Influencer marketing has grown exponentially in recent years. In this type of marketing, brands collaborate with popular social media accounts within their niche to promote their business message to a larger audience. Rather than marketing directly to your current audience, you work with relevant influencers to promote your products or services. 

Different types of influencers:

• Celebrities and cewebrities
  • Have 1M followers or more
  • Celebrities are famous for reasons outside social media, such as movies, tv shows, music, or sports personalities.
  • Cewebrities become famous online but now are universally recognized.
  • These influencer types, represented by talent agencies, charge per post. 
• Macro-influencers
  • Have between 10K and 1M followers
  • Macro influencers become popular thanks to social media.
  • They are local celebrities whose renown is amplified by social tools or digitally-famous category experts.
  • Some may charge per post, while others are open to trade. 
• Micro-influencers
  • Have less than 10K followers
  • These small influencers are numerous and often too fragmented for you to manage in a high-touch manner. A majority of them gain popularity exclusively through social media.
  • Because of their smaller audience size, many recognize they cannot command a pay-per-post payment model, particularly with large businesses. They are more likely to work on a performance basis and open to trade. 
• Organic influencers
  • Any number of followers
  • These influencers represent true earned media. They feel a strong affinity to your business and continually say good things about it, unprompted, even if not paid for mentions.

How to Find Influencers and Build Relationships

The first step in finding an influencer is to do research. You’ll need to know your target audience, what content they enjoy, and where they spend their time online. Use this information to help you decide which type of influencer is best suited to partner with your business.

Now that you know what type of influencer you want to find, you can move forward with picking one that is the right fit for your business. Ask yourself the following questions when reviewing your influencer picks:

• Do they have an adequate following to convey your message (look for quality here, not just quantity!)? 
• Do people engage with their content?
• Does this influencer provide a high chance of conversion for your buisness? 

Influencers are often overwhelmed by the number of businesses trying to work with them, so you want to stand out. Gain their attention by building a rapport before approaching them to work with your company. Share their posts, sign up for their newsletter, and ask them to be featured in some of your content. This puts you on their radar and will increase your chances of working with them, as you won’t be just another business in their inbox when you reach out to them.

Before teaming up with your influencer, decide what a successful campaign will look like. What do you want to achieve from this campaign - conversions, traffic, shares, or business awareness? Put your campaign objectives in writing and share them with the influencers you work with so that you are both on the same page. 

The last step is to determine your strategy. Knowing what you’re trying to achieve will make it easier to determine what content your influencer should create. Will you need the influencer to create a video, social competition, podcast, or blog post? Share your key performance indicators, how you want the message portrayed, and any specific requirements for the campaign, and work with the influencer to brainstorm tactics that would be most appropriate for their platform. Give the influencer some creative freedom throughout the process to ensure the content is authentic. 

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing offers a great return on investment! According to a study on the state of influencer marketing, businesses, on average, make $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. This is an incredible return on investment that has more marketers planning on increasing their influencer marketing budget.

It also adds authenticity to your business. Influencers amplify your business reach on social and add an element of authenticity to your message. Content created by influencers is not yet held to that level of scrutiny and is seen as more organic, even when “#ad” or “#sponsored” is included. It’s significantly more powerful to have a person that a consumer admires say that your business is great, than for you to say it!

Influencer marketing also increases engagement and business awareness. A successful campaign can result in more people becoming aware of your business, more visitors to your website, more people signing up for your newsletter, or more people following you on social media platforms, depending on your campaign goals. On top of this, you’ll also benefit from something that’s a little harder to measure; how people feel about your business. If you pick the right influencer for your niche, you’ll find that you can earn respect through association.

If you work with influencers, tell us more about your experience! If you’d like to learn more about how we can connect you with relevant influencers, learn more about our services at francesroy.com.