With an increase in the trend of social media, Influencer marketing is one of the most trending marketing techniques. As per a leading source, it is considered as one of the best marketing techniques to gain user from a particular niche. With over more than 23 million YouTube channels and over 1 billion active Instagram users, it is easier to find an Influencer in your own niche.
Who are Influencers? What is Influencer Marketing?
An influencer is a person having too many social media followers. They have enormous social media following and people tend to listen to their views and opinions and believe them. There are too many YouTube channels, each having more than 1 million subscribers. They are influencers in their niche.
While watching video on YouTube you must have seen YouTuber talking about any particular product of a particular brand. These YouTubers are approached by brands to promote their product, as they are influencers in their niche. They already have the target audience and hence brands find it easy to promote their products through them.
Influencer marketing is utilizing the reach of a current influencer who has pre-built followers and brand reputation in a particular niche to promote your brand or content with the motive of increasing brand visibility.
Influencer Marketing Strategies
1. Determine your goal
Before approaching any influencer, you should be clear with the goal, which you desire to achieve through influential marketing. You should keep one thing in mind that influencer marketing will not give you instant results. You may want to achieve either one or all of the below-mentioned goals:
- Brand Awareness: Brand awareness can be measured with the number of followers, likes, comments, and engagement to your social media links.
- Target a completely new audience group: If you are launching a new product or want to target a new segment of the audience
- Lead generation: If you are aiming for leads on your website or for your particular product
2. Choosing the correct Platform
It is very important to choose the right platform for your product. Before choosing the influencer, have a thorough market analysis for your target audience. See on which platform they are spending their maximum time. If you choose the wrong platform for your influencer marketing, the whole idea of the promotion will go wrong, as you will not get enough of targeted users.
3. Choosing the right Influencer
Choosing the right social media influencer for your marketing is key to influencer marketing strategy. Before selecting the influencer have a thorough check of his number of followers and his niche. An influencer 10k-100k follower is a good choice to start with. Choosing influencer in your niche will increase your reach to your target audience. For example, if you are someone, selling beauty products then a beauty vlogger or blogger would be the best fit for you as an influence.
You should be able to make your brand understand your influencer. The most important thing is that the audience should be able to connect with that person.
Best Practices for Influencer Marketing
1. Influencer making videos is the latest trend. More than reading people love to see videos and that create a longer impact on them. According to a source, 3 out of every 5 user goes or video content.
2. Have complete transparency with both your audiences and influencer. Choose influencers, who disclose the fact of paid sponsorship. This builds trust among users.
3. Look around you. Check what works for other brands. What strategy they are following or what type of content they are making to promote their product.
4. There are various software available, to help you find the best influencer in your niche. Brandwatch audiences, Traackr are few examples for the same.
5. Try collaborating with different influencers for different products. This will increase your reach of audience and will increase your brand awareness.
Conclusion:
Influencer marketing is an effective marketing technique if done with the right technique and influencer marketing strategy. Most of the top brands are following this marketing technique and generating high revenue. Social media is one of the strongest tools to convey your message and social media influencers can be of great benefit to your brand.
If you are unsure of your influencer marketing strategy then you may hire a good Influencer Marketing Agency. These agencies are highly skilled in influencer marketing management and will help you with everything from strategizing to implementing and tracking your results.