Do you want to get media coverage and build a name for your brand without having to pay unreasonable fees to a huge agency? The solution for this quest is simple – influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is becoming a popular branch of marketing across different industries. Businesses all over the world- regardless of their size – are turning to influencer marketing to promote their ideas, get their accomplishments recognized, and increase sales.
Influencer marketing offers you an opportunity to spread the right message to the right people. Connecting with the right influencer will help your business to stay relevant and earn recognition. For some direction on how to approach influencer marketing, check out these five effective tips.
Find Influencers Who Can Benefit Your Brand
Social media has created a whole new way of life for everyone from huge brands to social media users. Rising interest in the average person’s posts, preferences, and lifestyle, has created a new kind of entrepreneur – the influencer.
Influencers are people who have a large base of followers. They are often hired by brands to promote products. In this way, the influencer’s audience becomes aware of the brand. Ultimately, partnering with an influencer improves a brand’s online presence, drives engagement, and boosts sales.
Influencers can be your brand ambassadors so you need to find an influencer who agrees with your goals and ideas, and has a genuine appreciation for your product.
In order for influencer marketing to work, the influencers’ audience should match your target audience. Compare the demographics as well as their interests.
Let’s say that your business sells athletic wear for women. In that case, it is best to find a female influencer who is an advocate for exercising and living a healthy life.
You can inform yourself about influencers’ interests and beliefs through their content. Based on that, decide who the best fit for your company is.
Keep an eye on influencers who usually use the type of products you offer. You can send them a free sample and then ask for a review. After all, the best promotions are the ones where influencers promote brands that they genuinely love.
Another aspect that you need to take into consideration is the type of influencer that you want to hire. Based on their popularity, there are:
- Mega-influencers (over 1 million)
- Macro-influencers (between 100,000 and 1 million followers)
- Micro-influencers (between 1,000 and 100,000 followers)
Mega-influencers are mostly reserved for international brands. To clarify why we’ll just share that Kyle Jenner reportedly charges $1 million per social media post.
Use Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is when you pay influencers to mention your brand in their posts. Openly talking about the benefits of your products and services will help the influencers’ followers understand why your company is worth their attention.
“Paid-for” advertising will ensure the influencer takes your collaboration more seriously and mentions your product in the way you want them to. This type of collaboration is quite common.
What you need to pay attention to is transparency. The sponsored content should be presented in a natural way. Furthermore, the influencer needs to present your product in a way that resonates with the audience.
It is important to create a brief that will outline a few guidelines influencers should follow. Be that as it may, your guidelines should also allow the influencer room to improvise so that your content stays consistent with their personal style.
“The audience respects posts that are honest and trust me, they can recognize forced promotions. Truthful cooperation protects influencers’ integrity as well as your own,” advises Gregory Willis, a PR manager at BestWritersOnline.
Start an Affiliate Program and Use Discount Codes
Affiliate programs are quite popular in influencer marketing. In fact, you might have noticed that world-famous brands like Sephora, Zara, and Asos use affiliate programs to boost their PR.
Match a good affiliate program with attractive discount codes and you’ll get yourself one powerful combination. Not only will you increase brand awareness but you’ll also boost your sales rate.
The way affiliate programs work is that an influencer posts about your brand or mentions it in a YouTube video, offering a discount if users click on the affiliate link and purchase a product. There’s usually a code that users need to type in order to get their discount.
This is a great way to use influencer marketing to promote your product and get users to try it out. The discount will encourage your target audience to purchase your product. If they like it, you’ll get many positive reviews and repeat customers.
Organize Contests and Giveaways
When influencers promote your contest and giveaways they’ll drive massive attention to it.
Contests and giveaways encourage users to promote your products because of the requirements. Usually, the requirement to enter the contest or giveaway is to like a specific brand’s posts and follow their social media accounts, or something along those lines. With the right contest structure, you’ll boost the brand’s online presence.
Another way of running a contest is having influencers post about your giveaways and inviting the users to head to your website to win a free product.
Alternatively, you can make an agreement with an influencer to include your product in their giveaways, therefore promoting this product to their audiences.
Samantha Perry, a digital marketer and translation expert at PickWriters recently talked about the benefits of contests in influencer marketing. She said, “Contests and giveaways are very much loved by users. Influencers also support this marketing technique because they get the users to react and engage. Since target members are asked to follow the influencer and the brand, both get the recognition and a chance to grow their audience.”
Sign up for PR services
As was already mentioned, as a startup you might want to engage with more than micro-influencers. You have every right to want to start strong and land a major collaboration with popular influencers. You’ll find that you go through these steps much faster when you partner with a respected PR agency.
Collaborating with a PR company has many other benefits. These include:
- Attracting new clients – A PR company will make you more trustworthy in the eyes of potential clients.
- Building your reputation – Get your name recognized from the very first mention. Reputation plays a major part in marketing and a PR company can help your name to be associated with high-quality service.
- Building your credibility – If you don’t have lots of clients who prove your quality, a PR company can help you build up your credibility. As Jean-Louis Gassée, a successful business executive said “Advertising is saying you are good. PR is getting someone else to say you’re good.”
- Improve your SEO efforts – With a PR company on your side, you’ll be able to get more mentions in media and therefore, get a higher ranking in search results. This will also benefit your influencer marketing campaign because influencers will see that you have a strong online presence.
- Present yourself as an important brand – A company that works with a PR company is a company that invests in itself and in its progress. You’ll look more important among influencers if you use PR services to help your brand to stand out.
There are lots of options out there and you need to choose carefully if you want that PR campaign to achieve your goals.
For example, Pressfarm can provide you with:
- Contact details for over 1 million journalists
- Press release writing
- Feature story writing
- Content distribution that boosts your online visibility
- Curated media lists containing media contacts in your niche
- Tips for startup growth, PR, and more
Some Final Thoughts
Thanks to the world of the internet, startups don’t have to wait years to be recognized. Work on your PR campaign from the very start by making the most out of influencer marketing. The above-mentioned tips are good guidelines to make this whole process less complex. Just be confident and persistent and make sure that you build an influencer marketing campaign that works for your brand.