One of the biggest considerations of any business is how to get good sales leads and then how to get new customers.
One of the biggest considerations of any business is how to get good sales leads and then how to get new customers.
One of the biggest considerations of any business is how to get good sales leads and then how to get new customers. One great way of doing this is through Influencer marketing; a collaboration between a business and a person of influence to promote a service, product or campaign.
In the past, influencers tended to be of celebrity status but this is no longer the case in today’s digital world. Any social content creators with influence over niche groups of followers on social media are in popular demand by brands of all kinds. Groups of engaged and dedicated followers can offer real value to brands if approached and targeted correctly via social media influencers.
If you are looking to run an effective influencer marketing campaign for your business, it is important that you work with the right influencers. But who are they and how can you find them? 89% of marketers identify Instagram as the most prominent social platform for influencer marketing and with over half a million active influencers on Instagram alone, you’ll need to put in a bit of work to find the right one for you.
We are SocialTrend , a digital marketing agency in Manchester, and we want to share with you the key ways that we find and connect with the right influencers when it comes to running campaigns for our clients. Are you ready? Let’s go:
What does Influence mean exactly?
Influence is made up of 3 main components; relevance, reach and resonance. These components are referred to as the three R’s of Influence.
Relevance – Your chosen influencer should have followers that are a good fit with your target market. They should also share content with these followers that is relevant to your business, with the correct messaging.
Reach – This is the size of the audience that you could potentially reach through using a specific influencer. If they have a million followers on Instagram for example, that is your potential reach if you use them.
Resonance – Having a large audience isn’t enough if they aren’t interested or engaged in your brand. Resonance is the potential level of engagement any given influencer can create within their engaged follower base. For this reason, bigger isn’t better and this is why highly engaged and dedicated niche groups of followers can offer real value to brands.
Consider your influence
Always consider your campaign thoroughly before jumping into anything. You can’t appeal to everyone and you need to clearly define who your target audience is first. You can do this through developing target audience personas to help you understand who exactly you are reaching out to. This will in turn help you to create influencer personas to then help you understand what you are looking for when it comes to choosing the right influencer for your business.
Engagement is key
When choosing the right influencer, it is important to remember that your audience must look up to them and trust their opinion. You’ll be able to tell if this is the case by the influencer’s engagement levels on their shared content. If they typically get a high number of views, shares, likes and comments, then they know what they are doing, and their audience are much more likely to be engaged and loyal. Always look out for and avoid influencer accounts with large numbers of fake followers, made up of bots and fraud accounts. You want nothing to do with these so-called influencers.
Look for consistency
When advertising your service, product or campaign, you want to stick to your branding. You want to keep consistent across the board, with your message, look, tone and values. This means that you need to find an influencer that will help you do this and who produces content that will only serve to compliment your own. You don’t want your influencer marketing to feel out of place with your other marketing efforts.
Always research first
There may be half a million influencers out there on Instagram, but some are more desirable than others and those that are in-demand the most will be getting lots of offers. For this reason, make sure that you do your research before approaching these influencers. Firstly, this’ll put you in good stead with them and secondly, you’ll find out more about whether they are in fact right for you or not. Take the time to learn about what they do, what their channels are like and who their followers are.
Why not interact organically with their posts too, to get a better sense of things. You may find that certain popular influencers are sharing lots of sponsored content already and that their followers are a little tired of this. Their engagement levels may well not last because of this. Once you have chosen your influencer, it’s well worth thinking about this again in terms of how much content they are to post throughout the campaign. Too many posts in a short amount of time could be undesirable for the influencer or even detrimental to your campaign.
Consider your budget
When considering the right influencer for your campaign, it is important to keep your budget in mind. You can offer free products or services for the smaller influencers out there in return for them promoting your brand, but the larger influencers, with a more extensive reach, will almost certainly require payment. This payment can take many forms. They can work for an agreed flat rate fee but it’s worth considering other options with them. Perhaps an affiliate or commission structure would work best for you both.
Always direct message your favourite influencers
You’ve done your research, you’ve considered your brand, you have a solid picture of what your campaign is going to be and you know who you are targeting. It’s now time to reach out to your favourite influencers. You should always do this via a direct message and avoid sending mass emails or generic messages to multiple influencers. You want to add a personal touch to each message to increase the chances of them taking you seriously and in turn you striking a deal with them.
You want influencers to trust you from the outset. Provide loads of juicy information about your brand and let them know what you are trying to accomplish with your influencer campaign. You also want to make it perfectly clear that the influencers will benefit from partnering with you, and not only financially.
To conclude
Influencer marketing is a great way to promote your business and what you have to offer, but you want to get it right from the offset. Use the useful tips outlined above to make sure that you start off on the right foot and find the right influencer out there to really pack a punch when it comes to your campaign.
Here at SocialTrend we plan a lot of marketing campaigns and specialise in Instagram advertising, Tiktok advertising, Facebook advertising and much much more. Why not use us here at SocialTrend? We are the top marketing agency in Manchester. Get in touch at any time to talk Influencers for your business?
It’d be weird if we ran a social agency that didn’t LOVE talking (especially about ourselves). So get in touch to discuss what we can do for you.
UK Office:
Phone: 0161 726 5937
10th Floor, 3 Hardman Street,
Manchester,
M3 3HF
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