Benefits of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has been giving excellent results for several years to companies that dare to use it, so if you want to take advantage of the power of influencer marketing in your business this 2023 keep reading because today, we will give you some tips for you to start with this strategy.
Social media marketing can bring you great benefits, but it can be a complicated job, so today we want to introduce you to an alternative that can bring huge benefits: influencer marketing with which you can create a link between your products and content creators, to gain visibility or even make more sales.
What is influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a technique that consists of achieving a series of collaborations of brands or companies with people who have a high visibility and prominence on the Internet, that is to say, to form a link between brand and influencers.
This type of marketing can benefit your brand or product by collaborating with a person who already has engagement on social networks as a result of the size of their audience, plus influencers have the ability to change people’s behavior or decisions, which means a collaboration with a high degree of conversion.
How expensive is influencer marketing
Hiring celebrities as brand ambassadors or as brand image is not something new, it is as old as marketing itself, however for a long time it was something that only big brands could afford, because hiring a movie or TV celebrity was very expensive.
However, the Internet changed this, now influencer marketing is accessible to all budgets. Thanks to social media, for more than a decade now there have been content creators or influencers in every niche market, so finding a partnership that fits your budget is much easier than before.
Types of influencers
If you want to have a successful influencer marketing campaign for your business you don’t necessarily have to collaborate with a Kardashian or Luisito Comunica, in fact according to some studies influencers with fewer followers are what generate more engagement than someone with more followers. That is why it is important that you learn to distinguish the various types of influencers that are classified according to the number of followers:
Nano influencers: these are content creators who have around 5 thousand followers. Their strength is in the few followers as their recommendations seem genuine and honest, for their community it is as if they were recommended by a close friend.
Micro influencer: they have more than 10 thousand followers. The strength of these influencers is that they have the ability to create communities around specific interests. Collaborating with a micro influencer means accessing micro-communities with a common interest.
Mid Tier Influencers: these are influencers with a community ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 followers. Their community can be more open and not focused on a single interest.
Macro influencers: these are the influencers that obtain greater visibility with a community of 500 thousand to one million followers.
Mega influencers: these are the most famous influencers, with a follower base of more than one million. They have the ability to drive trends and create demand for products until they are sold out.
Collaborating with any of these influencers will depend on your strategy, objectives and budget, however our suggestion is that you consider working with nano and micro influencers.
A collaboration with nano influencers or micro influencers can be more productive than collaborating with better known influencers, because it will be cheaper, even with some you can reach agreements where the influencer collaborates with you in exchange for free products, also this type of collaboration makes your products seem more reliable and closer.
Influencer marketing benefits
Influencer marketing can bring great benefits to your business, in addition to gaining notoriety on social networks. For starters, choosing an influencer who is recognized in your niche market will help your brand appear closer to your audience, as the publicity is much more natural than other strategies.
You can reach new users, as another benefit is that they improve the engagement rate. The impact of these influencers on the algorithm of social networks helps to reach new users who can become potential users.
Influencer marketing gives you high levels of conversion. Another benefit is that most users generate a sense of trust and complicity with content creators, so when they recommend or appear using one of your products can give a sense of confidence to buy that product, this translates into high volumes of conversion to sales on social networks. And it is very easy to end up buying something that your favorite influencer recommends or uses.
High ROI, according to some experts’ influencer marketing can give you up to 11 times more ROI than traditional marketing methods.
How to leverage influencer marketing
Now that you are convinced to start with this strategy, maybe you don’t know how to start, so we will give you some tips for you to implement it. Start by defining what your goals are, do you want more visibility, or do you want to increase your sales, in which social network would you like to collaborate and of course what is your budget.
How to choose an influencer to collaborate with
Then comes one of the most important parts: choosing the influencer to make your collaboration. As we have explained, if you have a somewhat short budget you can opt for a nano or micro influencers, but keep in mind that the number of followers should not be the only criterion for choosing who to work with.
Regardless of your budget to choose the right influencer to collaborate with, you have to look at the community and the niche it focuses on, it must also be aligned with the values of your company, for example if your company is characterized by defending clean energy, but it is not a value for the content creator, then the collaboration can be counterproductive, because your audience can recriminate you with someone outside the environment.
One of the best tips for choosing the right content creator is to answer the question of who my potential customers follow, who are the influencers they most identify with.
Another question you may have is in which social network you are going to collaborate. For a long time Instagram and YouTube were the social networks par excellence for influencer marketing, however nowadays influencers have visibility on all social networks, especially Tik Tok; so consider advertising on this network.
Once you have found the perfect influencer, you may think that contacting them is the most complicated, however this is not the case, as most of them have visible means of contact in their biography, you can even send a simple direct message.
In some cases, especially with macro or mega influencers, the first contact and negotiation will have to be done through an agency or manager.
Choose the type of collaboration and promotion
The next step to have a winning marketing strategy is to plan the type of collaboration and promotion of your product, although you can design the strategy that best suits you the influencer may also participate in the design of it, because in the end it is your image that you are putting in the public eye.
It is important that you have clear what the goal is, for example if you want to publicize a new product, it is best to create more direct publications as post where the influencer recommends buying directly or makes a unboxing of your product, if instead you want to gain the trust of the public or that the visibility of a product or brand is long term, then you can ask them to use it in their publications or videos, this is very common in food or beauty influencers, so you can make sure that your product is seen in every post, this also helps to gain the trust of consumers, because it seems that the influencer uses it naturally, without payment.
Also, you will have to negotiate if you can make use of these posts by replicating them in your company’s social networks or even in other media.
Mistakes to avoid in influencer marketing
Before you start with your influencer marketing campaign there are some mistakes you should avoid to make the campaign a success. The first one is to start without planning and without having clear objectives. Another of the most common mistakes is to run the campaign without making timely measurements such as increase in sales, engagement, or number of views, not knowing this data in a timely manner can make you lose time and money.
The most common mistake and also the most feared by those who start with influencer marketing is to choose the wrong content creator to collaborate with. Many brands focus only on the number of followers or likes to assess the relevance of a profile on a social network, however the algorithms of social networks give more priority to other aspects such as comments, interactions, views among other things to promote the content of a creator, which is why choosing a creator only by the number of followers, can give you negative results such as low visibility.
Influencer marketing may seem intimidating, but you just have to dare to take the first step, there are currently dozens of influencers who are willing to collaborate with you, plus your brand can be another success story, which has become known thanks to a creative collaboration with an influencer. Tell us, which influencer would you like to collaborate with?