Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to get your brand in front of the right audience right now. It is said to have higher engagement rates, attract like-minded people, and have a higher return on investment. This is because influencers are trusted and admired by their followers, and they are more likely to gladly support products and services the influencer supports.
Having a strong understanding of your customer and knowing your brand voice and story are two of the most important things you can do to make influencer marketing more effective. Let’s explore the ways you can really dive into influencer marketing and explore all it has to offer.
Get inside the mind of your customer
First of all, you need to be able to define your target audience. To do so, try asking the following questions of you and your team:
- What is the age range of the customer you are trying to reach?
- Does your product or service appeal more to a specific gender? Or is it gender neutral?
- What problem is your product or service solving?
- What type of person has this sort of problem?
These are all great questions to ask yourself to help you better define your target audience. Once you have a more specific audience in mind, you can really try to put yourself in their shoes and get into their everyday experience.
Understanding the mind of your customers is a critical step toward influencing their behaviour. For example, supermarkets may layout their stores very strategically, placing produce, flowers, baked goods, and pharmaceuticals in a way that will encourage impulse buying. Rather than putting products in the line at the checkout, influencers help you meet your customers where they are — on their phone screens.
Find the right influencers
If you have a strong understanding of the mind of your customers, this will naturally lead you to find the right influencers. This would be someone that your target audience trusts, admires, and respects. It should be someone that resonates, so try to choose someone that would enjoy your product or service.
You don’t want to just go for the most popular influencers. Instead, ask yourself whether or not they are relevant to your business and field. Also, take a look at their engagement and reach. Often, these numbers will be lower in smaller, niche influencers — but their engagement may be more meaningful and closer to your target interactions.
Having the right influencers posting the right content in addition to your business’s social media posting the right content is the key to keeping consumers loyal to your brand. Many consumers make purchasing decisions based purely on brand loyalty.
Finding the best influencers for your specific brand is a crucial part of any strategy for starting influencer marketing, so you definitely don’t want to rush through this step. Take the time to make sure you are finding the best people to represent your brand.
Keep track of the content that is performing well
One of the areas where so many businesses make influencer marketing mistakes is content tracking. If you’re not tracking what’s working and what isn’t, you won’t know how to measure the success of the influencer campaign. All of the major social media platforms have analytics available that will allow you to see what content is performing well so that you can adjust future content and stop creating the type of content that isn’t working.
Another way to track this is to go back over comments made by customers and see if you can understand the voice of the customer. The voice of the customer refers to your customers’ entire perception of your brand. Here you may discover if there is a disconnect between what the customer wants to get out of your brand and their actual experience of your brand.
It’s important to understand how your brand is performing. This reflects how your business is performing overall. Social media can be a good place to receive feedback — not only about the content your brand is creating but also about the products and services your business is selling, your customer service, and how you are running other parts of the business. When working with influencers, you may see a more candid response in the comments of their posts about your products.
Maintain relationships with influencers
Creator marketing transcends advertising. Influencer or creator marketing is about relationships more than anything. Many brands will think of influencers as just another advertising channel. This, however, is a mistake.
Working with influencers is about building long-term relationships where their followers come to trust your brand as much as they trust the influencer. It isn’t the same as any other type of advertising — even social media advertising. While social media advertising can also be effective, it is a lot less personal and individuals are less likely to engage with ads.
Building relationships with influencers is a kind of social selling that can also be about building relationships with customers. This can build brand loyalty and make powerful connections with your target market.
Exploring the benefits associated with influencer marketing may be exactly what your organisation needs. Who doesn’t want to increase their sales, have more brand loyalty, and see more exposure on social media? All it really takes to start your first influencer marketing campaign at your business is to get started forging authentic connections.
