Brand influencing existed before social media, but (intelligently) centered more around events than individuals. An example would be a group of young people enjoying a brand of beer at a football game while also encouraging the other fans to drink it. There are, of course, many other examples of individuals outside of social media being used as brand ambassadors (athletes wearing branded hats, musicians using only one kind of guitar, etc.), but in the world of social media where these potential influencers have 24/7 access to their fans (and vice versa, just as importantly), there is almost endless potential for these individuals to drive business revenue through their influence.
The vast majority of those individuals who successfully influence branding outside of social media tend to be very popular individuals. With social media, if you reach out to the right influencer in the right niche, even if they only have a reach of a few thousand followers, they can help your brand grow and sell. Here are five steps to building a solid influencer Marketing Campaign, even for small, niche social media markets.
Have Realistic Goals
One of the many appealing things about an Instagram marketing campaign is the price tag range, as there truly is a deal out there for every company and every potential brand influencer. Some goals for every campaign should be to reach a brand new audience and to reestablish trust from your current buyers. If you’re a web-based company (and if you’re not, you should be thinking of ways to monetize your good or service via a website), increasing traffic to your site should also be on the top of the goals board.
The level at which you measure success in each of these fields is up to you, but some improvements in all of them should be met, even if your only investing $80 into a local influencer with 4,000 followers. 10 new followers on your page and a percentage increase for web traffic are realistic and easily-measurable goals.
Match the Message to the Niche
For micro-marketing campaigns directed towards the followers of a given influencer (maybe a quarterback at the local college), be sure to create a message that will resonate with those followers. It’s important to do research here, as many influencers get heard due to accomplishments, but take on a much more personal persona on social media. For instance, a person may be famous for golfing but is a huge gamer in his or her free time, and most of the social media posts are related to gaming.
In this case, if you could create a message that somehow tied in golf and videogames, your odds of meeting your goals increase by quite a bit. Easier typed than done!
Let the Influencer “Sit at the Table”
There is no audience with a more direct niche than an audience that follows a single individual’s life through the lens of social media. With this in mind, no one knows what that niche likes more than the influencer themselves. Inviting the influencer or influencer to share opinions on how the message is to be conveyed will not only resonate with followers but will also make for a more passionate message from a said influencer.
Take Advantage of Analytics
Social media analytics are instant, virtually free, and extremely easy to understand and utilize for the betterment of your campaigns. The beauty of having a sole person delivering your message is that you only have to talk to one person (or, perhaps a small team) to implement changes to that message. This can even be done during a campaign and should be fully taken advantage of. Making tweaks and changes based on audience response is incomparably easy to do on social media.
Grow
Every real influencer’s goal with social media is to grow their audience. For some, it’s no doubt equally as satisfying to the psyche as it is the wallet, but to most, they know that the bigger the audience, the bigger the paycheck. As a team or individual just starting out in the influencer marketing business, you, too, should be hoping to grow your reach. Finding out what works and what doesn’t is the name of the game with small dealings. Learn from those mistakes, widen your niche, and invest even more working with an influencer whose audience (and investment) is a little larger. Repeat and reap the benefits!
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