Influencer marketing is a type of marketing where brands collaborate with popular people for increased brand exposure. Social media is at its boom and thus, influencer marketing is also reaching new heights. According to marketers, it is a very cost-effective approach for marketing.
Let us now dive into the world of influencers to know them better. The following article will help you to know what is influencer marketing and how to do it.
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Who are influencers?
Influencers are the people who can affect decision-making. They have authority and knowledge about the niche, therefore, hold a respectable position. They have built strong relationships with the audience.
They not only are the best marketing tools for a brand but also social proof for the audience. The impact of influencers is much more than any other type of advertisement.
Types Of Influencers
based on the number of followers there are four types of influencers. influencer marketing however is still a game of followers. let’s discuss:
- Nano influencers:
They are considered friends of the audience rather than public figures. Their followers range from 1000 to 10,000. Nano influencers have the highest engagement rates.
They are easy to work with and have many advantages for influencer marketing campaigns. They are cost-effective and have the most filtered and relevant audiences. They are the best for higher ROI.
- Micro-influencers:
Micro-influencers have a wider audience than nano-influencers. Their followers range from 10,000-100,000. They can reach a wider and yet filtered audience. They are regarded as industry experts or niche specialists. They also have a strong relationship with the audiences.
- Macro influencers:
These are popular public figures. the followers range between 100,000 to 1 million. These have gained popularity by creating content on various social media platforms. When you want to target a particular customer type but a wider audience than Marco influencers are a perfect choice.
- Mega influencers:
These are the top-notch influencers having followers of more than 1 million. These are celebrities from the film or sports etc. industries who have a genuine fan base. Since they have such a huge following they are the most expensive influencers.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is the process of identifying, researching, engaging, supporting, and creating content that can impact a wider audience. This type of marketing strategy where marketers use key leaders to drive their brand’s message is influencer marketing.
According to experts influencer industry was worth $ 16.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow up to $21.1 billion in 2023. Currently, social media users have increased to 6.5% and reached 4.89 billion in 2023.
Why Do Influencer Marketing?
There are many reasons why you should choose influencer marketing as your marketing strategy. The massive growth of user influence is a golden asset for the marketing industry. Some advantages of influencer marketing are as follows:
- Increase brand awareness: When influencers make content featuring your brand. This will increase your brand awareness by engaging people constantly with the influencer’s content.
- Get new customers: Influencers can reach those customers who were not aware of your services and turn visitors into customers.
- Social proof: 61% of people rely on influencer recommendations. Influencers work as social proofs for your brand and help to build better customer relationships.
- Cost-effective: Influencer marketing doesn’t require a lot of investment. Therefore small businesses can also get significant returns from them.
Types Of Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Marketers often practice different types of marketing strategies. To decide which type of marketing technique will benefit you first you should know different types of marketing. Let us discuss some of them here.
Giveaways:
The brand gives influencers an offer to give the product for free to a few of their followers. This type of campaign results in the mutual benefit of the brand, influencer, and targeted leads. The most common and effective type of influencer marketing.
Social media takeovers:
When influencers seize the social media handle of a brand and post is called takeover marketing. This happens for a short period only say for a day or week. This requires trustworthy influencers with loyal followers.
Affiliate marketing:
If you want a campaign with the least investments then affiliate marketing is an option. With this, you can have as many influencers as you want to work for you. The influencers will get a commission per sale. This is also a tactic to increase sales.
Guest blogging:
Getting blog entries for your brand’s sites or requesting blog posts at the influencer’s blog corners for your brand is called guest blogging. This is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness.
Pre-release campaigns:
Creating excitement and hype up the launch of any new product is very important for the current marketing strategies. This becomes easy and effective when brands collaborate with influencers.
Discount codes campaigns:
Giving discount codes to the influencers which they share with audiences. This is a more sales-oriented campaign. This improves your brand’s authority.
How To Do Influencer Marketing?
We have till now discussed the basic idea of influencer marketing. The next comes is the process of strategizing your influencer marketing campaign. Here are some steps that can help to get the most out of your influencer campaigns. Let’s start:
1. Know your goals:
Identifying why you want influencer marketing is the most important step fur strategizing your marketing. The general goal a business has for influencer marketing is to increase brand awareness, boost sales, gain authority and trust, etc.
2. Select your audience:
A product is not for everybody. Suppose you are a business selling baby care products then you should only be targeting mothers or would-be mothers. Similarly, choose the ideal audience to target.
3. Choose an influencer:
Survey and analyze current popular influencers for your niche. According to your requirement and based on the goals select the best influencers who can prove to be the best for your brand.
4. Budget:
Once you have decided who can be your influencer, understand the payment structure. Figure out the investment required and how much can you afford for this influencer marketing strategy and make a budget.
5. Review and monitor:
The key for every marketing strategy to be effective is to constantly review and monitor the metrics of the outcomes. Check how the audience is responding, the sale and engagements after the campaign is live, etc.
These five steps can help you to make a perfect influencer marketing plan for your brand. These are the basics of any kind of marketing strategy.
Common Mistakes For Influencer Marketing
Nothing can be perfect but everything can be almost perfect. Marketers can do some small mistakes which can result in use loss. Here are some mistakes marketers make while making a plan for influencer marketing.
1. Not able to set clear goals for the campaign. Marketers often make mistakes of not defining a proper goal. This lead to an unsatisfactory result and low return on investment.
2. Marketers often focus on the quantity of leads rather than quality leads. They overlook the nano and micro-influencers. This results in a low return on investment.
3. While choosing an influencer brand may forget to consider the person’s past collaborations. You should not hire anyone who has worked with your competitors. This may affect your company’s reputation.
4. Many companies provide a weak brief of the product or service, this becomes a problem for the influencers to create creative promotional content.
5. Markets observe the results but often don’t analyze them. monitoring and analyzing the effectiveness of the campaign will lead to new campaign opportunities.
6. Before choosing an influencer check whether they have genuine followers. Having a big number of fake followers will not be helping in any way.
Tools For Influencer Marketing
Finding and managing influencers can be a big task for companies. To ease this there are many tools to manage and help you plan influencer marketing strategies.
1. UpInfluencer:
UpInfluencer is an influencer-finding and managing software. The software provides a Chrome plugin with analytics for any influencers from all the social media accounts they have. It has an AI that indexes and updates the profile in real time. You can narrow the influencers list by searching with the keywords.
2. Hype Auditor:
the hype auditor tool has over 78 million+ profile choices. you can refine this list by using filters. it provides a comprehensive set of tools and reports to analyze the influencers. the AI-based campaign management solution helps businesses to create, manage and automate campaigns.
3. Hootsuite:
Hootsuite is a social media management platform. the platform has all the features you may need to manage your social presence. it helps to create, schedule, and manage your social media ad campaigns across any social media platform.
4. BuzzSumo:
BuzzSumo is an all-in-one cloud-based system that helps to make your influencer marketing opportunities more effective. It helps to find new keywords, trending stories, customer queries, etc. and monitors the most important metrics for your brand.
The tool figures out and gives the list of the top 10 most relevant influencers for your niche. You can also see how the audiences react to the influencer’s content.
5. PitchBoard:
the main focus of the pitch board tool is to get new audiences for the business campaigns. the tool has AI algorithms that help to scan through the influencer’s data and find the most compatible audience for your campaign. it also gives real-time reports about the post engagements and cost per engagement.
PitchBoard can work with other influencer marketing tools and give the best possible results. you can submit your campaigns for review and the PitchBoard team will provide you with an in-depth report about your campaign performance.