SMEs facing competition from larger industry players must employ savvy influencer marketing tactics to maximize their online presence. By collaborating with influencers, SMEs can tap into the potential of social media platforms to amplify their brand message and engage with broader audiences.
This article explores the best social media influencer tactics you can leverage to increase profitability in a competitive market.
Social Media and Influencer Marketing Tactics to Step Up Your Game
1. Use Organic and Paid Search to Increase Brand Awareness
One of the challenges of running a small business is getting an audience that converts. While social media gives you access to an engaged audience, you must find a way to channel their focus on your company. The easiest way to increase traffic is to use paid ads to target specific users and familiarize them with your brand.
While the cost of paid ads might be prohibitive for smaller businesses, using them alongside organic strategies can give you a unique opportunity to increase your reach. Depending on your niche, you can choose the right social media network and craft a compelling ad to reinforce your social media presence.
For instance, you can keep boosting your organic traffic through posts with exceptional content and at the same time run a brand awareness campaign. This helps you to target specific users with the right message and boost their purchase intent.
Here’s a fun paid ad on Facebook from the clothing brand Sassyspud that speaks to its target audience.
Consider the following when combining organic and paid search for your campaign:
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Research Every Social Media Advertising Service
Before rolling out your paid ads, select the best advertising service to increase your campaign efficiency. From Facebook ads to Instagram ads, you have many choices to get your targeted messages across.
While Facebook ads can increase your reach and drive more traffic to your website, they can be expensive for smaller businesses with stricter budgets. You can use a VPN for Facebook to ensure the safety of your account. Doing any research necessary before investing in a paid advertising service will help you save money and find the most optimal solution to increase your brand visibility.
Here’s the average social media advertising cost by CPM on some of the most popular social media platforms from Falcon.io:
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Plan Your Social Media Landing Pages for Greater Conversions
After finding the best service, it’s time to plan the ultimate post-click conversion tool. Use landing pages to convince your social media followers to take action.
Look for a great landing page builder to save valuable time. Next, input compelling text and visual elements to support your CTA and lead your visitors to click on it. Since social media users can be easily distracted, your social landing pages must attract users’ attention and lead them to your website. Even a few minutes on your landing page can power up your lead-generation efforts and increase your traffic beyond measure.
2. Engage with your audience
Simple interactions like an answer to a comment, a thank you or an emoji to your users’ comments can help you build a friendly and more approachable brand. One of the advantages of this simple yet effective tactic is that you can implement it on every social media network. Be careful, though, because each platform has a unique personality that can affect the success of your engagement.
For instance, if you have a SaaS B2B business with an audience on LinkedIn, respond to comments formally and professionally. Use a language and tone that demonstrates your brand value. On the other hand, a food chain or confectionary store using X for marketing can be creative. Engage your followers in a fun and unexpected way to highlight your unique brand image.
For instance, Moonpie uses humor and social laughter to engage with their followers, offering an entertaining twist that’s hard to miss:
Moonpie’s post received numerous comments about the chess game. Their Twitter followers accepted the challenge and the brand responded to their comments accordingly:
SMEs have fewer followers compared to big enterprises. As such, you can create fun and interactive comments that show your brand’s personality.
3. Find the Right Influencers to Promote Your Brand
Influencers have a role to play in social media users’ purchase intention and trend adoption. They’ve become major trendsetters who can influence their followers to try new things, or even boycott brands. To leverage influencer marketing tactics, SMEs must find influencers who will promote their brand effectively without costing them a fortune.
The first step to influencer marketing is to plan. Set your marketing goals, then search for the most suitable person to promote your products. Remember that the right influencer for your brand can be someone who isn’t necessarily a big celebrity endorser but a fan of your brand and your products.
As experience has shown us, mainstream celebrities can make mistakes, too.
As an SME that doesn’t have the luxury of hiring an army of influencers, niche down to influencers that align with your marketing goals and industry.
4. Leverage Micro- and Nano-influencers
Influencers can be big celebrities and bloggers, or micro and nano-influencers with significantly smaller audiences. When implementing an influencer marketing strategy, marketers usually target influencers with millions of followers to maximize brand visibility. To get the most out of influencer marketing your brand shouldn’t focus on the numbers. Instead, look for the quality of exchange between brand, influencer, and follower.
For SMEs, micro- and nano-influencers are your ultimate weapon to build solid relationships with your audience and motivate them to take your CTA. One of the benefits of leveraging the power of micro-influencers is that they are cheaper. They can also promote your brand in a casual and less sales-y fashion.
Nano-influencers, on the other hand, might have fewer followers than micro-influencers. However, they have stronger bonds with their audience and are usually fans of specific brands and products. Targeting nano-influencers who love your product will give your business credibility.
Here’s an example from Alexis Baker’s Instagram profile, a nano-influencer with 3,290 followers:
5. Woo Your Followers with Exceptional Giveaways
One of the best tactics to increase your follower count, engagement and conversion rate is to give back to your audience. Giveaways are the perfect tactic to show how much you appreciate your audience and attract attention to your brand.
Planning the perfect giveaway is a task that requires not only creativity but also deliverability. Here’s a great giveaway from Kopari:
“Hyped” users will follow, comment, and tag one of their friends to have a chance to win your amazing product. They might also share your giveaway with their peers giving you the perfect opportunity to double your follower count and visibility.
Takeaway
Influencer marketing is one way to build a positive image for your brand. It also helps to introduce your brand to new audiences and levels the playing ground for SMEs competing with larger brands. Consider combining it with other social advertising tactics such as PPC ads to improve brand awareness and conversions.
Author bio
Marilia is a Creative Writer working for email marketing software Moosend. Her passion for writing has made her find new ways to combine the art of Creative Writing with SEO Copywriting. When not writing articles, you’ll find her spending time on her Drabbles.
