One of the most difficult things to do is to get in front of the right audience without being ignored. Due to the number of ads shown and familiarity with marketing tricks, it is getting harder to catch consumers’ attention.
If you’re struggling to get to your audience effectively or if you’re just trying to stay ahead of the curve, you may want to look into influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a collaboration between yourself and someone your audience follows on social media and respects their opinion.
What is a marketing influencer?
A marketing influencer is someone who can effectively influence their audience’s decisions. Influencers are usually very knowledgeable and trusted within a niche market and very actively engage with its community.
What makes these social media stars effective is that they have built themselves into their own independent brand — one that feels genuine and relatable to their followers. So when they promote other brands, their followers are likely to trust their recommendations.
Types of Influencers
Influencers can be celebrities, journalists, bloggers and vloggers and other types of content creators. Each has their own audience and expertise. The size and nature of each influencer should be considered when finding one to work with on a campaign.
If you’re just getting started with influencer marketing or are trying to get into a very specific niche, you can look into micro-influencers. They tend to be regular people that are knowledgeable about a topic that isn’t incredibly popular, but has its own dedicated following. They can be seen as more relatable than higher-profile influencers.
When you go lower on the influencer spectrum, you’re aiming for a “regular person speaking to regular people” image for your campaign. When going higher up the pole, you’re more likely to work with industry experts, CEOs, and celebrities.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a collaboration between an influencer and a brand. The influencer uses their reach to boost awareness about a brand or product to their following, which overlaps with the target audience of the sponsoring business. It’s great for audience building, lead generation, growing sales, engagement, and customer loyalty.
Influencer marketing can help get the word out about your brand or product, with the help of a knowledgeable figure that has sway in your market Just like any other important tool for your business, influencer marketing is another way to speak to your target audience.
How to find influencers
It is important that you take your time when looking for the right influencer for your campaign. You want to make sure your goals, audience, and expectations are aligned from beginning to end — but that’s for when you find the best influencer. How do you find an excellent partner in the first place?
Blogs and other online publications
If you are looking for an expert on a subject, finding a writer or reporter in your industry is a good place to start. If you have someone in mind, be sure to do more research by reading the content they have published.
Social media
This is an obvious one. Even if you’re not specifically looking for a social media influencer, there is still a large chance that your candidate has a social media following. This can allow you to see how they interact with their followers.
A great resource for finding an influencer on social media is your own audience. Keep an eye on accounts that are continually mentioned and tagged in posts or have their posts shared often. You should be able to find both relevant content and people by searching for your industry keywords and hashtags.
Search engines
Doing a search for an influencer, especially with your market in the search box (e.g. ‘your business industry’ + ‘influencer’) could give you some great results. Even if it leads you to one of the other tools to help find an influencer, it’s hard to go wrong with the world’s most popular search engine. Of course, you’ll also need to do additional research on your influencer if you get a hit to make sure they’re aligned with your values and are a good overall fit.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is possibly the fastest-growing channel right now. It opens up a whole world of opportunities for brands looking to drive targeted increases in awareness and place their products and services in front of new audiences.
If you are not using this strategy as a way to drive growth, it should be a serious consideration. After all, if your competitors are using it, there is a chance you will fall behind. And if they are not, you could gain a significant competitive advantage by doing so.
