Beginner’s guide to influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has been around for quite some time, whether we believe it or not. A term that has existed in the modern era since the early 1900s, and was even used by undefeated gladiators in ancient times for barter or gold.

In order to rationalize every expenditure, brands have cultivated celebrity endorsements and micro-influencers across multiple platforms.

The fastest way to reach your target audience and accelerate your brand is through influencer marketing. As the usage of phones and social media platforms has increased drastically in the last 5 years, customers got the platform to voice out their opinion.

Social media platforms like – Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, are among the chief platforms where Influencer marketing campaigns execute. Studies show that 74% or more people discover new products or make a purchasing decision while using social media.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencers are people who have built reputations and engage around a specific niche. They’re popular internet celebrities who work as ambassadors for your brand and promote the brand. Influencer marketing is a social media strategy to reach the target audience, where an influencer in exchange receives payment for endorsing a brand’s product. Typically, payback comes in the form of free products, cash, or discounts on expensive items.

Instagram is currently the most popular influencer marketing channel among all other social media channels, with 67% of brands using it.

Let’s look at a complete guide to influencer marketing:

Just like any other marketing strategy, you must identify your goals. This step will enable you to stay on track while ensuring your influencer marketing strategy achieves overall marketing and business goals.

Examples of influencer marketing are:
– Brand awareness
– Product launch
– Drive more website traffic
– Increase social media following
– Increase sales

Also, identify your customer cycle. It may be that some people are already looking for products like yours, and they simply need a little push to find you. Some prospective customers may not even be aware that you offer a product and certainly are not considering making a purchase. Between these two extremes, falls the third group.

To know how to execute your campaign effectively, you must clearly define your ultimate goal. Furthermore, having a clear objective will help you identify the most relevant performance metrics.

Before proceeding further, it is essential to ensure that you have sufficient finance set aside to pay for your influencer marketing campaign. You can’t just rely on influencers agreeing to work for you in exchange for free or discounted products.

Influencer marketing is an acceptable part of marketing, and as such, you need to set a budget for it in the same way you set a budget for other marketing activities. Your budget will determine the types of influencers like Mega-influencers, Macro–influencers, Mid-Tier Influencers, Micro-influencers, and Nano-influencers. Consider who you can approach to participate in your campaign – and if you can expect to succeed.

Identifying appropriate influencers is an essential part of influencer marketing. For example, one cannot ask the makeup artist to promote men’s apparel as the followers of the makeup artist are looking for cosmetics.

Things to consider while identifying influencers:
1. Niche: This is an important factor to consider while choosing an influencer for your brand. In order to maximize your influencer marketing strategy, you must target influencers according to their contextual fit. For example, if you sell a men’s grooming kit, Masoom Minawala won’t be the right fit to promote the product.

2. Reach: After identifying the right influencer that may fit your brand, you need to consider the following of your influencer in order to reach a mass audience. A way to identify is to check their followers and average engagement rate through different online tools.

After deciding on the right influencer, you must discuss how you are collaborating with them. In this way, both parties can run the campaign smoothly.

Here are the some of social media influencer endorsement payments and considerations:
– Pay per post: The most common arrangement is pay per post. Here we pay the influencers a certain amount in exchange for promotion. The pricing for this varies from influencer to influencer as it takes to reach and engagement into consideration.

– Freebies as tokens: As a product or service-based brand, you can offer freebies as a token of appreciation instead of money, in case the influencer is fond of the brand. This type of collaboration takes a good amount of time and effort.

– Commission: Influencers can also be compensated via pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-engagement commissions, which is known as commission. In this case, rather than paying a flat fee for access to their entire audience, you only pay if their endorsement leads directly to a sale, a new referral, or engagement.

In a modern marketing strategy, influencer marketing should be a key component. The pros and cons of this channel are the same as those of any other marketing channel. If you do influencer marketing right, you can gain considerable traction without paying large advertising expenses. Use these tips to increase your brand recognition, traffic to your website, and conversions with influencer marketing.