Fundamentals of Digital Marketing: What Is Influencer Marketing and How to Develop Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

You must have seen a lot of celebrities, bloggers, and other renowned people endorsing a brand or any brand's product. Have you ever thought about what made them do this? Mostly it is not their personal preference; rather, marketers use this campaign for the marketing of their brand. Usually, these people have a greater influence on the general public, so marketers use such influencer marketing services. However, nowadays, not just celebrities and bloggers are considered a choice for influencer marketing; the scope has widened…. a lot.

Today we’re talking influencer marketing - what is influencer marketing, influencer marketing services, developing your strategy, and weighing your options to decide if it is for you or not.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Chances are you’re familiar with this term, but the extent of the power of influence has drastically risen over the past few years. And we’re here to help break down, our take to help you better understand just exactly what influencer marketing is.

Basically, influencer marketing is a strategy of marketers in which they ask people with social media “influence” (aka their audience is listening to them) for endorsements and special mentions of their products. This way, the general public who follows these social media influencers get validation of the product's reliability. 

Before asking for endorsement, the people of the same niche are looked for so that you can reach the right audience. Influencer marketing is all about gaining exposure, but it does not mean that you collaborate with those influencers who have more audience reach, but with those influencers who have the reach to the right audience you might need for your brand’s advertisement.

Developing an Influencer Marketing Strategy

For an influencer marketing strategy to work, you need to keep in mind some important aspects of this campaign. Many social media personalities offer influencer marketing services, but you should know who to reach out to. There are a few steps that will help you build an impressive influencer marketing strategy for this.

Set Your Goals

It is better to have a defined set of goals before you get influencer marketing support. This way, you will know exactly what you want to achieve and what are your aims regarding the marketing campaign. Some of the main goals you might have are as follows:

1. Creating leverage through influencers so that you can reach out to more audiences, and it will, in turn, increase the traffic on your online marketing website. 

2. More people will start knowing and recognizing your brand.

3. Building a strong connection with the influencers and the audience.

4. Getting more backlinks to your website.

5. Enhancing the sales of your brand.

The Right Type of Influencer Marketing Campaign

Now, the next step is creating the right campaign for your influencer marketing services. There are several ways that brands reach out to the influencers asking them for influencer marketing support. To gain that support, you have to decide first what sort of campaign you are following. Some of the strategies are as follows:

1. You send a few products of your brands to an influencer and get a review or special mention by them.

2. You can arrange a giveaway of your brand, and in this regard, you can ask the influencer to post that giveaway through their social media platforms.

3. You contribute to the content creation of an influencer’s blog, where you write about your brand. 

4. The influencer can take over your social media accounts for a day or for some defined amount of time.

5. Similarly, you can co-create content with any influencer, and you can get in on your website and influencer's website or blog as well.

6. You can provide your affiliate link to the influencers. This will give them a definite amount of share for every click, and you will get more reach.

7. You can even ask a brand or some social media personality for a special mention of your brand in their post.

8. You can provide a discount code to the influencers so that they can promote your product to their audience.

9. A brand ambassador is the ultimate level of influencer marketing. You select an influencer, and the influencer promotes your brand, your products, any related campaigns, and services in return for being the brand's face and being featured by the brand.

Influencer Selection

For the selection of the right influencer, you need to know the right audience for your brand. Hitting up the right audience is your goal. It does not matter that the most celebrated person endorses your brand until they can reach the targeted audience. For the selection of the audience, start thinking from a buyer's perspective. You will get an idea of what category of people will be interested in your brand. You will easily select the influencer to perform your influencer marketing services. Generally, the influencers people reach out to are:

1. Bloggers

2. Social Media Stars

3. YouTube(rs)

4. Industry Specialists

5. Regular Customers

6. Celebrities

7. Other Non-Competing Brands

8. Leaders 

You need to select one of these who you think has a better approach to your targeted audience and who can help you with the influencer marketing support campaign.

Influencer Qualification

Once you are done with defining the audience and selecting a specific category of influencers, you don't just reach out to influencer marketing agencies for influencers. You need to first make sure that the influencer qualifies for your marketing needs, and they qualify for your goals.

For starters, you should see if the audience of your influencers and yours are the same. It is better to get a lesser reach, than a larger reach but of no use. For example, if you own a makeup brand, then a makeup artist is the best choice to perform your influencer marketing services.

There are some other things that you should consider such as the reach and authority of an influencer, as well as their type of content. To know the page reach, you can use Alexa rank to know their visitors and other metrics. You also need to analyze the type of content they have on-page and relevant to your niche. All these things help you qualify the influencer for marketing.  

Engaging Content

After selecting the influencer, you need to reach out to make your content look so catchy and good that the influencer cannot refuse a marketing campaign. Use engaging keywords and make your products look highly presentable. The engaging content is what will attract the influencer to your brand. If you can get the influencer convinced, then half of your influencer marketing services are done.

You can write about your brand's story, the audience you need to reach out to, and your unique perspective for the content. 

How to Reach Out?

To reach out to the influencers, you need to contact the influencer marketing agency. Then the influencer marketing agency will link you to the influencer.

For the influencer, create an engaging email in which you will be mentioning about your brand, the products you want them to endorse, and invite them to be a brand ambassador for a guest post or whatever campaign you are following. Keep in mind that you want your tone to remain conversational, yet formal. Be sure to get to the point and make it engaging.

Keep track of Your Results.

Your campaign does not end here. The actual success of influencer marketing services is when you can get your desired result and reach your goals. So, be sure to keep track of the influencer's outreach. If your current sales have increased due to that influencer’s marketing and your goals are being fulfilled, then your campaign is a success.
The Takeaway?

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that has been going on for years, but now due to social media reach and its effect on the audience, it has increased. Just follow the above steps, and you will have a great influencer marketing strategy built. I hope you learned about influencer marketing and how one can use it to promote brand awareness.