Influencer Marketing – A Smart Move For Your Business?

What is influencer marketing?

Every industry has key people inside of it that have a strong influence over a specific audience, whether that be because they are a celebrity, a through-leader, or simply a savvy social networker.

As a business, if you can get these people that have influence over your target audience to be champions of your brand, it can be a game changer.

We all remember the days of wheaties and air jordans, where celebrity athlete endorsements ruled the marketing game.

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But today, there are effective ways to do influencer marketing without spending millions on celebrities.

In the days of bloggers and social media kings and queens, there are plenty of influencers and micro-influencers our there that can help you take your brand from zero to hero.

Check out what Dollar Beard Club is doing! (No, we didn’t mean Dollar Shave Club, although we are big fans of their marketing as well!)

What should you consider before doing a campaign with an influencer?

1) Audience Demographic

Make sure the influencer you are considering partnering with has influence over your target audience demographic. No duh, right?

But his can be difficult to gauge accurately. Look at the demographics of their social following in depth (age, location, interests) and look at other products they are supporting (and how successfully).

2) Reach

It’s not all about the audience demographic or even the audience size. You also need to make sure that this influencers audience is engaged.

You can find a potential partner with millions of follows with next to no engagement. Spending your money on a campaign here is a waste. It’s often better to find influencers with smaller, but highly engaged and passionate audiences to partner with.

3) Reputation

If you successfully run a campaign with an influencer, their reputation becomes inextricably linked with your brand. And this can be dangerous.

Consider if an influencers reputation could be polarizing to your brand in any way before deciding to start working together.

Of course, there is always a risk linking your brand to someone else. You never know what skeletons may lie in the closet. But do you best to vet potential influencers before signing on with them.

Need I remind you of PewDiePie, Tiger Woods, or Jared (the Subway guy)? (Not to mention countless others that hurt brands’ reputations with their personal reputations)

4) Authenticity

The ideal would be for one of these influencers to be talking about your product for free just because they love it. This is the ultimate in authenticity.

While you may not be able to achieve this level of authenticity, it is important to find influencers with which your brand or your product fits well so that the endorsement is believable.

If your influencer campaigns don’t come across as authentic, it will be a waste of time and money (and can even work against your brand).

How can you get influencers on board?

Product

Send them product! For some micro-influencers, your product alone will be enough to get them on board to support your brand.

For larger influencers, you’ll likely need to follow up with other compensation, but getting an influencer to first try (and like) your product is the first step.

Payment

Offer compensation for talking about your brand. This could be a formal affiliate program or standard paid endorsements.

Now what?

Once you get an influencer on board, there are plenty of ways that they can spread the word about your brand. It could be social posts, written testimonials on your site, blog articles, video testimonials on you tube, etc. The sky is the limit! Choose a channel (or channels) that make sense for your brand (and your influencer, where they have the most reach).

And, make sure to keep sending them products if they really like it in order to keep them interested and talking about your brand.

Check out this article for more examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns.

 

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