag (clothing, accessories, product samples), access to discount codes or coupons or any other way.
8. Measuring The Campaign Results:
After you are done with all this stuff.
Now you have to start measuring the results or the outcomes, and determine if they are actually satisfying your expectations or not.
To do so, there are lots of metrics out there to help you out.
For example, you have to keep an eye on the engagement that the audience is having with the influencer and the product,
You have to see how much reach your product or service is receiving from people through the influencer.
Also, don’t forget to learn about the resonance, the level of completing an action, like buying the product or using the service, done by people.
After they have been engaged with the influencer while advertising the product or service.
There are some other important metrics like brand awareness, clicks, conversions, return on investments, follower counts etc.
All these merics will help you to figure out if you are really on track to achieving your business goal or not.
7 Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Certainly, you can’t tune around your face from influencer marketing to digital marketing. Sometimes influencer marketing is far better than the regular and traditional marketing process.
So, let’s see some of the benefits of influencer marketing in 2022.
- Improve in the sales
- Help Customer to Take Purchase decision
- Increase the brand awareness and reach
- Improve the SEO, PPC and Website Traffic
- Improve the Content Marketing Strategy
- TIme Saving, Cost – effective and stary long period of time
- Increase the chance to share various social sharing site
1. Improve in The Sales
100% improve the sales if the influencers have the authority over their audience and you choose the perfect influencer for your targeted audience.
Most of the time the audience trusts their digital influence and they buy some for their his/her understanding.
So, it will improve your sales.
2. Help Customer to Take Purchase Decision
Oftentimes common have a tendency that if an audience follows a longer period of time and gives like and common on their content that means that influencer definitely makes a good impression on.
And now, if the influencer says some of the product and that audience are interested in buying then 100% sure he/she will buy from that source.
3. Increase The Brand Awareness And Reach
This sort of thing will happen automatically.
Because via influencers people will know about the brand and if you pick the right in influence according to your niche.
Then the chance is that people will start following you at that moment if your work is good enough to create some value for them.
4. Improve the SEO, PPC and Website Traffic
Influencer marketers in their content will talk about your website or products and for that audience to need to go to your website.
By this process, your website SEO boosts and more people know about your company or brand which is also a positive sign to get bounce traffic.
5. Improve The Content Marketing Strategy
Influencer marketing also helps to improve your content marketing plan, For example: if you want to create multiple contents for your website or video then you can create those videos and share them to your own channel and the influence channel as well.
So, you are also creating some of the content for your brand as well which stays for a long time.
6. Time Saving, Cost – Effective And Story Long Period of Time
Definitely, influencer marketing is time, cost-saving and gives more benefits for a long time.
For marketing, you need to have content that can be video, images, a Good amount of PPC, SEO knowledge and a targeted audience to spread your brand.
On the other hand, an influence marketer has already inbuilt an audience and the best thing is they are engaged with the influencer.
In addition, he is creating content for you if you can converse with him.
7. Increase The Chance to Share Various Social sharing Site
The positive sign is your promotion content can go viral and share most of the social media. An influencer is making content about your brand.
The chances are high to share various platforms and more people know about your products or brand.
Final Words:
There has been a constant rise in word-of-mouth marketing and social proof. With that, influencer marketing has also been on the focus, making the marketers interested in making an investment in this particular type of marketing. There is no denying the fact that influencer marketing is absolutely effective to improve our reach among potential customers. I hope through this article you now to How to Build an Influencer Marketing Strategy.