While struggling to learn Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing and SEO for your website, brand or product, there is a high chance you must have come across the term ‘Influencer Marketing’ somewhere. You may or may not be aware of this term but if you are looking for more clarification on the topic ‘Influencer Marketing’ then you are at the right place.
In this article we are going to discuss:
-Who is an influencer?
-What is Influencer marketing?
-How to find influencers?
-How to connect with influencers?
-How can it be useful for your brand?
1. Who is an influencer?
An influencer is someone who has the power to affect the purchasing decision of your potential customer because of his/her authority and popularity among the masses. An influencer may have huge followership in a distinct niche with whom he/she has a strong virtual connection. The size of the audience and followership of an influencer depend on his/her SM channel and content niche.
2. What is Influencer marketing?
Fundamentally, it’s a form of social media marketing where endorsement of brand and product is done by an influencer. So, Influencer Marketing is a brand’s engagement with an influencer to promote their product to his/her audience with the intention of growing sales and spreading brand awareness. It may sound simple, but the biggest challenge today in front of brands is to find the right influencer out of millions of bloggers, vloggers and content creators who all have a huge amount of followers based on social media. Let’s discuss the ways to find good influencers for your brand.
3. How to find influencers?
There was a time when only celebrities, influential thought leaders and opinion-makers were considered by brands to make them their brand ambassadors. But now with changing times and growing social media dynamics, SM influencers have emerged as good options for all big & small brands. Now the challenge is to find the right influencer for your brand promotions who can help to boost your sales and brand awareness among the audience. These steps may help you to pick the right person among millions of influencers over social media.
● Know your goals before starting: You must comprehensively define your goals before going to pick an influencer. Before starting you should be able to tell what you want to achieve from this marketing exercise. Whether it may be an increase in sales, more awareness of the brand or self-branding, you should be very clear in your plan.
● Scan your competitors: You should be aware that you are not alone on the battlefield of influencer marketing. There are many brands like yours who have already engaged some great influencers for their brand who might be doing well. So, after defining your goals, your second job is to scan brands like yours to find out what kind of influencers they are using and what results they are getting from it.
● Find influencer related to your industry & share the same audience: Your brand has a defined niche so your influencer should be from that specific niche only. You need an influencer who is already well known among the audience who have the same interest which your customers have. You can use monitoring tools or simply Google Alerts to know which influencer is regularly talking about the topics related to your industry and liked by the audience.
● Check Authority and track results: Don’t rush into a hurry to find an influencer for your brand, first evaluate the authority of the person and their platform. You need to Check & track the number of followers, quality of content, Alexa rankings and type of engagement of that influencer’s platforms. Also, check the previous metrics to see if they have done endorsement for any brand then what was the result.
4. How to connect with influencers?
There are numerous tools and websites available on the internet which can help you to get the right influencers. They should match your requirements and the interest of your potential customers. You need to look, find, evaluate, analyze and compare the most suitable influencer using these tools. Sign-up on these tools and have a close eye on top bloggers, vloggers, content creators, publishers and social media influencers.
You can use tools like:
BuzzSumo, Alexa’s Audience Interest Tool, GroupHigh, TapInfluence, Influencity
Also, you can easily find influencers in your niche by going through this in-depth guide.
5. How ‘Influencer Marketing’ is useful for your brand?
A clearly defined and strategically planned influencer marketing campaign can achieve something for your brand that other digital marketing methods can’t. It can quickly build trust for your brand and improve brand awareness among masses. Through an influencer, you can effectively reach your target audience and convert them into leads by providing them with great value. Influencer marketing can be incredibly rewarding for your startup brand or your new product.
So, follow all the above steps, define your goals today, prepare a plan and go for ‘Influencer Marketing’.