How Influencer Marketing Can Help Your Brand
The Power of Influencer Marketing
The best way and lowest barrier to entry way to get PR in this digital age is through influencer marketing.In this day and age, utilizing social media efficiently and partnering with the right influencers can sometimes result in more success than the traditional images we think of regarding PR, like PR agencies, billboard covers, magazine advertisements, and news show coverage.
What exactly is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing where you focus more on specific, influential people to partner with as opposed to placing general advertisements where your target market is located. The reason influencer marketing works so well is because people, especially millennials, like to be influenced by people they follow or look up to, and they are more likely to purchase a product or service if it is recommended by someone they trust.
Trust is the key word here.
A lot of people may not realize this, but for influencer marketing, it is important that the actual influencer likes and believes in a product they endorse or promote, and honestly reviews it and lets their followers know that they were not simply paid to say they like a product they do not actually enjoy.
How do I partner with influencers?
This form of marketing is especially popular on the visual platform Instagram, where “influencers,” or popular figures on the social media platform, post pictures with captions describing products they are wearing, using, reading, etc, to their thousands or even millions of followers.
This kind of exposure is quite effective if done correctly.
For example, if a brand sells shirts that have a unique athletic feature, they would likely receive an impressive return on their investment by partnering with an online influencer that has an Instagram audience of at least 50,000 followers consisting of athletes and people who are interested in running, exercise, etc. The influencer will wear the clothing item and in the caption mention the company name.
To get more likes, shares, and PR exposure, run a giveaway or exclusive discount for your product to the influencer’s audience, such as free shipping or a certain percentage off of the ticket price for their items.
Influencer Outreach Tools
Luckily, there are some handy tools that are helpful in reaching out to influencers. Here are a few of my favorites:
Influence.co
Buysellshoutouts
ShoutCart
Each of these will help you in analyzing thousands of influencers’ data, engagement, and audience, which will allow us to strategically target the right powerful individuals.
You want to look for high engagement from the profile, not just how many followers, because that person could have bought fake followers. Generally, an engagement rate of 3-5% is a safe bet you’ll gain some valuable exposure, followers, and potentially more sales by partnering with an Instagram profile owner.
You can also partner with “micro-influencers” which are usually profiles with 10,000 followers or less. The benefit here is that these “shoutouts” (where they promote your products) can be free or a fraction of the cost of a feature from a large profile with 1 million followers. Then, you can have 10 different Instagram pages promote your products for free or a small cost, and you have more control over your investment and can track which profiles have a larger impact and return on the investment.
