What is influencer marketing?
Essentially, influencer marketing is a way of marketing your products or service online through the power of another person. This person could be seen as an ‘expert’ in their field or have a significant following which is similar to your target audience. Therefore – when they shout about how great you or your products are, they are doing so to people who would also be interested in your business. This gives these individuals an opportunity to find you online when they may not have done so organically.
Influencer marketing is ‘kind of a big deal’ these days. In 2017, Influence.co published the results of their research into Instagram influencer payments and value. They looked at the average cost per Instagram post and found:
- The overall average price was $271 per post.
- The average price for micro-influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers was $83 per post.
- The average price for influencers with more than 100,000 followers was $763 per post.
- We’ll go a little more into the different relationships and deals within this blog.
Influencing your influencers
Instagram, the Facebook owned platform has said that its audience go to Instagram to ‘find inspiration’, whereas they may go to Facebook to communicate. Meaning, the way in which your influencers agree to work with you, and what they say they’ll do is key.
It’s important to stand out from the crowd, use positive, bold imagery and think about the aesthetics of a post. How you compose your image on a smartphone or camera is also likely to attract or detract your target audience and meet the desired outcome.
Whilst the influencer craze may have begun with fancy, flawless photos edited in Photoshop – the Instagram users of today are looking for something more authentic. After all, that’s how your audience engages with the influencer. If your business sells baby products and you want to reach more mums and dads, ask the influencer to show some clutter in the background and dirty bowls from breakfast – this is the reality for so many parents!
To be a fashion influencer, you may not need to rely on perfectly shot photos. Instead, casual poses and limited editing are now becoming more welcome on the feed.
Consider your influencer marketing strategy
- In order to get it right, you need to do your research. Like other forms of marketing, without a proper plan or strategy in place, you could find that you’re wasting valuable time and money sending free products to anyone that asks for them! Consider our short steps to success in order to find the right people to partner up with:
- Make sure you consider your audience and where they are – closely matching the style of the influencer to ensure that when they speak to your potential audience, it’s in a voice that your audience will react positively to.
- Before you dive in, watch your influencers for a time. Do they represent many other brands? How much engagement do they seem to get? Do their efforts lie in blogs, posts or stories? Does this correlate with your audience?
- Their following does give you an indication of potential reach. Would you like to work with a celebrity who has 50k followers? Or a micro-influencer with 1000 followers? The answer maybe as unique as your business, but try to find someone who truly loves your brand with authenticity.
- Don’t agree to the first price they offer you. Understand what you’ll really get for your investment and what other partnerships they have in place. You’ll quickly get a sense of your ROI.
- Are you able to offer a discount code to your influencer? Maybe another way of paying for their support is to offer a kick-back for each time someone buys from you using their code. This gives both parties in the agreement an incentive!
- Come up with an agreement that is clear and works for you both. Be sure not to ask for ‘too much’ so that the influencer falls behind or feels overwhelmed, but do follow up to make sure that your agreement is being adhered to.
- Feed their creative spirit! You want an influencer’s post to be authentic and engaging, but there’s no harm in you sharing key messages from your brand and what you want out of this partnership. Work together and set up clear communications.
- Set check points! Whether you have engaged with an influencer on a short term, or longer strategy – set check points early so that you can keep in touch and continue to build on your relationship. You never know, you may work together in the future!
- Ask them about their metrics! Many professional influencers will have access to tools such as Instagram insights which will track and demonstrate the success of a post
- Make as much out of it as you can. Check with the influencer if they’re happy for you to keep their quotes on record, construct a blog with their posts and use Instagram highlights.
Conclusion
Like all things which rely on technology and marketing – nothing stays still for long. The landscape in which social media managers and marketers operate today, may be very different in 5 years. However, from how it looks in 2020 – influencers are here to stay! So, it’s definitely worth including influencer marketing in your strategy.
The success of engaging with an influencer varies with every attempt. Don’t be deterred and be prepared to try again. Your business will also learn as you go along, so treat every agreement like a new learning curve – each time coming back sharper and clearer.
Let our marketing consultancy know whether you’ve engaged in influencer marketing and whether you’ve learned some useful tips that you can share!
