Influencer marketing continues to open new revenue opportunities for brands and businesses. A powerful influencer marketing campaign can increase the reach of your products and services and build an instant bridge of trust between your audience and business. More importantly, it is a digital marketing strategy with an enticing ROI.
In fact, influencer marketing has a $7.65 ROI for every dollar invested. Not a bad value for your marketing budget. This digital marketing avenue has become less of a trend, and more of a must.
Why is influencer marketing important? Most brands and businesses are dialing in their content creation, but this is only half the battle. Even the most spectacular piece of content can be lost in the ocean of online content.
Influencer marketing can make your content stand out. One of the most important questions you can ask before a single keystroke is, “WHO will amplify this content?” This makes influencers an asset for your content. With a faithful follower base hanging on every recommendation they make, influencers can amplify your content, products, services, brand, or business.
When it comes to influencer marketing, 28 percent of marketing managers agreed that it is fastest growing customer acquisition method. The highest among all other customer acquisition methods marketers found important.
How can you make influencer marketing part of your digital marketing mix? Here are a few essentials to make your New Year a successful one.
Start with Influencer Outreach
There are plenty of influencers to choose from, and having your ear to the ground in your niche will help you find the right one for your brand or business. Who’s getting good engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube? Those are the influencers you could start reaching out to.
Doing your own influencer outreach is always beneficial. Influencers like making connections in their niche, and they also like gaining another stream of income. Outreach also opens direct lines of communication that will become important for balancing your goals with the influencer’s ability.
Here are a few influencer outreach tips:
- Do your due diligence. What topics does he or she talk about online? Does the influencer do sponsored posts? Are they getting good engagement?
- Think about your target audience. Has the influencer worked with brands or businesses similar to yours in the past? Will your products or services be a good fit for their audience?
- Make outreach personal. Will you use your influencer’s first name in your outreach email? Will you use a recent post of the influencer’s to make the outreach more personal? Will you give an authentic compliment?
- Build confidence during outreach. How will you share your brand’s story, success, and goals? Can you mention other influencers you have worked with?
Communication is key when it comes to influencer campaigns. Online content marketing is ever-shifting, and changes to search engine algorithms can cause a shift in your influencer’s medium. For instance, if a new Google algorithm comes out, it could make your influencer’s blog a more powerful channel than his or her Instagram.
Get Influencers to Come to You
Having influencers come to you has a lot of benefits and setting up blogger programs is a great first step. They provide insight into your products or services, and how you cultivate relationships with influencers. For instance, many major brands, like Nike, have an influencer recruitment program.
These blogger programs can create prestige around your brand or businesses since you are recruiting, rather than doing general outreach. This allows you to control the quality of your influencers.
Influencer candidates can be vetted, and once approved, given a detailed guide covering your brand’s mission, message, audience, influencer incentives, social media channels, and more.
Take Influencer Platforms for a Spin
On the opposite of the spectrum, you can employ influencer platforms. If waiting for influencers to find your company, you can easily find them. Influencer platforms serve up a variety of influencers and micro-influencers in a wide range of industries.
These platforms have extensive databases you can access for free, or for a monthly payment. They also show influencer social media channels, followers, pricing, and a way to contact the influencer through the platform’s system.
One of the benefits of using these types of platforms is that you can choose different influencers for different campaigns. Influencer platforms worth checking out include FameBit, Revfluence, BrandBacker, Content BLVD, and TapInfluence. These platforms can save you time and money, especially if you want to get your influencer marketing campaign up and running fast.
Make Your Influencer’s Audience Yours
Once you have a successful influencer campaign in your digital marketing mix, it is time to capitalize on that new audience. You can easily make your influencer traffic into loyal long-term customers.
Email marketing is great for this and having your influencer backlink to your email subscriber landing page is the first step. They can post, “Sign up for new offers and special discounts” to move that traffic in the right direction.
Did you know that email marketing has higher click-through rates (CTR) than many social media networks? For instance, you are six times more likely to earn a click via email than Twitter. Build from your influencer marketing efforts and make their audience yours with an email marketing campaign.
Making influencers part of your digital marketing mix is going to be essential to your success in 2018. The above tips will help you find a relevant influencer in your industry, build meaningful relationships with them, and turn their followers and fans into your customers. How will you use influencer marketing?
