We all remember when big celebrities like Beyoncé and Harry Styles were the only influencers, with huge Instagram followings promoting major brands. But in the past few years, there’s been a rise in the “next-door influencer.”
These influencers aren’t global stars; they’re regular people who gained big followings by sharing their lives on social media. They’re relatable and connect with their audience on a personal level.
Instead of being famous for entertainment, they might excel in areas like cooking, fitness, parenting, or DIY projects. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have allowed anyone with a passion to become an influencer.
Last month, we saw the hype about Stanley cups and how a handful of baby mom influencers made these cups go viral and increase their sales by a staggering 751%. People were camping overnight in front of their local Walmart to get their hands on these tumblers.
The truth is, every company is trying to create their own Stanley cup phenomena by hiring influencers, and so should you! If you sell products and services to consumers, influencer marketing can be perfect for your sales.
Many business owners are afraid of working with influencers. They live in the old mentality that “if my product is good, people will find out about it sooner or later”. The problem with that logic is that we live in a hugely competitive world now. And people don’t shop only for products, they shop for experiences too.
Influencers create those experiences and that social proof that we are all used when we buy something today. For example, when was the last time you bought a camera without first looking for video review about it? You see, even if we don’t think of tech review guys as influencers per se, they are hugely influential when it comes to our tech purchasing decisions.
So enough theory, what kind of influencer do you need and how to work with them?
What Kind of Influencer Do I Need?
The answer depends on your needs, and yes your budget too. Traditionally there are 4 types of influencers depending on their number of followers.
- Those that have over 1 million followers aka Mega influencers.
- The ones that have between 100k and 1 million followers known as Macro influencers.
- Influencer that have between 10k and 100k followers or Micro influencers.
- And influencers that have less than 10k followers or the Nano influencers.
What is interesting for us here is the Micro and Nano influencers. Followers usually perceive them as more authentic and they are usually tied to a certain location and demographic. This is great for pushing promotions for products and services.
These two types of influencers because of their age, lifestyle, eating choices, sporting habits gain followers of certain demographic. Like for example we might sell sports equipment, and we need to look for someone who is in their early 20s, doing some kind of sport, living a healthy lifestyle, etc. So when we get this kind of influencer we automatically gain that target group that follows him, which is very useful for effective marketing campaigns. One of the main rules of marketing is knowing your target audience. And by hiring the right influencer, we get access to our target group.
How to Get in Touch With Influencers?
Many businesses are not against working with influencers, but simply are afraid to contact them and arrange their scope of work. There is a further distinction that should be made here between the Micro and Nano influencers.
Micro influencers (100k to 1M followers) will probably be a bigger expense for you and your marketing budget, and working with them will require a bit more effort. They have a certain style and they want to do things their way, which is understandable, and you will need to fit into their messaging.
On the other side, the Nano influencers are great for small business that just want to start working with influencers. They have less than 10k followers but they are usually very well known in the local community or in the niche that they are working in. It’s also possible to work with Nano influencers by just giving them your products for free and in return, they show it to their followers or make a review about it.
You need to understand that some Nano influencers are absolute starts in their niche. They might have less than 10k followers, but that is because the niche is so small and they are the biggest fish in the pond. Collaboration with influencers that have that kind of follower is going to cost you more than hiring the run-of-the-mill influencer, but probably the results will be great too.
How to Set Up My Influencer Campaign?
The most important thing when setting up your collaboration with an influencer is to exactly know what would you like to achieve? You might not achieve your goals, but at least you will have something to measure your campaign by.
Clear Goals/KPI’s
Think about what goals would you like to achieve and what those numbers would look like. For example if you have 50 sales a day would you like those sales to go to 70 per day, 33% increase? Or would you like to get more views on your Instagram posts, instead of getting the standard 500-700 get a thousand? Or would you like some brand recognition, like more people from some region to become aware of your product that influencers are now wearing?
Find Your Influencer
Find the influencer who is popular with your target audience. Like we said above, find how old and what gender is your ideal customer (think about making a customer persona). Think about their preferences, their lifestyles, their working habits. And then see if there is a influencer that is appealing to such an audience.
Contact the Influencer and Set Up the Collaboration
After you have identified your influencer contact him/her and ask them if they would be interested in doing a collaboration, and how do they usually go about it? Don’t write one huge email at the beginning, rather contact them on Instagram via DM and keep the conversation casual. Communicate your marketing vision and ask them how they would go about it.
Define Channels and Messaging
When working with influencers, you usually want to give them the creative freedom to present your product in the best way they know. But it’s useful to agree on the posting frequency and how you will be included in the posts. Do you want to just be mentioned, do you want a special hashtag? Do you want to be tagged in photos or you want the followers to figure it out themselves. Also you should discuss messaging, in the sense that you want to focus on these features of your product and not talk about others. And lastly, of course set up the date when you are starting your campaign.
Launch and Course Corrections
When the campaign starts try to follow it closely to see if there are some corrections that should be made. It’s good to check the influencer profile few times a day, to see how the whole thing is going and if they keep on the agreed posting schedule. Also you might notice that some things don’t work, like the timing of the posts, or the way you are tagged, the way your product is described, try to think about these details and form a plan. Contact the influencer and make corrections, so you can get better results.
Analyze Campaign Results
After the campaign is over, sit down and analyze the results that you got. See what KPI you have gotten, the number of sales, number of impressions, clicks, the questions from customers you got in your inbox and so on. Compare this to the initial goals you had, and see how well you did. Usually you will have some KPIs where you did very well, and others that didn’t see much of an increase.
You can also calculate your KPI by the dollar spent, so if you usually have 500 visitors, and when the influencer was doing your campaign you had 1200 visitors then you have 700 more visitors. Divide this by the budget of your campaign, let’s say 100 dollars. So 100 dollars divided by 700 users, it’s 0.14$ per user.
The easiest calculation to do is the conversion rate. It’s the same logic, see how many more sales you’ve got, divide your budget by that number and you get dollars per conversion metric. Then you can compare this to running ads directly on Instagram or on Google and compare what is more cost-effective for your business.
Influencer Marketing is More Than KPI’s
It’s important to remember that influencer marketing is more than just reaching KPI’s. Don’t get me wrong, it’s about that too, but it is also good for creating engagement and trust with customers, and also super important about raising brand awareness.
You have surely heard that customer need to see an advertisement multiple times to purchase a certain product. The studies say that an average customer needs to see the ad at least 7-8 times before making a purchasing decision. Now imagine the exposure you get from influencers when their followers surely see your product in a post, in a story and see you tagged, you get 3 views from a single customer.
On top of that, the influencer is someone who has formed a connection with your customers, so they naturally trust them more than an advertisement on the billboard or one on the radio. That’s why there is no better, authentic way to get the customer interested in your product and how they really look than influencer marketing.
KPI’s sometimes, for some reason don’t reflect this. Every investment in influencers is a long-term benefit. If you don’t see the results now when your campaign is over, wait for a few months and you will see a slow build up of impressions and conversions.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a powerful way to get more exposure for your product, especially if you are a small business and you offer a quality product. Working with influencers will help you to better target your audience and provide social proof, so your customers will feel like they already know what they are buying.
The biggest decision you should make is which influencer should you hire and what your collaboration will look like. Do a good research before finding your influencer, and see that she/he is on board with your message and what you are selling. Agree on how your product will be presented and how you will be mentioned, and what they should focus on when presenting it.
As any other marketing campaign, monitor the campaign and make course correction when necessary. When it’s over, compare it to the goals you set in the beginning and see what you can do next time. But don’t forget influencer marketing is not just about KPI’s, there are other non-measurable effects that you will see over time.
If you need help with setting up your influencer campaign, feel free to contact us at any time. We run the best web marketing agency in Montreal.
