Celebrities and athletes used to be the golden geese in marketing. Putting your product in the hand or on the body of a person with a recognizable face was the key to selling. While celebrities will still move product, there’s a more cost-effective way to go about this approach. Audiences are looking for people who are more relatable to their everyday. This is why influencer marketing has taken off and become a staple in mainstream marketing. If your company is looking to leverage influencer marketing to scale your business, we have four tips to help.
Find Influencers in Your Niche
Social media influencers come in all shapes, sizes, styles, and niches. No matter what you’re looking to sell, you can find the perfect influencer for what you sell. However, it’s crucial to do your research and find those who fit within the niche that you’re looking to reach.
Understand that the size of your target demographic is a direct reflection of the size of your chosen influencer’s reach. If you’re selling something like kitchen storage bins or gardening gloves, you a plethora of homemaker influencers at your disposal for product placement. However, if you sell shoes for cats, you’re going to be limited to influencers who specifically appeal to cat owners. This influencer might have a relatively large following in the niche, but not the same reach as the mommy blogger who has her own herb garden, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re still reaching your target demographic.
According to the influencer pairing service Scalefluence, “Among the biggest challenges agencies face is finding the perfect influencers for maximum campaign success.” Do your research to get it done right and maximize your ROI. The payoff will be worth the hunt.
Run Giveaways
You can get the message out about a product launch with a giveaway by working with a social media influencer. The point of working with influencers is that you’re immediately reaching their established audience. If you’re a growing business and trying to work with a social media influencer who has somewhere around five million Instagram followers, there’s a real possibility that as many as three million of those people have no idea who you are. This is a massive audience that has just become aware of your brand.
By paying an influencer to get your product in front of millions of their followers, you’re clearly growing your brand awareness and getting the eyes of potential buyers on your product. Even if the item that’s run in the giveaway isn’t for everyone in the audience, the contest can spark interest in other items within your catalog. Analyze the cost and benefit of working with a big-time influencer for a giveaway because the impressions alone could pay massive dividends in the future.
Contribute to Social Media Posts
Something that influencers are good at is making it look easy to post on social media several times a day. Although, they’ll be the first to tell you that it is a whole lot of work. Most influencers will welcome posts that have been pre-written with an image that’s ready to go. Even a script for a video or pre-determined poses for photos with a product can go a long way to saving time and effort.
Your contribution to their social media posts can come in many forms. Provide B roll or product photos to supplement social media posts. This will not only enhance their posts but it’s an easy way for you to still control the message to some degree.
Supply Products for Testimonial Videos
Many social media influencers have loyal followers who essentially take recommendations as a guarantee. You can use this trust that these influencers have built with their followers to get a strong customer review directly in front of your target demographic. These can be shared across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms.
A word of warning when asking for testimonial videos: Make sure that you’re going to get a positive review from an influencer before asking them to make a video. If an influencer is going to give your product a negative review, you’re going to lose most, if not all, of that influencer’s audience as potential customers.
To avoid this, you can take the approach in phases while maximizing the relationship. Offer the product to the influencer for feedback. If they enjoy it, ask them to create a testimonial video. If they don’t enjoy it, learn how you can improve the product. This part of the process can be beneficial as you then have a relationship with someone who can provide more feedback in the future and they’ll be more likely to create a testimonial video.