If you’ve just created an online store or website that needs traction, influencer marketing may be the answer to your prayers. As time goes on, using influencer marketing has become a more popular, widely spread strategy to grow your business, and see real results. This is when you get someone well-known in their niche or industry to endorse your products and services to a like-minded audience. As a result, you usually see a boost in conversions, traffic, and sales.
There’s a common misconception that influencer marketing means having an influencer endorse your brand in a couple of posts and watching the sales trickle in, but this is misleading and dangerous. You won’t reach any of your goals with this mentality because there’s no thought, planning, or strategizing behind it.
Research conducted by Twitter found that 49 percent of respondents depend on influencers for shopping recommendations. It’s a valuable strategy that has proven to build onto businesses and grow them exponentially, so not to take advantage of it is a huge waste.
Here are a few tips to help you get started with influencer marketing so you can grow your business.
Set specific goals and KPIs first
Before you even begin your search for the influencers you want to sponsor your brand, you need to lay out your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). These are specific metrics that tell you how well your business is performing from influencer marketing so you can determine what works best and optimize your strategy it if needed.
Linqia’s 2018 The State of Influencer Marketing report found that 90 percent of marketers measure the success they get from influencer marketing by its engagement while 59 percent and under measure clicks, impressions, and conversions. These are all important KPIs you want to track throughout your influencer marketing strategy so you know how it’s affecting your business and where you can improve.
Let’s dive into a few different goals you may have for your influencer campaign:
- Increase product sales
- Increase engagement levels with visitors
- Generate brand awareness
- Capture email addresses
- Increased followers on social media
- Boosted website traffic
Use the right platform
You need to look for influencers that use the same platform as your audience so it’s easier to cater to their needs and for them to get introduced to your brand. Choosing the platform that’s most popular with your target market means you can increase user engagement, build a list of subscribers, and improve your lead generation.
Setting up your campaigns on the wrong platform could mean a reduction in ROI and time and resources wasted. That’s why doing the research beforehand is imperative. By mapping out all the details beforehand, you eliminate extra room for error and are prepared for positive results.
Ask yourself where your audience hangs out the most and is most active. This factor is more important than where they’re most popular because you want to catch their attention in the place you know your content is most likely to get seen.
Understand your target market
Without fully knowing your target audience, it’s impossible to pick influencers to endorse your products that also match their target market. It doesn’t make sense to reach out to an influencer whose niche is in gaming and ask them to endorse beauty products. Hardly anyone from their pool of followers — no matter how vast — will be interested because those offers don’t cater to their needs or interests.
Create customer personas, also known as buyer personas, of your ideal customers that outline important details and give you an idea of their needs, interests, pain points, and problems. They help you reach your goals faster so you can get the results you want sooner.
By adequately researching your target audience, you eliminate the guesswork for how much your influencer’s audience will take to your products and services. It’s also essential to stick to influencers who have similar branding, values, and messages as you. It makes more sense for like-minded brands to come together to promote a product or business and will click better with your audience.
Wrapping up
Influencer marketing is a growing trend that’s giving businesses extra revenue, followers, engagement, and much more. When done right, it could be the boost your business needs to grow and prosper as it’s a great way to grab your audience’s attention and get them listening. However, doing your research and planning in advance is a great way to ensure that this method will work for your business.