Influencer Marketing 101
- Posted by Pearl Jain
- Date June 14, 2021
- Comments 0 comment
Gone are the days where brands only used celebrity endorsements on cable TV to grab the attention of their target audience. As a continually growing industry, Influencer Marketing is an increasingly popular digital marketing strategy that most companies are turning to. But what is it, why is it so popular, and how can you succeed?
Let’s look at what an influencer is: an influencer is a personality in the digital space that is followed by the audience you are trying to attract for your business.
Influencers can be found on any social media platform, but the most sought after ones are on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok as these are all completely visual platforms. They can be incredibly celebrities or even your local mommy bloggers.
By collaborating with social media influencers, brands seek to create unique content, increase brand awareness, target new audiences and ultimately generate revenue for their business. It’s not uncommon to see thousands of fashion, food, beauty, skincare or travel influencers raking in lakhs or millions for each social media post, but it should also be noted that for brands, the ROI on influencer marketing is pretty high.
Other than generating higher sales from a target audience, using influencer marketing can create social proof needed for consumers to trust your brand and give you an organic and direct connection with your audience as opposed to above-the-line marketing.
Depending on the number of followers, social media influencers can be categorised as mega, macro, micro, or nano influencers.
Mega-influencers are well-known celebrities, have millions of followers worldwide, are the most expensive to work with, and probably care the least about the sponsored products because it’s a highly lucrative deal for them.
Next are macro-influencers with between 100,000 to 1 million followers – they are pricey to work with and are mostly approached by large companies but have a semi-engaged follower base. These include social media stars who have specific kinds of audiences but can still appeal to the masses.
Micro-influencers have between 10,000 to 100,000 followers, have a far more engaged audience, are less expensive to work with and are a great target for small-to-medium sized businesses. Typically include people with established thought-leadership in a field or a niche audience.
Lastly, nano-influencers are every-day social media users with less than 10,000 followers are the most likely to care about the products they endorse because their network usually consists of friends, family or people they have made genuine connections with. They are the least expensive to work with, and some may even post in exchange for free products. Examples include local community leaders, mommy bloggers or food bloggers in a specific city.
Some of the main ways influencer marketing can be carried out include:
- Sponsored posts where the brand pays the influencer to endorse the product and the brand is tagged and advertised along with a #spon or #ad disclaimer
- Mentions in posts or stories in exchange for free products – highly popular for fashion bloggers
- Word pieces such as blogs or articles to recommend a product or service
- Sharing a code for followers to purchase the company’s products at a discounted rate e.g. highly popular with Daniel Wellington watches
- Giveaways which can be created in collaboration with multiple influencers or brands
- Restaurants can ask food bloggers to come to dine for free and leave a review afterwards
- A free stay at a hotel in exchange for travel influencers to post content such as videos, images and posts on their social media pages
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