The digital landscape, social media usage, and internet penetration has changed the way of Marketing practices and techniques being practiced. You need to realize that the practice has become more democratic in terms of availability, resources required, and, most notably, the platform has become a mostly equal playing field. 

The medium has also changed. You don’t need top tier celebrities from films, sports, or politics to promote your brand and earn back the investment. It can be done by anyone, a businessman, a chef, or a housewife. This is because advertisement has become simple and almost costless with even better results and return rates.

With the world becoming a small place, people have multiple options and alternatives to choose from. But brands need more space in the highly-competitive space. They need to be more enterprising to capture the target audience’s attention first and then think about sales.   

The brands have realized the work can’t be done all by themselves or a single celebrity anymore. They need to find alternatives, cheaper and more in number. And that’s precisely where Influencer Marketing stems out from.

The world of marketing has a lot of jargon and industry slangs which must not intimidate you. The term Influencer marketing is a very industry-specific word, but everyone who has used social media has encountered someone who uses it.

Let’s understand the term Influencer marketing first.

It is a method or strategy deployed by businesses to promote their products and services by association with popular social media users, also called Influencers, content creators, and vloggers across various mediums. These channels or mediums have a fair amount of authority, social capital, and engaged following that can help you by catering to newer audiences or introducing your brand to them. The end goal of hiring them is to drive sales, improve brand awareness, and expand outreach.

What is an Influencer?

You don’t need a qualification to become an influencer. You need to have an above-average influence, have a high level of knowledge, and have a loyal base of followers who believe and trust in your opinion.

People must value what you offer and must be genuinely interested in what you think. To achieve that the same, you must:

1. Select and focus on your forte, don’t fall into the trap of what people want or what’s trending.
2. Have command on your knowledge and must know how to use it to simplify it to reach an audience.
3. Be vocal in what you stand for. No one is asking you to take a stance for everything, but speak up when required. Individuality will make you stand out in the masses.
4. Build your network by being available, use various platforms, and don’t shy away from making the first move. Attend industry meets, have a meet and greet with your followers and establish yourself.

Here are some impressive figures you must know to grasp the importance, affluence and the revolution Influencer marketing has implemented in the digital marketing sphere:

• Adweek has estimated that the industry is expected to be worth $10 billion by the end of 2020. 
• As of the end of 2018, Mediakix estimated that the ROI has multiplied by 11 times.
• Only 1% of the majority of the users, the millennials trust advertisements by brand. 33% of them buy products that are vouched for by Influencers in reviews.
• 60% of the in-store or offline purchases have been directly or indirectly because they heard about it from their trusted influencers.
• The ad revenue is calculated at $6.5 per dollar worth of investment.

How are influencers different from celebrities?

When you look up to a celebrity promoting a particular brand, you are in awe, and you don’t focus on the product being sold. You also know that no celebrity uses the products they sell. This is why more businesses are using Influencer marketing techniques. People read reviews and watch their favorite influencer opinion or verdict because they are uncensored(they don’t mind using the F word in their reviews multiple times), unscripted, and, most importantly, relatable. The last two aspects are the reasons for their success and presence. They aren’t scripted- they will warn you that this product might not suit you if you have these problems and won’t shy away from telling you that it might be not economically viable. The most crucial factor in today’s marketing world is relatability. People have tons of options, and they won’t shy away from choosing the other option if results are delivered. And that’s where influencers play an important role in the chain, they are just like you and me- and people buy products if they are recommended by people who are similar to them. You don’t trust that celebrities use only that product and see the results; everyone knows what happens in the backdrop.

How to create an Influencer marketing strategy?

1.Document your goals

For any strategy to succeed, you need to know what are your end goals and non-compromisable targets. For any influencer marketing strategy, the common underlying goals would be:

1. Increasing brand awareness and credibility: The only metric to fully understand customer response is by tracking how the audience responds to your content. You need to keep a close eye on the engagement rates, likes, comments, shares, and impressions. Every single response is crucial.
2. Expand your base of target audience: What’s the point in hiring Influencers if they can’t introduce your new product or service to the new audience? You need to closely monitor how and more importantly, how many people you are successfully engaging in.
3. Lead generation: You are making efforts to increase your sales and revenue, that is the end goal of any venture. You can’t compromise if you aren’t receiving any monetary return for an extended period of time.
4. Link Building and customer loyalty: They might not be the most important when commencing the journey, but they are undoubtedly an essential aspect to focus and target upon in the long term perspective. They are the indicators of the effectiveness of your product, and it’s marketing.

You mustn’t be very adamant about getting the results by compromising on the quality or even the way of achieving it. You must look at it from a long term perspective and understand that it is a trial and error method. It is a gamble and painstaking process, but the results are sure worth it!

2. Research and understand the space

You must take extra effort in marking and understanding your target audience. It is essential to understand this to ensure that you find the right medium to market your product, and to do so, you must do thorough market research, which gives you a good understanding of the space. You need to create a buyer’s persona in which you target them by their demographic, geographic, and psychographic orientation. You need to focus them not only on their age, gender, and physical location but also on their psychographic behavior, which includes and appropriate their values, attitudes, interests, lifestyles, priorities, and motivation. These factors lead them to make several choices that are based on their personality and emotions. 

You must also ensure that you use varied and different platforms. The majority of the brands think that Instagram influencers are enough, and statistics also support the claim that 90% of their revenue is generated from the platform. You need to realize that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and YouTube are also important in the initial phase where Influencer marketing can find its space.

3.Choose a type of Influencer marketing strategy: 

It must be based on your brand’s popularity, the reach and engagement rates, and the budget you have decided for it.

The most popular types are:

1.Discount codes and affiliate marketing: A coupon code can get you over 75% of consumers to increase their average order by $40. Two-thirds of millennials will switch brands if they can enjoy at least a 30% discount, says a report by Forbes. In this method, you provide the influencers with a code that will be promoted to avail of the cut. You can also give them a unique code that provides them with the commission as the discount offered to the customer. Some of the most famous examples would be the ones by Shein, Audible, and Daniel Wellington.

2.Competitions and giveaways: In the initial stages, it becomes the most effective tool, which is to simply give the customers or the influencers the product. You can ask the influencers to make an unboxing or review video for your product. You can also hold competitions where the users are requested to tag, share, or follow your page to receive the product by random picking. You can use ShortStack, BuzzSumo and Ninja Outreach to create, manage and shortlist the winners of these competition campaigns

3.Sponsored Post: You can pay the influencer to post your product as an ad and be transparent with disclosing. You can ask them to create content for the same or just give them the guidelines and necessary points which must be included. Ensure that you check the material before you post so that there is no confusion or mismatch of facts.

4.Find the apt influencers : This is the most challenging and demanding step as it requires you to do perform background checks and approach the influencer with exciting content which they can’t refuse. An influencer can be anything from a celebrity, thought leader, field expert, or a non-competing brand. You can research them by using backlinks, search them by topic or even use platforms like ShortStack and BuzzSumo and use their compiled data based on the hashtags and subtopics. 

After finding them, you need to find a way to connect to them. Most of them have an email address to contact and collaborate on their Official social media platforms. If you don’t find them, use tools like Voila Norbert, which help you find their professional email addresses. You can also use referrals and recommendations from LinkedIn.

5.Qualify and recheck their authenticity: The number of followers doesn’t determine the authority, credibility, and influence the person has over their audience. Make sure you check their clickable and engagement rates before offering them a deal. Many users do use third-party services to gain overnight success, which might not help you in converting leads. 

The best way to tackle this is by in-depth research about their audience demographic and by choosing micro-influencers over big names. You should select an account with 5k followers instead of having a 50k or 100k following to target the niche audience.

6.Determine a fair price and discuss the guidelines explicitly: The biggest shortcoming of Influencer marketing is the inadequate price brands offer. You must decide and dedicate a set amount from your marketing budget. 48% of marketers are keen on increasing their share.

You must sit down and decide what the influencer would prefer. It could be freebies and sponsorships for one time deals while offers prefer a monthly fee or commissions per purchase via unique codes. Also, clarify the content they will create and be available to help whenever they need your guidance.

7.Record, Revisit, and Review: Use platforms like Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, and Iconosquare, which provide you information about the engagement rates, likes, and expected revenue from each influencer hired. You should make necessary revisions required as hiring influencers isn’t the way of getting your sales up. Compare the results with the initial ground rules and metrics set to see how far you have reached and what needs a push.

This is a blueprint that can be used in most of the cases, but you must be aware of your brand and requirements to make the required amendments to customize the plans to be the most suitable one for your brand size, goals, and image.

What doesn’t work for an Influencer marketing strategy?

The influencer marketing field is still emerging; the guidelines and functionality are varied. There is no standard of measurement returns, remuneration, and no real way of knowing the conversion rates. 

Here are the top 5 factors that act as a hindrance in growth:

• Fake followers and fake numbers: With the abundance of third parties in the marketing claiming to provide real engagement and real followers, we all know that they are bots and fake followers. This factor directly affects the Influencer marketing chain of operation. While stricter policies and a frequent crackdown by my social media websites have become a routine on many platforms, the trend isn’t stopping any sooner. Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram users have seen this happen. The only way to protect Influencer marketing’s credibility is to make the platforms more secure and accountable.
• The integrity of the Influencer: Let’s face the truth we all know that only some of the influencers care about the authenticity and safety of the products they are promoting. For most, it’s a method of earning quick cash and maintaining a quasi-celeb aura offline. It’s the sad truth, but in the long run, the organic and transparent people will only survive with the competition the future is going to offer.
• Engagement levels on social media aren’t accurate measurement techniques: There is no guarantee that likes, comments, shares, and website visits will get you more sales or even lead to long term conversion and associations. They can form the basis of payment and partnerships will influencers but aren’t enough to help you estimate your quarterly sales.
• No diverse influencers: Most influencers are associated with fashion, food, fitness, and lifestyle backgrounds. What about cost accountant or medical personnel as an influencer. There is no denying that student communities, doctors, and consultants are entertaining the idea of vlogging. But it doesn’t give an equal and fair chance to every company or brand type. The struggle for it to become a reality is going to be a hard and long one. With growing internet penetration rates globally, we can hope for a better representation of the ordinary people.
• Problems in measuring ROI: While the most crucial goal is gaining visibility amongst the target audience, sales are also equally important. Using google analytics isn’t enough and satisfactory in considering getting long term return on investment via an influencer. Ensure that your marketing strategy keeps the influencer in check and interested to truly gain something via the medium.

What works for an Influencer marketing strategy?

• Influencer creating quality and engaging content is the only way your brand can target the ultimate audience. It must satisfy your company’s ethics, morals, and standards first and then cater to others. Influencers should produce content that also attracts newer consumers and not only target the existing base to make more purchases. It can also help you strategize and develop your content better.
• Influencer marketing isn’t promotional and aspirational: Influencers don’t tell the audiences to buy your products, and neither do customers buy it because their favorite celebrity is using it. They really invest and read in between the lines of a review and make a decision for themselves. No one is forcing them to, an influencer just shares his/her experience, and that’s what customers buy.
• Reach out to a new audience: The sole purpose of hiring an influencer is because they have a reactive and engaging audience that can help you to penetrate an untapped market. A new audience is not readily available due to the competitiveness and hence reaching out is what works in influencer marketing.

Conclusion:

You need to realize that it is the next big thing in marketing, and you shouldn’t shy away from giving it a genuine try and approach. The whole process might look like a gamble and look ineffective, but trusting your instincts and pairing it up with a robust data collection and breakdown, will arrive you a comprehensive conclusion. For a new brand launching the marketing, this is an essential investment and should be integral to their marketing mix to grow organically and rapidly.

Make sure that your content, influencers, and brand values are in sync and on the same page to build a long-lasting relationship with your newly gained audience. Make systems and spaces which protect and hold influencers accountable regarding the conversions obtained before making more serious investments and expanding your brand online. And in the end, don’t forget to do your research!

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