Social media has become prevalent across the world. People of all age groups, whether we talk about teens, adults, and even the elderly, have started using platforms like Facebook and Twitter to stay connected to their family and friends, learn about the latest trends, get news, or voice their opinions. This is why social media marketing and influencer marketing have become so effective today.
The following are some stats that show why influencer marketing is so popular:
- Influencer marketing is attracting investors from different industries today as it’s projected to clock at a value of over 10 billion USD value by 2020 (adweek)
- A whopping 39% of Instagram users are influencers! (influencerdb)
Brand Promotion with Influencer Marketing
If you want to leverage influencer marketing and increase your ROI, then follow these steps:
Create a Plan
It’s a bad idea to go ahead with influencer marketing without any plan or goals. So, you should start with the objectives- what do you want from influencer marketing? Do you want higher sales or more brand visibility? How much budget do you have for the marketing and how much revenue are you looking to generate? These are some of the questions you need to have clear answers of before you get started.
Avoid Low-Quality Influencers
You will find numerous influencers who are in the game just for the money. These are the users who are influencers just for the sake of it, i.e. they don’t really care about helping others by offering valuable insights and information. Many of these don’t even have real followers who look up to them. Instead, they buy these followers from fake accounts and paid services.
If you want your marketing efforts to get the best results, then you should pick your influencers carefully. Find the ones who have a reputation in the industry and are known to be experts in what they do.
Use Social Media to Communicate with Influencers
Social media offers many opportunities for you to identify and engage with appropriate influencers. You can find those who have tons of followers and publish content that’s relevant to your niche, and engage with them. For instance, you can comment on their posts and share the same with your own followers while complimenting their work. Doing this can give you an opportunity to contact them for actual collaboration. For instance, once your connection with them becomes strong, you can leave them a message asking if they would like to cover an exclusive product that you are about to launch soon.
Social listening tools can also help a lot in finding the best influencers. This is because they can inform you when someone mentions your brand on social media. So, you can identify the users that are actively sharing positive content about your company and support them for more promotion.
Understand Your Value
For the influencers to take interest in you and promote your brand with more dedication, you must first know the value that you bring to the table. For instance, you can ask yourself, what can you offer the influencers in return? The answer to this question could be anything- a guest post on your blog that can allow them to reach a new market, or an exclusive interview with your company’s CEO that they can share on their platforms to attract new users.
Host Giveaway Contests to Increase Engagement
One of the best ways to leverage influencer marketing is to launch giveaway contests with them in which you can giveaway goodies and free subscriptions to your services to the winners. These can increase brand engagement and attract new users towards your brand.
There are many social media giveaway tools that allow you to launch fun contests and track the engagement activities so that you can identify the users that are participating by following the rules. You can also record their contact details with these tools so that they can be added to your database.
The following are some of the products that you can use:
- Woobox
- Shortstack
- Wishpond
- Rafflecopter
- Pagemodo
- SnapApp
Influencer Marketing ServicesInfluencer marketing is powerful but it’s also quite tricky. There are many factors that you need to consider and many things to get right for the overall system to work. For instance, from finding the right influencers to establishing deep connections, there are many things you have to manage. This is why it’s better if you can simply find an influencer marketing services provider who can manage everything for you. This way, you can work on building your business and let professionals worry about improving your brand image in the market.