Influencer Marketing: Strategies for Skyrocketing Business Growth

Greetings everyone,?

I hope you are all having a winning Wednesday!

Today, I’ll talk about a marketing trend that has shot up in popularity over the last few years and helped businesses skyrocket their growth.?

You guessed it, influencer marketing!

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy, where instead of promoting your business offerings yourself, you partner up with an influential individual or industry expert who has a large following on social media.?

These individuals will market your products to their loyal audience and serve as brand advocates in return for financial payments or other benefits (like gift cards, free trials, or exclusive access.) By correctly implementing an influencer marketing strategy, you can expand your reach and boost brand awareness.?

Now you might ask, “How is influencer marketing any different from directly connecting with potential customers and promoting your business?”

Although the end goal of every marketing technique is to get more sales, influencer marketing is different as there is an element of trust involved within it.???

Influencers are content creators who have built a loyal audience base using various kinds of content. And due to this trust factor, they can influence the purchasing decisions of their followers.?

By promoting products or brands using in-depth reviews, influencers can convince their subscribers to check out said product or even make a purchase.?

On the other hand, if you, as a business, are running marketing campaigns to promote your products or services to people who haven’t heard about you before, they might hesitate to take the next step. This is because there is no trust aspect involved in this situation.?

An influencer serves as a mediator between you and their followers, relaying accurate information about your products. Also, by having your offerings endorsed by an influencer, you can compel their followers to take action by earning that seal of approval from a trusted source.?

So, how can you utilize influencer marketing to facilitate business growth?

Well, just like any other marketing initiative, influencer marketing requires a well-planned approach to ensure everything goes smoothly. That being said, here’s a roadmap on how to get started with it:?

Finding the right influencer?

The first step in building an effective influencer marketing program is to identify the correct influencers who can help you achieve your goals.?

Simply looking at their follower count to decide where you would work with them is not good enough. You need to consider other important factors as well:?

• Platform type: The platform they primarily use for connecting with their audience and if that is suitable for promoting your business.?
• Relevance: How closely an influencer is related to your brand or industry. It doesn’t make sense to partner up with an IT influencer to promote your apparel business.?
• Engagement metrics: These metrics will help you understand how well their followers interact with their content. These metrics include likes, comments, and shares.?
• Credibility: Look out for influencers who are respected by their audience and create original content. Partnering up with someone who uses recycled content might not bring you the desired results.?

How can you start looking for the best-suited influencer for your business??

There are multiple ways to discover the influencer perfect for your needs. You can start by:?

• Searching for relevant influencers online yourself
• Use a social media marketing tool with influencers' data

If you choose the first method, you can Google: Best influencers for [your niche/industry]

For example, if you are looking for influencers in the health sector, search “best influencers for health” and you can shortlist the ones matching your needs from the results.?

However, if you want to use a tool to help you with influencer marketing, you can use BuzzSumo , Phyllo (API Driven) or any other research tool that includes the capability to find suitable influencers for your brand.

With Find Influencers features, you can discover countless influencers active in any industry, analyze their engagement scores, and view their most used type of content.?

This way, you don’t have to do any manual work of creating a list of influencers or evaluating their performance.??

Set clear goals

After you have shortlisted the influencers to partner up with, next, you have to set goals for your influencer marketing and convey them to your partner.?

When setting up these goals, you have to ask yourself, “What do you plan to accomplish by teaming up with influencers?”?

Depending on your answer, you have to use suitable kinds of content along with the platform that allows you to accomplish them.?

Generating original content

Once you have selected an influencer and they agree to partner with you, you have to then start generating promotional content.?

In most cases, you can decide how you want to promote your brand. You can even provide a script to the influencer, giving them directions on what to say.?

Although you are in control of how you want your products to be showcased, you shouldn’t restrict the creative freedom of your partner. After all, who can know their followers if not them?

So, let them market your offerings in their unique manner. This way, the promotion will not only seem natural but also encourage their followers to take practical action.?

Monitoring performance?

As is the case with any business activity, evaluating the performance of your influencer marketing campaign is critical for further improvement and measuring ROI.?

Doing so will give you valuable insights on where you are lacking, and you can share them with the influencer to benefit both of you.?

To measure your influencer marketing efforts, select a set of metrics you want to monitor. For instance, you can analyze engagement rates by measuring views, comments, likes, and shares.?

On the other hand, if you want to measure conversion metrics, like CTR or conversion rate, you can use affiliate links, exclusive codes, or specialized landing pages.?

You may wonder, “Keeping track of all these metrics sounds confusing. How can I do that?”

Don’t worry, it’s not that difficult.?

If you are using influencer marketing to direct traffic to your website, you can monitor them via Google Analytics as you would normally do.?

For measuring engagement, most of the social media platforms come with a native analytics dashboard to let you monitor how well a particular post or a piece of content is performing. These free tools will help you keep an eye on your influencer marketing initiatives.?

Conclusion?

Overall, influencer marketing is an excellent way to utilize an already existing group of people who are interested in your industry/ niche for acquiring qualified leads.?

Partnering up with influencers allows you to set your business up for success by having the backing of an external, credible source.?

Think of it this way, who are you more inclined to trust: a person you interact with frequently or a brand you have never heard of before? The choice seems pretty obvious to me.?

Let me know in the comments what your experience with influencer marketing is and how it helped you achieve your goals.

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Prem Saini