What is influence marketing and how to work with influencers
From 2016 to 2020, influencers’ advertising investments increased from $1.7 billion to $9.7 billion. Such trust of brands proves that the promotion through opinion leaders is working.Various brands, not only well–known ones want to cooperate with artists and bloggers now. Almost every launch of a new brand or product is accompanied by the advertising from a popular influencer – not necessarily from a one, who has one and more millions of followers. Read this article to learn more about influencer marketing and how it helps companies.
Influence marketing and bloggers
Influence Marketing is the promotion of products or services through influencers or opinion leaders. Influencers aren’t only celebrities, but also bloggers, experts in various fields who run social networks, or well—known people in certain fields. People don’t need to have a million followers to become an influencer. The effectiveness of influence marketing doesn’t depend on the number of followers, audience involvement in the influencer’s content is more important. Now small bloggers with an audience of up to 3 thousand followers are trusted more than large ones, because they run blogs where “everyone is known”.
According to the size of the audience, influencers are divided into several groups:
- Nano-influencers — up to 1000 subscribers;
- Micro-influencers — from 5 to 100 thousand subscribers;
- Mid-influencers — from 100 thousand to 1 million;
- Macro—influencers – more than 1 million subscribers.
The difference between influencer marketing and direct advertising is in nativity. Product promotion doesn’t look like advertising. A blogger is a friend for followers, who simply recommends what he/she likes: products, places, entertainment. Advertising becomes a part of the content, and the audience perceives it loyally. The influencer knows his audience well: what topics and content subscribers like, so his account is a ready-made channel of communication and SMM promotion. Even when the market is saturated with bloggers, the industry doesn’t slow down. Over the past 5 years, the query “blogger” in search engines remains at the top.
Moreover, there are types of bloggers, who can place advertisements, and they are:
- Celebrity – a public person or a person from show business.
- Opinion Leader – an expert in a certain field, for example, a food blogger.
- Discoverer – a person who shares information about new products and niches. Trendsetters are also related to this category because they anticipate trends.
- Sharers and Networkers – these influencers have contacts, connections and can spread information through different channels.
- User – an ordinary person in the street who has found his small but very grateful audience and shares advice with it. This is a great option for small businesses.
Types of ads from bloggers
- A direct recommendation – a call to follow a link or make a targeted action.
- Reviews — a detailed description of one or several products together with yours to add nativity.
- Product placement – a technique of the native brand mention in a frame that bloggers took from a movie. Do you remember what brand of sneakers Marty McFly (the hero from “Back to the Future”) wore that will be in the second part of the trilogy? Yes, it was Nike!
- Unpacking – a format when an influencer receives a product from a company for testing and then tells about it.
- Branding a profile or category – a campaign when the influencer becomes the face of the brand, for example, during a contest or marathon.
- Giveaway — contests on Instagram with the condition to subscribe to all sponsors.
- Special projects or special campaigns when the content for the brand is completely created by a blogger.
How to work with influencers?
Start by defining goals, objectives, budget, and develop an individual influence marketing strategy. The choice of the influencer and the tactics of the campaign depend on what goals you plan to achieve. Formulate priority tasks, for example:
- Increase brand awareness;
- Stimulate sales growth;
- Increase audience loyalty;
- Engage new and retain old customers;
- Increase the number of followers.
Next, you should choose a platform for advertising. The most popular are Instagram and TikTok. When choosing a site, focus on the preferences of your target audience, and use the platforms where your customers spend time. To find out for sure which messengers and social networks your audience prefers, conduct a survey by email or on social networks.
Finding and selecting bloggers can take a lot of time, but we’ll give you a couple of tips to speed up the process. To find and select an influencer, use the following methods:
- Study the ratings of Internet users;
- Conduct a survey among customers;
- Look for bloggers on social networks by thematic hashtags;
- Use special services to search for bloggers;
- Contact a specialized agency.
The last step of the process is the discussion of the terms of cooperation and the conclusion of the contract. The contract must specify all the conditions of cooperation:
- Payment format;
- Date and time of the ad launch;
- Frequency of publication (posts, videos);
- Ownership of content rights;
- The term of advertising on the blogger’s account;
- The amount of compensation in case of non-compliance with the agreements.
Also, do not forget to specify additional conditions – for example, a blogger is obliged to respond to user comments under an advertising post.
For the influencer, as well as for company, the payment format is also important, so we are sharing possible options with you:
- Fixed payment. You determine the fee for the advertising post and specify it in the contract.
- Barter. You give the blogger your product in exchange for advertising.
- Affiliate program. The amount of payment depends on the number of transactions with customers (it can be tracked using a promo code) from the moment the ad is launched or clicks on the link to the site.
All in all, Influencer Marketing is an effective tool for a brand, but it isn’t a replacement for content marketing and not a magic pill for the promotion. The blogger doesn’t guarantee the result and can become uncontrollable, for example, he can make an advertisement not according to your request, to harm the reputation of the company. Therefore, preparation is important: a strategy with a detailed analysis of the statistics and reputation of the influencer whom you trust to become the face of your brand during the campaign. Remember, that bloggers with millions of followers don’t always have a positive reputation, which is important for brand promotion, because the more popular an opinion leader is, the more haters he has. Therefore, it is sometimes better to work with bloggers who have a smaller, but more loyal audience.
