Can Influencers Be The Missing Ingredient In Your Marketing Strategy?

The rise of marketing and e-commerce has been one of the most significant developments of the past decade. This has been driven by the growth of the internet, with more and more people relying on online trends and adverts for their purchasing needs. As a result, businesses invest in online marketing strategies such as social media management, email marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and many others to drive traffic and reach wider audiences. 

We know you’re working hard on establishing your brand. You’ve spent a lot of time pinning down your business goals and brainstorming ways to get ahead of your competitors. But if you’ve tried various marketing strategies and are still falling short of your expected outcomes, perhaps Influencer Marketing is the answer to boost your brand.

What is an Influencer?

An influencer is someone with an established online reputation because of their expertise on a specific topic or niche. 

Influencer Marketing Hub defined it as “someone who has the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience”.

This can range from artists (athletes, musicians, pop-culture celebrities, etc.) to bloggers and content creators, and industry leaders and experts (journalists, academics, professional advisors, etc.). 

More businesses are employing the power of influencers to further breach communication gaps between brands and their consumers. This strategy is dubbed ‘Influencer Marketing’ and is becoming an increasingly popular way to skyrocket brand reputation and sales.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing focuses on using key opinion leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead focus on targeting a smaller group of influential people. 

These influencers may have a large social media following or they may be well-connected in their industry. The goal is simple: to get these influencers to share your content, do a review on your product, or promote your services to their followers, which, in turn, will reach a larger audience.

How Can Influencers Benefit Your Business?

Influencers can be a valuable asset to your marketing ventures. Social media influencers, in particular, are creative, resourceful, and can deliver content to their audience in a way that would evoke action (or reaction). How else do you think they gain a large following? 

Apart from that, consumers often trust the opinion of influencers, thus the tendency to support what they advertise, listen to what they say,  and more likely engage with your brand.

What are the Different Types of Influencer Content Campaigns?

  1. Product Seeding 

Sending free products to influencers might get you positive mentions in their posts. And honestly, there’s nothing better than having a person with high-level influence vouch for the quality of your brand. This is one of the less absolute ways to get your name out there, though, since there is no official partnership, and it fully depends on the influencer whether or not they’d share your product.

  1. Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Businesses can give commissions for every sale generated from the influencer’s efforts to promote the product. Often this would involve discount promo codes for influencers to provide to their audience to prompt them to purchase on the brand’s online store. A win-win situation, where the influencer earns their share and your business gets its sale.

  1. Product Placements

Subtlety can be the best way to highlight something. Instagram influencers can seamlessly employ this technique by incorporating products into their content – in a manner that would appear natural and not overly emphasized or staged. In this case, the influencer is not trying to sell actively, but rather they are recommending by simply showing, mentioning, or bragging about it. 

  1. Brand ambassadorship

This is when a business hires a person of influence to be the ‘face’ of their brand. This can involve them in representing your brand in events, advertising your goods and services on their social media accounts and via other platforms, and answering questions consumers might have about the product (therefore, they should be knowledgeable about what the brand is about).

  1. Social Media Takeover

A takeover is when an influencer takes the reins to a brand’s social media page, allowing them to post what they want, when they want and however they want (with well-defined terms of the agreement, of course). Takeovers have been popular on Instagram and Snapchat, but businesses can implement them on other available social media platforms.

How do you choose the right ‘brand champions’?

More people are becoming influencers, all with distinct styles in sparking trends across the web. How do you find the perfect set of influencers to grow your brand?

  • Consider their audience size, and gauge whether it aligns with your target market. You’re aiming to reach the right people and expand your consumer base. Choosing an influencer who’s not relevant to your target demographic is unlikely to get you the results you want.
  • Observe the content they share and decide if they are a good fit for your products or services. Their content should align with your brand identity, vision, and values. Get a feel of their feeds, and see what kind of messages they’re sending to their audience. Do they spark meaningful conversation? Are they able to encourage viewers to act on something?
  • Consider their engagement levels and whether they are actively interacting with their followers. It will not hurt to check if an influencer’s audience reacts, responds, shares, or comments on their content. Apart from this, how frequently does the influencer interact with their following? 

By keeping these in mind, you can narrow your options and find the right influencer for your brand. 

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is something that every business should be looking into. With thorough research and testing, this marketing strategy can be the missing link to increasing the visibility of your brand. 

5 Types of Digital Marketing for Promoting Your Business

After the digital revolution, the world has turned into a global village where physical boundaries do not matter. This amazing change opened an infinite number of new opportunities. One of them is called digital marketing.

It is a form of marketing in which the internet is used to spread your brand awareness. There are many benefits that it provides, but you cannot find them through any other technique.

Some of these are as follows.

Benefits Of Digital Marketing:

There are many advantages of digital marketing that are hard to get through traditional methods.

Targeted Audience:

Suppose that you are launching a makeup brand and your targeted audience is ladies from France who are under 60 years old. If you had used traditional methods, it would be impossible to target this audience. Digital marketing solves this problem for you. You can target your audience in almost every way possible, even though their interest. Big companies like Facebook and Google classified their users in many categories and ads are shown to these people accordingly so that your campaign gives you the best results possible.

For example, if you are manufacturing an affordable chef knife, then you can target the cooking enthusiast with a low budget from around the world.

Low Cost:

Digital marketing is best if you have a very limited marketing budget. You do not need millions of dollars to reach out to thousands of people. Many options provide you with the best services in return for the minimum cost.

This makes digital marketing best for new businesses.

Data-Driven:

One of the best advantages is that digital advertisements provide us with an insane amount of data.

This data can give us a deep insight into the campaign and its results, and the basis of these results can be used to make changes if necessary.

Global Approach:

The digital world has no borders. You can approach any person in the world freely over the internet. This enabled you to spread your message all over the world.

It does not matter where you are based, you can advertise your business all around the world at the same cost you need for your native country.

It can help small companies to target a larger audience and take their business to a whole new level.

Types of Digital Marketing:

The digital world is growing, not just in terms of users, but also the platforms, with this increase came the new options and kinds of digital marketing.

Some of these types are as follows.

1-Email Marketing:

If you are looking to keep the people engaged after their first interaction, then email marketing is the best option.

Using this technique, you can keep your potential customers updated about the inventory and upcoming products.

Email marketing can play a great role in creating brand loyalty and make people keep the people coming back.

You can hire Email marketing experts or buy an automated tool that will send emails to a large audience very easily.

2-Social Media Marketing:

According to the latest reports, there are over 4 billion active users on social media. These four billion people spend a great amount of time in front of screens. Which makes it the best way to spread messages.

Big social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram provide the services through which you can run ads. These ads are one of the best ways to reach out to new customers.

Another way is to create social media pages and create a community around them. The biggest advantage of this technique is that it is free and once you create the followers you can translate these followers into customers.

3-Search Engine Optimization:

Search engines like Google are the biggest source of information, with countless numbers of websites on each topic. But the users select top results for every information. To reach more people and bring your website on top, you can use SEO.

It is a form of digital advertising in which you apply different techniques to make your website easier to search for the search engine.

This will improve the ranking of your website and bring in more audience.

4-Influencer Marketing:

With the increase in social media audience, new types of celebrities arise, known as influencers. These are the people who have a large number of followers on social media.

You can pay these influencers to feature your post on their social media. This gives you access to a large audience instantly and also the trust of customers because a well-known person is endorsing your product.

For example, if Gordon Ramsay is endorsing your affordable chef knife then you will have more chances to make sales.

5-Content Marketing:

As nowadays people are consuming more and more content, you can turn this trend into your favor.

You can create relevant, valuable, and consistent content to engage your customers. By doing this, you stay relevant and also create a Fan base. These fans will then be converted into customers.

This content will act as the ad and spread your brand name quickly.

How to Effectively Increase Brand Visibility

Brand visibility is imperative to success and relates to more prevalent customer recognition and awareness. It denotes the ability of customers to recognize a brand or business based on various factors.

It is commonly associated with visual representations of a brand such as the business logo, colors, and products, but it’s much more pervasive than that. For example, Apple and Google are synonymous with technology products, including computers, mobile devices, and so on. Every time those types of products are brought up, or the related topics are in focus, those two brands come to mind, among others. That is because they have effectively boosted brand visibility, in many different ways.

Of course, effectively increasing brand visibility for a small business or medium-sized operation, with limited resources, is quite a bit different than doing so for a corporate entity. What goes into brand visibility, and what are some ways to enhance and leverage the concept?

1. Optimize for Search

These days, there is no valid excuse for NOT optimizing a business or brand website for SEO, or search engine results. You can do this by focusing on relevant keywords, namely terms that your customers will be searching for. It’s not something you have to do alone either, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO experts willing to help. It’s also accessible to all businesses, big and small. 

Choose keywords, use a proper SEO tool, and begin adding those keywords to your site. Coming up with a clear content marketing campaign that hits all those relevant keywords and delivers enriching and engaging material is just as important. Moreover, the keywords can be embedded within the web copy on all pages, product descriptions, headers, and much more.

2. Use Smart Advertising

Advertising and marketing are critical for boosting visibility, across print ads, digital ads, and various other mediums. But one of the best ways to get your name out there is to use creative measures, doing something a little different than everyone else. Some examples include clever office branding, unique product packaging, local sponsorships, or even customer rewards and incentives.

Like all forms of advertising, the idea is to get your brand out there and in front of as many eyes as possible. Doing it in a witty or creative way ensures that both the medium and the content stand out, creating a memorable experience, and vastly boosting brand awareness.

3. Tap Into Influencer Marketing

The term “influencer” has taken on new meaning in the digital frontier. It doesn’t just include celebrities and public personas, but also YouTubers, social media users, content creators, and much more. Moxy Hotels launched a YouTube channel featuring Taryn Southern, a popular influencer that became so popular, it now has multiple seasons’ worth of content.

Just as you would with celebrities during the days of old, you can tap into an influencer’s audience and resources to build awareness about your brand. You can do it by offering products for review, paying for ad placements or mentions, sending out free swag, opening discussions with creators, and so on.

The trick is to choose the right influencers for your niche, products, and brand. Instead of just picking someone because they’re popular, try to find someone local. Alternatively, you can look for someone that works with the types of products or services you offer, such as tech, makeup, accessories, or whatever.

4. Enhance Offline Marketing

In the digital age, and with so much happening online, it’s easy to overlook the offline world. Every business should invest some time and resources enhancing offline marketing efforts. It includes product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising or referrals, radio advertisements, networking, public events, cold calls, and much more. Basically, the term encompasses anything that happens offline and away from the internet.

Wearing yourself thin trying to do it all is not the goal, nor is it a good strategy. But choosing one or two channels to focus on, and then becoming the best of the best is the way to go. If you choose to participate in local job fairs or networking events, then do it with a splash! Host a keynote discussion or panel. Give out free swag to all booth visitors. Make it memorable and get your brand out there.

5. Reward Your Customers

To build loyalty, entice customers to share their experiences, and naturally increase awareness, you need to be going above and beyond. Rewarding your customers is an excellent way to do that. The first thing that comes to mind is a customer loyalty program or cashback rewards, but while those are great solutions, they’re not the only strategies that exist. There are many ways to give back and reward your customers, not necessarily through monetary incentives.

Bundling small gifts with every purchase is one example. Honing customer service programs to near perfection to ensure customers are always taken care of, is another. Another still might be something as simple as offering free shipping for all online orders. You’ll need to review your competitors so you know what they’re doing and what they offer, and then you can up your game. Ensure that your customers continually have positive and memorable experiences, and that will create a cyclical system where those people are always willing to share and talk about your brand.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Continue improving and innovating as much as possible, but also establish a way to measure brand visibility. Doing so is easier than you might think. You can look at website traffic, and how much it’s growing, review the search volume of your keywords, check in-store traffic, look at trending topics or messages about your brand, and much more.

Search optimization should always be on your plate, which means you should continue utilizing your chosen keywords and researching more. Smart advertising, offline marketing, and influencer support should also be persistent strategies. Don’t forget to reward your customers or your employees on the frontlines!

Once you put that vehicle in motion, don’t use the brakes, continue your momentum. Measure, iterate, improve, and then re-measure. It’s the best way to increase visibility, build strong and positive awareness, and cement your brand in the annals of history.

Eleanor Hecks is editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.

Is There a Goldmine in Influencer Marketing?

For the love of short stories, I’ll go ahead to say, “yea, there is a goldmine in influencer marketing”. As a matter of fact, it is a relatively untapped goldmine. While the majority of internet business owners are channeling resources into driving traffic from SEO and social media ads, the minority are reaping the rewards of affordable influencer marketing.

You might be asking “what is influencer marketing?” Influencer marketing is a form of digital marketing where internet business owners (mostly those with products to sell) hire highly influential social media users to promote their stuff to their followers or audience. It’s similar to paying an email marketer with a large email list to blast emails about your business his contacts for a fee. Like every other form of internet marketing, you must find a winning strategy to reap the full benefits of influencer marketing.

MOST COMMON FORMS OF INFLUENCER MARKETING

Testimonial Video

Nearly every social media platform allows the upload of multimedia content — including videos. Influencer may upload a testimonial video explaining and narrating a sales-oriented description of product or services being advertised. This strategy works effectively since videos are maybe the most contents out there. The use of testimonial videos is usually the priciest form of influencer marketing.

Shout Outs

This is the most common form of influencer marketing and is often less expensive. All it takes here is a shout out to the product, service, website or social media page of the client. It comes as a text post for Twitter & Facebook, or picture post for Instagram. Shout outs are good for a low budget campaign.

RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES TO ADOPT

Research The Influencer’s Followers/Audience

So much as influencer marketing can guarantee engagement, you do want to make actual sales. If you hire an influencer with followers over 40 years of age and advertise fidget spinners, you’ll get views but maybe zero sales. Age range is just one of many factors to consider; gender, interests and hobbies all count here. An easy way to find this out is looking into the public profile of prospective influencer, his followers probably like what he likes. So, as much as you can, do a quick research into prospective influencer’s followers to see if you are a good fit.

Let the Campaign Run A Little While

This is important if you’re just getting into influencer marketing. Shell out a few bucks to let the campaign run for a while, at least, a week. While you’re at it, be on the lookout for days and hours that sell better than others. This knowledge will come in handy in helping you spend more effectively in the future.

Remember how we started off saying influencer marketing is relatively untapped? It means unlike most opportunities on the internet, there is no sign of saturation yet. It is totally affordable and effective. There’s no harm in exposing your business to an extra source of traffic.