Devising a winning social media marketing strategy isn’t always easy. During a time when almost half of Internet users have some form of adblocker, it can be difficult to find the right ways to reach customers and deliver your message. This is where influencer marketing comes in – it can be a good way to organically reach your target audience and spread the word about your brand and its products or services.
The first step in developing an influencer marketing campaign is to outline your objective. That could, for example, be to explicitly drive sales, or to build brand identity. Perhaps you want to inform your existing customers about a new product or service, or to engage new customers. Influencer marketing has a flexibility that can make it suitable for a range of business objectives.
Influencer marketing strategies can take a variety of forms, but it makes sense to build on social trends by leveraging an influencer’s established identity and following. In short: there’s a reason why that individual influencer has followers, and it makes sense to think about how their own “brand” and yours can work together to the mutual advantage of both parties.
The most obvious form of influencer marketing is leveraging social media celebrities to amplify your brand message, but it can pay to think beyond this. Attaching your influencer campaign to a particular cultural event or charitable cause can work to your advantage. It can also help to link to local events, rather than necessarily thinking on a national or global scale.
One of the most successful techniques of influencer marketing can be simply providing sample products for influencers to use and review or otherwise promote. In comparison to more traditional forms of advertising – such as television or print adverts, or even paid social media marketing– the cost of providing a sample product is relatively low, while the return on investment in terms of reach can be high.
One important tip to remember in influencer marketing – is to take a step back and allow the influencer to make the content their own. Other forms of both traditional and social media marketing are about being hands-on; you get to control the message and how it is presented to the target audience. Influencer marketing is a somewhat different beast. Social media influencers have built their audience through their own unique personality and creativity, and if you try to control and direct that too closely, chances are it won’t work for either you or the influencer. While you can and should give tips and suggestions, the essence of influencer marketing is in standing back and trusting the influencer to exercise their creativity.
Here at Beyond Fifteen we have first-hand experience leveraging influencer marketing campaigns to reach new audiences and spread the word about our client brands. By identifying and collaborating with key influencers, it’s possible to spread your message in a way that can provide a high return on investment, as part of a wider social media marketing strategy. Contact us today to learn more!