The following post comes to us from Keith Coppersmith, an experienced business consultant who serves small businesses and startups.
With potential earnings going over thousands per post, influencers are becoming the name of the game in the digital marketing world. Influencer marketing has a staggering 11 times bigger ROI than traditional or offline marketing, as reported by socialmediatoday.com.
Influencers are just starting to cash in on their ability to engage large audiences and to heavily impact the purchasing behavior of their followers. Almost 50% of customers depend on influencer recommendations and 40% of them have purchased something after seeing it on social media. This only shows the growing importance of social media influencers for brands to be able to connect with their target audience. If the consumers are feeling confident about an influencer’s recommendation, they are more likely to make a purchase, thus businesses are able to piggyback on this trust that influencers create.
But all these sparks of interests for influencers also creates a problem for marketers and brands alike – everyone is trying to win over the attention of the same influencers. For your brand to really stand out, you’ll need to employ greater efforts than just sharing their posts.
Go easy with the investments for the influencer
Before you start running with the wolves, be warned about not spending your entire online marketing budget on social media stars. Sure, spending $1 million on Kylie Jenner to post about your service or product may impact hundreds of thousands of people, but only for a few hours. Instead, think about where you can get the biggest bang for your buck and go for the influencers that will have the biggest impact.
The key here is to start investing carefully. Test, learn and then scale the process as it iterates on itself. Integrate the feedback as it comes through frequently, not just once every quarter. You can also use your product or service as a start of the payment since this can be an efficient way to influence the influencers buy-in, especially if the influencer is already using your brand.
When you offer gifts or a discount for their followers, be prepared to create a particular landing page or a discount code for each influencer. This will help with the tracking of the campaign’s success.
Organizing an event to attract influencers
Influencers are often a holy grail for event guests. Ranging from celebrities to social media stars, these attendees have the ability to share the event message in a wider circle and attract the right buzz for the event.
Great event management starts by inviting the influencers. Their decision about attending the event starts from the moment of receiving the invitation, which can be either positive or negative. Go for a hard invite, either through an email or a hand delivery. When you go for hand delivery, communicate with the recipient in advance to find out about the ideal time for them to accept delivery so that you don’t miss out on the moment. Electronic invites don’t receive the same response since they can be much more easily ignored.
Then make it personal for the influencer, since they will be more compelled to attend the event if they feel their presence is both valued and valuable to them as a person. Handpick your guest list instead of sending out a mass of invites. Then see which possible attendees are more receptive. We all have limited time on our hand and you want your guests to feel they have made the right choice with theirs.
Using your content as an incentive
Influencers growth in worth will jump from $2 billion in 2017 to $10 billion in 2020. One way of capitalizing on this is by using your content to approach influencers.
First, make your content stand out. By having high-quality content, you will not only attract influencers but also anyone else interested in your niche. Go for comprehensive resources that other bloggers will have a hard time replicating. If it really is something of value to your influencers’ followers, they may feel compelled to share it even without you asking for it.
Secondly, share their own content. If they just posted something new, they’ll probably watch the analytics closely. Use notifications or add their blog to your RSS feed in order to be the first to share the content after it’s published.
Lastly, comment and link to their content. By commenting on their blog, they may see you as a conversation starter and will surely appreciate it. Link to their content from your own pages, and they will see your domain shown up in their backlink statistics. Which will make them curious about the context of the link and then they’ll probably go directly to your site. If by chance your links start generating some traffic for them, they surely won’t forget it.
Approach your targeted influencers carefully, do a few favors for them by sharing and commenting, and when you invite them to your event, they may just share a great story about you and your brand.
Have you had success with promoting your business or event through influencer marketing? What are your hesitations for jumping on this growing trend?
Share your insights by leaving a comment below!
About the Author: Keith Coppersmith is an Adelaide based business consultant with a degree in Media Management. With experience in numerous small businesses and startups, he enjoys giving advice on all things marketing.
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