Influencer marketing can be an extremely powerful and successful strategy to help brands meet their goals, but it is crucial that brands understand its effect on brand reputation and customer sentiment.
Establishing honest relationships with influencers and creating content relevant to their audiences will yield tangible results. This includes sponsored posts, social media takeovers, contests or giveaways as well as affiliate partnerships.
1. Increased brand awareness
Selecting influencers that align with your business goals can help maximize the reach of your campaign. Once you’ve established who your target audience is, search social media for influencers that resonate with them or use an influencer marketing platform that provides recommendations and audience demographic data.
Make sure that the influencer’s brand image and content style match up well with what your business needs; otherwise, forced partnerships may come off as inauthentic and damage both your campaign and brand’s reputation.
Influencer partners should represent your business values and help create a devoted following for its continued development, further cementing credibility and trust among consumers.
2. Increased engagement
Influencer collaborations can be an excellent way to generate engagement for your brand. A successful campaign may result in significant returns while building up credibility within your audience.
Search for influencers whose followers share similar interests to your business, either manually by scrolling through their follower counts or with an influencer marketing platform such as Shopify Collabs.
Consider an influencer’s personal brand and values when selecting them as partners for your campaign involving intimate apparel products. A body positivity advocate would make an excellent partner.
B2B brands can use influencers to promote events, product launches and other key milestones. SAP famously invited influencers to their annual Sapphire event and streamed videos featuring experts that helped generate over 17% of total engagement around their hashtag.
3. Increased conversions
Brand ambassadors that connect with your audience are more likely to drive conversions. You can identify these influencers manually by scrolling through their follower information or use an influencer marketing platform that matches you with compatible partners.
When selecting an influencer partner, look for one with a high engagement rate among their followers. While a large following doesn’t always translate to high engagement rates, aim instead for someone well-respected by your target audience who is popular and respected by them.
To maximize conversions from influencer campaigns, syndicate the branded and user-generated content generated through them across all your sales platforms. Share it in product galleries on ecommerce sites, social media shops and reseller sites so customers can see it no matter where they shop online or offline. Use it in sponsored ads as well to reach your target audience at scale; for maximum effectiveness consider long-term influencers who already understand your brand and expectations rather than spending time developing new relationships.
4. Increased revenue
Influencer campaigns can generate substantial amounts of revenue. One method of doing this is through providing influencers with unique discount codes which they distribute among their audience, then rewarding them when sales occur with those codes.
Partnering with influencers for events can help your business increase revenue. Leveraging social media and hashtags, you can raise the profile of your event while inviting influencers to attend and create content at your event.
Before embarking on any campaign, it’s vital to establish clear expectations with influencer partners. Clarify timeline, deliverables, compensation terms, as well as ensure your influencer knows and supports the values and products associated with your brand. It may be advantageous to collaborate with influencers who specialize in niche content while possessing established content styles; this will allow for optimal campaign results.
