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Video Summary
With more than 4.65 billion social media users on the planet, social media platforms give you an avenue to showcase your services and promote your brand to potential customers. And with an influencer’s posts or mentions on social media channels, people tend to trust the associated brand more.
However, it’s not easy work. Customers and influencers don’t fall from the sky while you surf Facebook or Instagram. You have to connect and engage with your audience and strategize to improve your online presence.
Here are 10 tips you can use to create an influencer marketing strategy to promote your business…
Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Jeffrey Kirk. And this is our 7th video in the how to get seen online series. If you would like to watch the previous videos, I have included a link here for easy access.
Today, let’s take a look at influencer marketing as a powerful way to reach new audiences and build brand awareness.
But first, why did the influencer cross the road? Well, to get to the other side, and to take a selfie in a new location for his Instagram feed, and to be close enough to wi-fi so he could upload immediately! Why else might an influencer cross the road? Put your thoughts in the comments below.
In the meantime, I want you to know I put together a checklist for you. It includes all 10 tips I’m going over today along with action steps to help you get started with each one. You’ll find this checklist at upatdawn.biz/10influence
Okay, now let’s dig in… Connecting with influencers is a great strategy to engage with others in your industry and build a significant social media following. Because influencers are already leaders in your industry, it’s possible your customers and target audience are already following them.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is about using the status of an individual as a trusted authority in their area of expertise in order to boost your company or brand’s overall image. It’s a relationship between the brand and the influencer where the influencer promotes your products and services through different social media platforms to his or her following.
With more than 4.65 billion social media users on the planet, social media platforms give you an avenue to showcase your services and promote your brand to potential customers. And with an influencer’s posts or mentions on social media channels, people tend to trust the associated brand more.
However, it’s not easy work. Customers and influencers don’t fall from the sky while you surf Facebook or Instagram. You have to connect and engage with your audience and strategize to improve your online presence.
Here are 10 tips you can use to create an influencer marketing strategy to promote your business…
Tip #1 Identify the right influencers for your business.
First things first, identify which social media platforms you want to focus on. If you’re just starting out, pick one platform and master it before moving onto another. Which platform do you pick? Well, where is your target audience? You want a good match for factors such as demographics, engagement rates, and relevance.
Then, research to find the influential people in your industry that use that particular platform. You can start searching by niche or topic. See who’s talking, and see who’s being talked about. Once you know who the leaders are, start by following their accounts. And follow those other people in your industry are following.
Tip #2 Build relationships with influencers through direct outreach, collaboration, and sponsored content.
Now that you have some idea of the influencers you would like to work with, it’s time to reach out and get to know them. You might want to talk business right away, but finding some things out about the influencers first would be better. This will help you understand their style and build lasting relationships.
Interact slowly by engaging with their posts and their content. Eventually you can send a personal message including information about your business. Let them know why you chose them and how this partnership will benefit both of you.
You need time to cultivate these relationships and find out what type of content works best for both of you.
Tip #3 Create a clear and compelling brief for influencer collaborations.
Influencers help increase brand awareness and therefore sales. To do that, it’s important to have determined your goals, messaging, and expectations.
What age demographic do you want to reach? Or do you want to build a following within a specific geographic area? Or maybe you have a new product, and you want to test it out and get user data. Collaborating with influencers gives you the opportunity to reach new and targeted audiences who are potential buyers that will engage with your content and with your business.
These collaborations take more of a personal approach than a salesy one. And so properly communicating your brand’s goals, messaging, and expectations to your influencers is important so they don’t go in a direction that doesn’t work for you and your business.
Tip #4 Offer incentives to the influencers.
These incentives could be product discounts, exclusive access, or even payment in exchange for their promotions. You know what you’re trying to accomplish, and you need to understand their needs as well. Properly communicating each other’s needs is vital in creating an effective marketing strategy.
Influencers are already experts in what they do. So, in addition to whatever is agreed, it helps if you appreciate their work. Showing how you truly care about them will reflect positively on your brand as well.
Tip #5 Encourage influencers to share their experiences with their followers.
And then you should leverage their social proof to reach new audiences. Integrate your product releases and new content with the influencer’s posting schedule. Through these posts, your content will be seen by relevant audiences that are already interested in your products and services.
New prospects will find you, know more about your business and what you have to offer. It’s like word-of-mouth marketing but with a wider range of audiences and platforms involved.
Tip #6 Use influencer-generated content.
Influencer-generated content helps you reach out to new audiences and raise awareness for your brand, therefore increasing engagement and conversions. Whenever an influencer posts about your products and services, they pass along a sense of trust and credibility to their followers.
You can take advantage of this by sharing the content they create in your own social media accounts or even in your ads. Of course, for this to work, make sure the influencer generates relevant content that is aligned with your message and your goals.
Tip #7 Pay attention to metrics to measure the success of your influencer marketing campaigns.
It’s easy to get mesmerized by the number of likes and comments that an influencer’s post can receive. However, it is a better strategy to measure the success of the campaign by its value in terms of ROI.
Before a campaign starts, figure out what metrics are meaningful to you. Metrics such as reach, engagement, and conversions are a few. And I already mentioned return on investment. To measure directly, give a unique link to each influencer that redirects to the appropriate page of your site. That way, you’ll know where each click came from, and you can easily track engagement from there.
You can also provide a unique discount code for their followers to use whenever they make a purchase on your website. These codes help you easily track where each and every sale came from. And if the influencers are tracking engagement, you may be able to get their reporting too.
Tip #8 Regularly monitor and analyze the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns.
The point of this is to identify areas for improvement. Start with the metrics mentioned in tip #7 and maybe you want to track KPIs that represent areas of improvement such as the number of clicks, page views, phone calls, email sign-ups, and sales.
Use analytics to measure and monitor performance so you can adjust as needed to meet your goals. And, you can use Google Analytics to track the activity on your website. You’ll get insights into how your website is performing, how users interact with your pages, and what content is attractive to them.
Tip #9 Build long-term relationships with top-performing influencers.
Collaborating and engaging with influencers can be the start of a powerful relationship. Once you’ve established a good working relationship with them, you’ll never know when you might need each other’s help again.
There could be more possible partnerships, more events, maybe some work opportunities that benefit each of you going forward. For this reason, it might make sense to incorporate certain influencers into your long-term marketing strategy.
Tip #10 Stay up to date with influencer marketing trends and best practices.
Hey, this is the internet! Things change constantly! You have to be willing to experiment and try new tactics and strategies. It’s no different with influencer marketing. By constantly improving and keeping up with trends you can improve your methods and get better and better results.
Also remember to use different content types to create awareness, convert leads, and ascend prospects to the next step in their journey. See which ones work the best for you and adjust accordingly. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to influencer marketing, so you have to be willing to try new things and see what works, and what doesn’t, in your specific niche.
Influencer marketing can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it is a powerful tool in today’s highly competitive marketing world.
Let’s face it. Social exposure is important. And the more content you post, the more chances you get to show up on your audience’s feed and get that valuable traffic for your business. And, with the help of influencers, you’ll be able to reach into new audiences. New people will be able to find you, learn more about your business or brand, and discover what you have to offer.
By implementing these actions, you’ll be able to effectively reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and drive more conversions and sales through influencer marketing.
As I mentioned earlier, I invite you to pick up a copy of these 10 tips along with action steps you can take to implement them. Go to upatdawn.biz/10influence and get started now.
Your business deserves to be seen online, and I will help you get there.
Thanks for watching and have a great day!
