What is Influencer Marketing and Are Social Media Influencers Effective

What is Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the process of hiring influential people with large followings to promote your brand or product on their social media channels. In a recent survey by MediaKix, 71% of marketers rate the quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing as better than other marketing sources and 89% of marketers say influencer marketing ROI is as good or better than other marketing channels. Influencer marketing has been shown to deliver an ROI of 100x higher than all other digital media channels! 

There is no doubt that using social media influencers can be an effective aspect of your marketing campaign, but using social media influencers in your social media strategy can be a daunting thought – especially if you and your brand has never worked with influencers on a campaign before. You may have many questions such as: Are social media influencers effective? What type of budget should I reserve for influencers? How many leads will social media influencers bring in? Will social media influencers bring in qualified leads? …and more. 

How to Utilize Social Media Influencers

The first step you should take when considering social media influencers for a campaign is to think about the goals of the campaign. Are you selling a new product or service? Do you want more followers on your social media accounts? Different types of influencers can help you with the different goals and aspects of your campaign, so that’s why it’s important to choose influencers who align with your brand and your campaign goals. Ensuring that the influencers you choose align with your brand and your campaign goals will ensure that the content that they create for you is on-brand and will push your brand and campaign’s good reputation further. 

We recommend using influencers as just one aspect of your campaign for a portion of your budget. Doing so can be a nice way to round out your campaign for maximum customer touchpoints. If you’re a small business, we recommend using micro influencers. Micro influencers will require a smaller budget for each, enabling you to hire more – therefore spreading out your reach. 

Utilizing social media influencers will be effective if you have very specific goals for your strategy that you can present to them. It’s ultimately your decision if you want to give influencers content to use or if you’d like to allow them to create their own content for the campaign. We usually encourage social media influencers to create their own content as they are creators. To ensure maximum effectiveness, request to see the content they create before they publish it so you can make sure it’s on-brand. 

Tracking and Measuring Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Once the campaign goes live, you’ll want to track the campaign for measurement. If you’re selling a product, you can give them a specific code that is linked to their name so you can see how many leads and sales they’ve brought in. If they have over 10,000 followers, you can utilize the Swipe Up feature on Instagram Stories to track how many of their followers have visited your website from their content. You should also make note of which days the influencers pushed out their content and compare that with website and social media visits. 

If this all sounds great but you’re not sure where to begin when it comes to influencer marketing, feel free to reach out to us today and we can give you a free consultation on how to best utilize social media influencers for your marketing campaigns.