What is Influencer Marketing? Benefits, Tools, and Examples
Influencer marketing is a type of digital marketing done through the collaboration of brands with online influencers to promote one specific product.
The influential stratum is known for influencing other people into using or trying and adapting new things into their lifestyle. It is considered to be more efficient than any of the traditional models of marketing, as it involves the biggest platform of promotion, which is social media. It is less tangible for brands as they do not have to put in a lot of resources to gain recognition for their brand.
In this blog, we will learn about the meaning of influencer marketing, the benefits and strategies of influencer marketing, examples of influencer marketing, and more.
Meaning of Influencer Marketing
A type of marketing strategy that involves the collaboration of brands with individuals who have a large following on social media platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, to promote a brand, product, or service to their audience is known as influencer marketing. The people involved in this strategy possess the ability to influence people.
The goal of this strategy in digital marketing is to use the influencer’s reach to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and boost sales. Brands partner with influencers for their services and products to perform well on social media.
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Benefits of Influencer Advertising
This marketing technique has several benefits for brands that need social media recognition and upward growth. Here are a few essential benefits of influencer marketing:
- Awareness: The brands that set up influencer marketing campaigns are more exposed to the audience that consistently follow those influencers. It is helpful for the products and services of that brand as they are easily recognizable.
- Engagement: The influencer marketing campaigns have higher engagements because of the influencer’s huge following. Therefore, investing in it can benefit the brands big time.
- Credibility: Social media influencers are perceived as a trusted source, therefore, promoting a product or service through them increases the credibility of the brand or industry.
- Targeted Marketing: The influencers carry the influencing to a particular set of target audiences. Selecting the right influencers for a particular product and service will most likely boost its recognition.
- Cost Effectiveness: Influencer marketing is comparatively cheaper than any of the traditional marketing techniques and is more effective than any other methods of marketing.
- Increase in Sales: Influencer marketing drives sales as the influencers usually have a huge following and audience that consistently follows and supports them. Hence, when the brand selects the right influencers, the sales of the product or service will automatically increase.
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Instagram Influencer Marketing
Instagram influencer marketing is a strategy where the influencers promote the products and services of a brand on Instagram. The brand usually collaborates with influencers who have a huge following and can work best in influencing people about a particular product or service that the brand offers.
The brand has to be very careful while choosing the right influencer. They should keenly research about the influencer’s niches and aesthetics, and what kind of promotions they are involved in. It will give a clearer vision to the brand to invest their money in the right direction and partner with the right influencer for future endeavors. It will also provide exposure to their recently launched products or services.
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Influencer Marketing Tools
Now that we know Influencer Marketing and its benefits, we should get more into the tools that make this process a lot easier. Given below are some tools used in Influencer Marketing that make it easy to put into practice:
- Influencer Discovery Tools: They help brands find influencers whose aesthetics align with their brand and campaign goals. Some of these tools include BuzzSumo, Grin, and Upfluence.
- Influencer Outreach Tools: They help the brands send personalized messages and collaboration requests by streamlining the influencers. It also lets brands track responses from the influencers. Examples of such tools include Pitchbox and Mailshake.
- Influencer Management Tools: These tools help brands manage their collaborations and relationships with the influencers, which include content approval, management, and payment processes. Examples of these tools include TapInfluence and AspireIQ.
- Influencer Analytics Tools: These tools help the brands track the engagement, conversions, and reach of the influencer campaigns. Some examples include Socialbakers and HypeAuditor.
- Social Media Management Tools: They help brands to manage their social media accounts, by scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and keeping track of reach through insights. Examples include HootSuite and Buffer.
How to Create a Strong Influencer Marketing Strategy?
Creating a strong influencer marketing strategy requires the following essential steps.
1. Set Clear Goals
It is essential to have clear goals before setting up a marketing campaign. Defining why, what, and how, will be important for strategic planning and focused campaigning.
Your goals can include the following:
- Growing brand awareness and identity.
- Getting more likes, shares, and comments on the content.
- Enhancing sales by offering a promotion to potential customers.
- Improving search engine results page ranking.
2. Identification of Influencers
Identifying the correct type of influencers for the campaign to promote products and services is another important factor. The audience will be easier to influence if the influencer has a relatable field of expertise.
3. Content Strategy
Create a brief for the influencers to follow. They will base their content creation strategy according to the details provided here. However, ensure you give them enough creative freedom so that they can add their personal touch to resonate with their audience. Some common examples of campaigns are sponsored content, mentions, giveaways, contests, affiliates, discount codes, etc.
4. Authenticity
Authenticity is another factor that should not be overlooked. If the services and products are sponsored, the influencers are expected to disclose that to align with the audience’s values.
5. Maintain Relationships
Building relationships with the influencers can result very positively for a brand as they will be the permanent allies to promote a new service and product.
6. Set a Budget
To set a budget for a campaign is important, as all the other resources depend on it. The location, necessities, and props that will be used in the marketing campaign will be decided based on the budget.
7. Track Results
To know how the campaign is performing, it is important to measure and track the result of the marketing campaign, which will give an idea if any improvement is required or if the campaign is going the way it was envisioned.
Why Do You Need to Track Influencer Marketing Campaigns?
Tracking influencer marketing campaigns is important for the following reasons.
- One needs to track their campaigns to see if the objective or goal they had set for their campaign is achieved. The goal could be to increase the reach, attract potential customers, engage, and create brand awareness.
- By tracking the campaign, you can analyze and understand more about the traffic that you are getting. You will know where it is coming from, the age group, and the time when most people engage with the campaign content. It helps in optimizing the content accordingly.
- Knowing whether or not the business goals were met or not is also important. Tracking the influencer campaign will let you know if you are getting enough conversions and if the campaign is financially beneficial for the brand.
- It also helps in realizing if the influencer and their content have a considerable influence on the results of the campaign. For this, results from the coupon codes unique to the influencer and their affiliate links can be analyzed.
- Tracking influencer campaigns also lets the brands know which platform their campaign is working better on. Future campaigns can be planned specifically for those platforms.
What to Avoid in Influencer Marketing?
To utilize the benefits of influencer marketing, one needs to avoid the following mistakes.
Poorly Constructed Briefs
A well-constructed brief is essential for your influencer marketing campaign to work well. If you have not mentioned all the details and resources the influencer will need to promote your brand, the campaign will not get the desired results.
Hence, be clear about what is to be mentioned in the campaign. The brief should include details about your company, brand, goal, budget, target audience, timeline, and most importantly, words and ideas the influencers must avoid in their content.
Unclear Goals
When you partner with an influencer, you spend a significant amount of money on their content. Therefore, unclear goals are the last thing you want to interrupt your campaign.
Clearly define the purpose or goal of your campaign. It will help you find the right influencer and ensure your brand and influencer work toward a common goal. Also, define the KPIs you will use to track the performance before and after the campaign to measure its success.
No Upfront Expectations
One of the most common mistakes brands make is not being upfront about the expectations from the influencers regarding the content and the campaign. It is important to specify a timeline for the influencer to deliver the content. They should know when to submit the content and the number of posts, videos, or stories they have to create.
Additionally, discuss the payment terms and conditions and the amount along with the mode of payment well in advance.
Not Researching the Influencer Well
Many collaborate with the influencers without doing much research, which can lead to the failure of the campaign. It is important to understand that not every influencer can help you reach your target audience even if they have a considerable following.
Therefore, conduct thorough research before selecting an influencer for your brand. Analyze their audience, the kind of content they create, their engagement, interactions, authenticity, and their prior brand collaboration experience.
Restrictions on Influencer’s Creative Freedom
Let us not forget that the influencer’s job is to create content. Giving a well-constructed brief is okay, but if it is too detailed, it curbs the influencer’s creativity. This indirectly affects your campaign.
So, instead of micro-managing every aspect of the content creation process, give the influencer the creative freedom and let them add their personal touch to the content.
Focusing on Irrelevant Metrics
Though several brands decide beforehand the metrics they will focus on, at times these are wrong or irrelevant to the brand. Too much focus on conversion rates and revenue shifts the focus from important metrics, such as engagement, brand awareness, inbound leads, and follower growth.
How to Hire and Work With an Influencer?
Hiring the right influencer is an integral part of influencer marketing. Here are some tips to hire and work with an influencer:
Research the Influencer
Research the influencer well before you hire them for your campaign. Partner with someone who can reflect your brand’s message.
Focus on Engagement Than Followers
Instead of focusing on the number of followers an influencer has, analyze their engagement patterns to check if hiring them will be useful for your brand. An influencer with a good relationship with their audience will lead to an increase in brand awareness.
Formally Approach the Influencer
How you approach the influencer also matters since the wrong approach can lead to the influencer rejecting your offer for collaboration. A formal email or direct message through social media platforms is a good way to connect with them. You can also check if they have a dedicated manager for the same.
Provide Value
While payment in exchange for the content is mostly appreciated, if the offer provides an additional value, it becomes even more lucrative. The influencer would be more interested in collaborating with your brand if they see an opportunity to increase their reach as well.
Create an Agreement
A very important aspect of influencer marketing is the agreement. This is essential to let both parties know their responsibilities. It helps avoid any confusion at a later stage.
Influencer Marketing Examples
There are many examples of various brands that chose social media influencers over celebrities to promote their products and services. The decision worked quite well because of the popularity and audience that the influencers had. Following are a few examples of influencer marketing:
- Swiggy: This famous food-delivering brand chose Bhuvan Bam, a YouTuber, influencer, and content creator for the promotion of their brand on a social media platform known as Instagram. In return, Bhuvan Bam created hilarious videos on Swiggy’s convenient and speedy delivery that engaged the audience, gave them a good laugh, and most importantly left an impression to use Swiggy when they would order their food.
- Myntra: This fashion business chose lifestyle and beauty influencers, including Komal Pandey and Kritika Khurana. They were seen flaunting and promoting this brand’s clothes and accessories in their Instagram posts and reels. They engaged in Myntra’s latest collection and contributed to the increased reach and sales of the brand.
- Amazon Prime Video: Prajakta Koli, an influencer, YouTuber, and actress became the face of this streaming service to promote their series, “Four More Shots”. She created content specifically promoting the show and encouraged her audience to watch it, which then increased the views and engagement of the show and watch time of the streaming service.
- Allen Solly: This brand promoted its chino range with the #ShootforSolly campaign and managed to make 22 influencers across 7 Indian cities promote their brand, which created a buzz that suited different body types and styles.
- Fashion Nova: An international clothing brand built its marketing strategy around social media influencers. They worked with a famous celebrity and influencer, Kylie Jenner, who promoted their clothes on her Instagram. The brand also reposted the influencer’s stories and posts as it increased the reach of the campaign.
Conclusion
Social media is a huge part of our lives now, and there is no denying that we often get influenced by the style, products, and services that we see online. Hence, the existence of influencer marketing was created for us and we have been constantly making it a bigger platform for brands to promote their products and services. This is also because social media certainly has more audiences than any other platform.
If you wish to dive more into the world of social media, here’s a guide on social media marketing, including its benefits, tips, key metrics, and more.
