While there is a time and a place for traditional marketing methods, the way of the future is definitely to focus on digital marketing. One of the biggest recent trends with digital marketing is influencer marketing.
An online influencer is someone that has online influence. This may be through a blog or through social media. Making use of an online influencer is an amazing way to reach a bigger audience, to increase your sales and to build your credibility.
Here are some tips on how to use influencer marketing to grow your business:
Table of Contents
How To Find Influencers
You may already have your eye on a few online influencers in your niche, but if you don’t have anyone in mind to work with and you don’t know where to start the best thing may be to find an online platform that connects influencers with brands.
You can increase brand and sales ROI by finding influencers on Smartfluence. Follow @smartfluence on Instagram to see featured influencers.
One big advantage of using an online platform like this is that all the information that you need is right at your fingertips to compare how many followers each influencer has on each platform, the reach of each influencer, the niche of each influencer and many much more important information to choose the influencer best matched with your needs.
Audience Relevance
It is vital that you find an influencer that has the exact audience that you are trying to reach, otherwise your campaign will be a complete waste of time.
It will be well worth your time spending some researching who you are wanting to target and comparing your target audience with the audience of any influencer you are interested in working with.
There is going to be no point in marketing a maternity clothing range to an influencer that has a teenage following. You will get the best return on investment by finding influencers with your exact target market.
Influencing With Integrity
It is important to find an influencer that stands up for what they believe in and to ensure that your company vision is in line with the influencer’s beliefs.
You don’t want to work with influencers that will say anything just to get a quick buck. It is much better to work with someone that well and truly clicks with you, your brand and your products.
Big vs Small Influencers
You may think that the really big influencers have the most clout, and while you may get a lot of exposure using such an influencer for one campaign the investment will be condsiderable.
A series of smaller campaigns with micro influencers may be a much better long term strategy for growing your business at a much smaller cost per influencer.
Followers vs Engagement
It is our first instinct to look at the amount of followers an influencer has on social media and assume that this means you will get a great response advertising with that influencer. It is so easy to be impressed with a large following.
Firstly look at the amount of followers in relation to the amount of people that influencer is following. A very popular tactic to gain followers is to follow others in the hopes that they follow back or to join groups that offer follows for follows.
If an influencer follows more people or has close to the same amount of followers chances are that many of the followers are not in fact interested in the content the influencer shares.
A much better way of evaluating an influencer’s true reach is to look at the engagement that they get on social media. It is so much better to have a smaller following an engaged audience than to have a large base of followers that do not engage.
Make sure to not only look at the number of likes and comments on posts, but to read the comments. You need to evaluate the engagement for a qualitative perspective too to ensure that the comments are not superficial. You want to work with an influencer that has an audience that is really interested and engaged.
It is important to note that micro-influencers have a very specific audience and very often their audience is highly engaged, making them a wonderful investment.
Evaluate Influencer Campaigns
As with any aspect of marketing for your business it is essential to regularly assess all of your marketing efforts, including your influencer campaigns. Before you start working with any influencer ensure that they are prepared to supply the relevant reporting that you need to assess the how successful each campaign has been.
Over time you will be able to see which influencers are a very good fit for your brand and which influencers are not working for you. You can then start to work with some influencers on a regular basis to reach your business growth goals.
These are good tips for using influencers to grow your business. My sister is a makeup and skin care influencer so I am familiar with the concept. I wouldn’t have thought to focus on engagement or discuss reporting for traceability. Now that you said it though, it makes perfect sense! Thanks for bringing these to my attention!
Hey Eric
Oh for sure, you really need to assess the success of each campaign afterwards. The beauty of using an online influencer platform is that very often the tracking and reporting is included in the service so that is taken care of for you! Otherwise if you are dealing directly with an influencer you can request that they give a report at the end of the campaign. You can then compare the success of each influencer against the others.
Thanks for this article on influencer marketing. I must commend you for the job well-done on the post. I find it so full of enlightenment on influencer marketing. This is my first time of hearing the word and influencer marketing maybe it is due to the fact that am new to marketing as a business both online and offline.but when talking about influencer marketing I will like to make use of it and exploit it and see how it can help me in marketing world
You will be amazed at how effective it can be! And if your business is new you don’t have to spend a fortune on huge campaigns. In fact if you sell products you can even contact some smaller influencers and offer free products in exchange for a review on their website or perhaps a social media share about your product!
Hi, Lynne, thank you for the 6 tips on growing your business using influencer selling power. You offer some good advice. I like when you talked about having followers. I would rather have 100 followers that are engaged in the topic and ask a real question, then to have 5000 subscribers where only about 1% is interested in what I’m offering. So I agree with you, the amount of followers means little if they are relevant.
Spot on there LeNard! And you would be shocked how many people have fake followers too! I once had someone contact me and offer to build up my mommy blog for me through his amazing social media channels… and I went to go and have a look and first impressions was impressive – lots of followers and he was hardly following anyone but when I looked at each post there were no likes and no comments. Literally zero engagement at all! When I replied to his email asking him some questions he just disappeared. It is so sad that some people buy fake followers to make themselves look better than they are.
One of the ways to ensure this does not happen is to go through an online influencer program since those problems will be dealt with by the company you deal with – very often they use software to analyze the influencer’s accounts to measure the true engagement and reach.
These are great tips and I do find them very informative. I would very much love to have an influencer marketing to grow my business and following your article and tips I think finding one won’t be difficult. I’m impressed by the tip about evaluating the influencer’s campaign, as i have been on that for a while and the turnout is great.
Hello, great tips to help grow my business through social media influencers. I have a couple of friends who are entertainment influencers in my country, but by your definition, they may not be good value for money because, they got most of their followers by following back. It makes more sense to select an influencer based on activity rather than followers. I will be looking to implement this next time I need an influencer on social media. Thanks for the write-up, warm regards.
Hi Louis
Yes it it is a very common tactic to increase followers and it does work to increase followers but those followers are not engaged, quality followers so in my opinion it is a pointless way to try and grow your social media accounts!
I have just followed smart influence on instagram though I was expecting smartinfluence to have up to 20k followers. However, I am hopeful I will have amazing result following smartinfluence.
Celebrities are great influencers and they are very much influential as well but the challenge is how to get their contact as to do business with them. Most of them can’t reveal their true contact. What suggestions can you give me on how to get a celebrity’s contact so that I can do business with them as its gonna help me in my niche. Celebrities are damn influential.
Well just as highlighted in this post, it’s not so much about the quantity of followers, it’s more about the engagement of the followers. The same will be true of Smartfluence.
If you want to do business with an influencer that you come across online, celebrity or otherwise, you can send them a PM on that social media platform to request their information for collaboration. I get a lot of enquiries through social media. I then direct them to my website.
You can also check the influencer’s website for a contact page.
Hi Lynne.
I look forward to reading more from you.
Right now I am struggling to get the right influencer with the same audience as my blog readers. One mentioned made sense to me and I would’ve made that mistake if I didn’t come to your blog. My budget is limited so a campaign spread across a few micro influencers might be better since my blog is still relatively young.
I am also interested in the other side of the coin. Do you have anything on how to become an influencer?
Hi Ian
I’ve never used influencers myself but I do quite a lot of influencer jobs in my parenting niche. I have not written any articles on this website on becoming an influencer but I have published a tutorial at Wealthy Affiliate on How To Establish Yourself As An Online Influencer that will help you understand on how to get started.
Thank you for sharing this useful tips. I recently wrote a post target an influencer, Bethenny Frankel, since my site focuses on Heath and Dieting. I have a question though, how donyou know which influencer is good for your site? What if and influencer does not offer affiliation? My first approach of writing about her was just to reach more audiences in the dieting industry. Will look for more influencers in the mean time 🙂
This post outlines very important points in market influencing. My main worries is when an influencer loses his sense of integrity just to market an item to people. As an influencer, your word means a lot because at the very end the buyers are the ones that would risk their money based on your words. I had a similar experience when I tried buying an item online sometime last year.
Hi Mikay
I believe that is a very important part of being an influencer and working with influencers. I do a lot of influencer jobs on my parenting website and I have a little section at the bottom of my rate card titled “Blogging With Integrity” which explains very nicely why I may decline to work with certain brands or products. If I market anything that is not in line with my beliefs just for the sake of money I will be damaging my business beyond repair and I will in fact not be doing any favors to the company I am working with either.
I was told one of the best ways to improve my business is through the use of influencer. Since then I have been thinking of what to look out for in using influencers but I didn’t see the best answer to what I’ve been searching for until I read this post.o Reading this article I got to know everything I need to know about using influencers , what to look out for .My question is how do I discover those influencers who by their timeline in online is convincing but they are fake , how will I discover?, I will be looking forward to your reply.
Hi Lok
I recommend that you look for influencer platforms such as Smartfluence – and there are many more – to connect with bloggers and influencers in your niche. That will cut out a lot of the legwork for you and ensure that you are dealing with legitimate influencers.
Hello. I own a business and I am currently looking at digital marketing as a means of increasing my business as I feel it is a more effective way of marketing than traditional methods of marketing. Thanks to this article, I am sure to try influencer marketing as a means of growing my business. Kudos to the author.
Great tips on how to find the right influencer. I agree with you, a large following does not mean anything- people but followers the whole time. However, people can also buy likes. Is there a way to tell if the likes are followers are actually genuine?
Do you think regular advertising has had its day and now if you want success you have to go through social media marketing?
The easiest way to see if likes or followers are bought is to check if there is any engagement. There are also some websites I have used where to enter the social media account and it does a check for you. I can’t remember the website I used for that but there are some you can use if you just do a search.
Hollie I believe that the best is to not put all your eggs into one basket. Yes focus on digital marketing and some offline marketing. Don’t just focus on social media – make sure to start building your list too, do some content marketing and make sure you also have your business cards with you at all times. You just never know who you will bump into!
Outside the six tips on influencer of business marketing pointed at in this beautiful article , are there other tested tips ? Can the Influencer Marketing methods replaced the traditional marketing methods?. How does Influencer Marketing improve our natural marketing skills as entrepreneurs?. Can I totally depend on smartphone only for my Influencer Marketing approach?.
Hi Olalekan
I don’t ever use only one approach for marketing my business. I make use of email marketing, push notifications, social media marketing and content marketing. I believe that it is important to diversify your marketing efforts and not just focus on one medium.
I believe that digital marketing is now the way to go and businesses should put the majority of their efforts online, however there are many offline marketing tactics that still work well depending on the type of business you have.
I still carry business cards with me wherever I go and I try to make personal connections with people. I now also attend lots of networking events so that I can meet people face to face.
There are lots of people that manage to work online solely from a mobile but for me personally I am more old school. I like to work mostly from my laptop and I use my phone to stay connected when I am on the move.
I find using Instagram influencer marketing as a kind of short term solution if you decide to use it as a means to make some sales. Although using to grow a brand is something I have not yet tried. You have provided some great tips on how to do this.
There are so many Instagram accounts that have a lot of followers that don’t engage with their contents. This is a red flag that can tell you to stay away from such an influencer as they might have built up their following in a way that does not attract followers really interested in their niche.