Influencer marketing is a relative newcomer to the digital marketing toolkit but it is one that delivers a great return on investment, allows for lots of creativity and is a great way for smaller brands to scale their marketing while specifically targeting relevant audiences. That means lots of appropriate eyeballs, no wasted spend. Sounds good, right?
So, what is influencer marketing?
While some aspects of digital marketing – such as search engine optimisation (SEO) – can be extremely complicated, influencer marketing is actually fairly straightforward.
HubSpot has a great definition for influencer marketing. It says: “Influencer marketing employs leading, niche content creators to improve brand awareness, increase traffic, and drive your brand’s message to your target audience. These content creators already market to your ideal audience across different channels which allows you to expand your reach across your buyer personas.”
Simply put, you’ll find someone who has influence over your target audience and collaborate with them (or pay them) to promote your brand to that audience. Most commonly, influencer marketing sees brands teaming up with high-profile social media personalities, bloggers or other celebrities such as reality TV stars, models or well-known names within a certain field.
If you were a gluten free bread company for example, author and food blogger Deliciously Ella would be your ultimate influencer. If you design workout gear for women, personal trainer and Instagram favourite Alice Liveling could be a dream influencer.
How does it work?
The most common form of influencer marketing takes place on social media channels such as Instagram. The influencer will post images, videos or live stream themselves using a certain product or service, tag that brand, mention them in the comments, perhaps run giveaways or competitions to raise the profile of that brand with their existing audience.
This type of marketing is effective because it is the modern form of word-of-mouth recommendations. The audience trusts that influencer so having that person share a product they love, use and endorse is a powerful tool.
It’s not just the influencers getting paid to promote a brand that love influencer marketing. Consumers do too. Around half of shoppers say they rely on influencer recommendations to help them make purchase decisions. Marketers agree that the quality of traffic from influencer marketing is high with 71% say the quality of customers generated by influencer marketing is superior to other sources.
How can you get started?
Influencer marketing is a modern marketing tactic and one which smaller brands can use to scale their presence in front of their desired audience. It’s an effective way to build awareness and make more sales, making it especially interesting for start-ups, entrepreneurs and businesses ready to scale.
Getting started is simple but requires a little leg work. You’ll need to identify influencers within your niche; people that have the eyes and ears of your target audience. You’ll then approach your selected influencer with a proposal to work together, agree on the collaboration and the fee, and then get started.
There are platforms for influencers which can do much of the work for you but they do come at a cost. If you’re prepared to do a bit of the leg work yourself and spend some time on social media or blogs identifying popular personalities, it is something that you can do yourself initially.
It’s worth pointing out that the bigger the influence and audience, the more expensive your collaboration will be. If you’re working to a very tight budget, look for micro-influencers. These are people with a smaller following but still command the attention of their audience. Look for those with a following between 5,000 – 20,000 and a very niche audience.
