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How Companies Should Use Influencer Marketing For Their Growth Strategy
Influencer Marketing – content-created marketing with profiles, bloggers and youtubers has become a buzzword and a well-debated topic lately and when it comes to “new channels” and the shift in power, there are often a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions. These questions we will try to find out and go deeper into Influencer Marketing and give concrete tips on how you can avoid mistakes when testing your progress.
According to a study by Collective Bias, consumers are 10x more likely to buy a product from an influencer who is not a celebrity, but a person who has built up his followers organically over time.
1. Prioritize engagement before follower count
Many companies believe that reach is the key to a good result. This may be true in many traditional media such as TV, Radio and banners – but when it comes to marketing with influencers it doesn’t really work the same way. The match is really crucial to succeed. Prioritize profiles with a high level of engagement, as this often correlates with good click statistics and interactions. Thus, high reach does not guarantee the effect but of course something that is interesting to look at as well.
There are great influencers who have very good engagement – although it’s a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. The problem is that these profiles are often very in demand, which greatly increases prices. Learn to research and identify influencers with a high level of engagement. It is also important to look at the comments many international comments = scattered reach or purchased followers equals wasted money.
Influencers tend to follow 1-5% of their total followers. If someone has a lot higher than that, it’s probably about growth manipulation or “growth hacks” with tactics that provide rapid growth without loyalty or engaging followers. Of course, there are exceptions
2. Treat Influencer Marketing as part of your marketing budget
Influencer Marketing is something that requires time and commitment and not infrequently from several people at the company. There are partners who can spread your message through influencers, but it is important that you take the time to measure and follow up on the results. Influencers are often very good at creating great content, so be sure to re-use the images in their own channels, on the website etc. to optimize ROI and increase the association between the profile and your brand.
3. Give creative freedom
This may feel difficult or a little scary … but all Influencer Marketing is all about is credibility. You have to give the creator space to create the content in his own way. After all, they know best what their audience resonates with.
Don’t put too much demand on exactly how that post should be designed – instead give guidelines on what you want and the tools required in the form of information about the products and the brand. This channel is more like a review than a purchased format where you can control just about everything. You order the profile of the profile / blogger and should trust that they know what content best engages their followers.
4. Think long term, not a campaign
If you expect to see a big increase in sales after one month, you definitely need to rethink and lower expectations. As with everything in life, good results come over time, not after a campaign. Sure, you can get good results quickly, provided you have already built up a very strong brand (that people are already likely to buy your products) but in order for you to really succeed, you need to test different profiles and niches, measure new customers and their repurchase rate. in the long run. Compare the loyalty between the customers who come from influencers and other channels.
Companies that use Influencer Marketing will realize that it will take time to expand the reach of their brand, but once it does, you will see a huge increase in brand awareness. For those of you in a competitive industry, it is a golden position to get loyal followers, who learn more about your products.
5. Consider micro-influencers before premium / celebrities
Are you prepared to pay 500-1000 EUR for a publication on Instagram and blog, with an influencer you are not sure is right for your brand? Ok – try it! But if you’re not, bet on micro-influencers instead. Micro-influencers (profiles between 10-80k followers) have a stronger and more personal relationship with their followers – and their engagement levels are on average 3x higher than larger profiles
6. Set clear goals and follow up the results
What is really the goal of your campaign; Is it brand distribution, engagement, new followers, content for own channels or sales? Of course, it is possible to combine different KPIs, but set goals and follow up your efforts on an ongoing basis. If sales are the main goal – tips are to use UTM links for each influencer so you can easily track the results in Google Analytics. Another is to use link shorteners (for example bit.ly) to make the links look good and discount codes to track conversions directly at checkout.
Some final tips to maximize the impact of your Influencer Marketing in addition to the actual publications:
All publications that you do with influencers should end up under the same #hashtag as it becomes a “community” and makes it easy for new customers to find you and get inspiration from others who use your products.
Reuse and repurpose images produced by influencers on your website. Consumers would rather take inspiration from your existing customers and influencers. Check out services like te.x. Olapic where you can choose which products to download under a specific hashtag and to which product page. This has proven to be very effective in increasing the conversion rate for many companies.
