What is influencers marketing

Influencer marketing – a social media strategy involving product placement and brand mentions from people considered to be experts in their field or defined as influencers by the sheer number of followers. In the easiest way it is – promotion of products and\or services through influencers, their opinions’ trust. 

Influence marketing campaigns are possible in different social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. 

There are many advantages of influencer marketing. Thousands of small, medium companies and enterprises cooperate with Internet celebrities successfully.  So, among the pros of Influencer marketing are:

Influencer marketing does work

There are many studies examining the results of influencer marketing campaigns in different industries. The conclusions are clear – working with relevant influencers, if done right, will boost your sales. Influencers attract customers with much longer lifetime value than customers you appeal to via other marketing channels. 

Avoiding pushy advertising 

In essence, influencer marketing is an ad that doesn’t look like a paid commercial at all. Influencers’ content is not as pushy as a traditional ad, and, often, much better targeted. These factors will work to your benefit, as it’s just another advantage of working with influencers. Influencers know their audience well, and, therefore, they are able to provide exactly the content they’re most likely to interact with. 

• Influencer marketing saves time

First of all, you don’t have to come up with content for social media platforms on your own. Influencers can prepare posts that will resonate with their audience and will align with their general online presence. Customers enter your sales funnel much later after contact with an influencer. That means they are much closer to buying your product than customers attracted via other marketing channels. 

• Possibility to create brand ambassadors

Social media marketing with the right influencer doesn’t have to be a one-off collaboration. Online personalities love steady relationships with brands. One or two successful campaigns will positively affect your relation with the influencer. They will be more likely to recommend your products long after your campaign is over. Brand ambassadors are especially precious. This way, without a huge budget you can build credibility and target the right audience regularly.

• Ability to raise brand awareness with a low budget

Ideally by creating viral content with influencers. A great influencer marketing strategies don’t require big budgets. If you do your research right and connect with the right influencer, you are able to save a lot of money on advertising. But be careful – a wrong influencer will only burn your money.

However, there are still some cons of Influencer marketing. Among them:

• Influencer marketing takes time to set up

A successful campaign that serves its purpose takes time and effort to set up. You have to do your research and find an influencer that suits your brand, prepare terms and conditions of your cooperation, approve the content your influencer prepared, and measure the results of your campaigns.

• Tracking performance and calculating ROI is difficult

Measuring the results of an influencer marketing campaign usually requires some additional tools. And you need to track the effects of the campaign; otherwise you just repeat some activities without knowing whether they work or not. 

• You need employees to connect with influencers

Whether you do it yourself or delegate the task to one of your employees, you need to put some time aside to prepare your influencer marketing tactic and monitor the results of the campaign. 

• The campaign might be a failure

You can do the research, have great content prepared, avoid social media crises and still don’t see the desired results. Influencer marketing campaigns might do wonders to your business but they might also fail. In the meantime, your competitors could invest in a marketing channel that will yield more substantial results. 

What works in Influencer Marketing

1. Carefully consider your approach to influencer marketing

• Be organized, put together a strategy, plan, and budget, spend time on research
• Decide on your approach to finding influencers – find them organically, subscribe to a platform, or work through an agency
• Be patient and be human – people talking to people, not companies talking to companies

2. Develop a schedule

• Does the influencer prefer monthly/quarterly/biannual calls or newsletters?
• Integrate with your PR schedule, product release schedule, etc.
• Send emails on behalf of key executives. Plan travel schedules for executives and arrange face-to-face meetings

What Influencer Marketing is Not

Influencer marketing isn’t just about finding someone with an audience and offering them money or exposure so they can say good things about you. That’s what viral celebrities are for. Influencers are people who’ve spent time building their own brand and cultivating their audience; they will be naturally protective of their reputation and the people who trust them. They’re people who have the patience and focus to succeed in social media, one organic follower at a time—people like this aren’t interested in doing influencer marketing solely for the money.

Influencer Marketing is also not about quick results. It’s the same kind of slow-and-steady approach as Social Media and Content Marketing, where your campaign isn’t about directly selling your wares. Instead, it’s about demonstrating your authority, credibility, and thought leadership within your industry. It’s about becoming synonymous with whatever it is that you offer, like when people say they’re going to Xerox a document instead of photocopying it, or to Hoover the floor, rather than vacuuming it.

What doesn’t work in Influencer Marketing

• Generalizing your approach to finding and making use of different influencers. 

One size doesn’t fit all influencers: tailor your approach to the specific influencer

• Simply looking at the popularity of the influencer. 

Influence does not only mean popularity. 

*Remember that your goal is to elicit a particular action from your customers. Don’t automatically assume that the people with the most followers are the influencers of a niche.