Influencer marketing has grown dramatically in the last few years. With the introduction of new forms of social media, along with an ever-changing online shopping experience, Influencer marketing is a strong way of directly targeting your desired audience.
80% of marketers say that influencer marketing is an effective way to promote a product, with 65 out of 100 marketers planning to include influencers in their marketing plan for 2020. It’s clear that influencer marketing has a very bright future, but is it for you?
If you have a product or service that you aim at general consumers, then yes, this is a form of marketing that you should really be adapting into your plan for 2021. If, however you market your products or services to a small or niche audience, then you should do your research into the field first. In order to ensure there are influencers with an audience that resonates with your own.
A scenario:
Let’s say you have a new product that you’re launching in the gaming market. There are thousands of gamer influencers across YouTube alone, allowing you to reach out and offer them your product to feature in any videos they make.
I myself am an avid gamer, and I find myself purchasing games after viewing influencers on YouTube and TikTok playing and promoting the game, or purchasing accessories I see these people using which I feel would be great to have.
Companies often send one of their products to an influencer as a way of gaining brand awareness. These are inclusive of web traffic directly from the influencer. This can have a very high return on investment (ROI) if you manage them correctly. In fact, 89% of marketers say they’ve seen comparable or better results as part of influencer marketing.
Here are some effective ways to implement influencer marketing into your marketing plan which you can test to see the results:
Gifting
Gifting is a really effective way to get your product or service featured on popular influencer channels, especially Instagram. By sending the product as a gift to an influencer, many would put the product on their story and tag your company thanking you for the product. This would give you brand awareness, as well as free content for your own social media, all for the price of the product.
There is a risk, however, that the influencer may not feature the product, but with the cost only being the cost of the product, this is a low-risk high-reward marketing idea.
To increase the likelihood of coverage, as well as an increase in sales, you could add a unique voucher code or affiliate link for each influencer. This could offer a certain percentage off the product, and in return, the influencer gets a percentage of the sale when a consumer uses the code or link.
Reviews
Reviews are a solid way of getting exposure, as well as showing authenticity to your potential customers. The modern consumer often checks reviews before making a purchase, particularly a high-value product, so it’s important to get reviews from influencers who perhaps already value your brand, or an influencer whose reviews get high viewership.
Reviews also offer consumers the chance to see the product in action, which can be really helpful to a consumer before buying. This way, they can see if the product is the right fit for what they want or need, and can compare this to other products on the market.
Influencer Giveaways & Competitions
Giveaways and competitions are great ways to gain audience interest in your brand and its products, as well as to promote your company to a niche audience. They’re also a really effective way to increase traffic to your socials.
If the influencer is having the competition over their social channels, then you could ask the influencer to make sure they like/tag one of your social pages to be in with a chance of winning.
Giveaways and competitions are perhaps the simplest form of influencer marketing out there. Many influencers jump at the chance to have a prize to offer to their followers, and it tends to be for mutual gain, so it’s worth bearing in mind when it comes to creating your marketing plan.
Brand Ambassadors & Partnerships
In selected industries, having brand ambassadors or partnerships with influencers can be a very smart way to promote your brand/product. By having an influencer as a brand partner, you can work alongside them on any projects you’re doing, and have them write features, blogs or videos to promote your brand.
This is also a really strong way to humanise your brand. Consumers prefer to buy from people as opposed to a faceless entity, so by having the influencer work in partnership with you, they are willingly promoting your brand.
They can also be used for the sharing of direct information. If a new product or service is launched by your brand, then giving the brand ambassadors this to work with can really help spread that news.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship can be a strong form of direct communication with your audience. Whether it be a blogger or a YouTuber, sponsorship can be an effective use of funds. Sponsorship can, however, be quite a pricey form of marketing, so it’s vital you do your research prior to implementing.
When it comes to blogs, there are two types of ways to sponsor a blog. You could have a dedicated blog which would advertise purely your products and services, as well as be listed with discount offers. This is great for traffic, however, a consumer would see the blog for what it is, which is a paid piece of content.
Alternatively, you could converse with the influencer and ask them if they’re working on a blog post where your product could potentially feature. This offers a lot more authenticity to the reader and makes the blog post more attractive to the reader. This can also be done for YouTubers, who might be working on a video where your product could feature.
You can also sponsor a video with a YouTuber, which means that you’d get a mention somewhere in the video, with the influencer usually “thanking you” for sponsoring the video, and usually offering the viewers a discount code. This works really well for subscription services related to the YouTubers audience, but for products and brand advertising this can be a little hit-and-miss.
We work with brands and help them reach their goals through the use of influencers, in all forms from gifts to sponsorships.
If you’d like to learn more about Influencer Marketing, feel free to drop me an email at [email protected]
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