In the era of digital influencers, the influence marketing has been gaining more and more space among companies, brands and marketing teams.
The idea of reaching an engaged audience is quite interesting and, therefore, there are companies that are spending a lot of money on this strategy.
Learn more about influencer marketing and why brands are investing so much in it.
What is influence marketing?
Before understanding what influencer marketing is, you need to know who digital influencers are, a fundamental part of this type of strategy.
The term 'digital influencers' is more recent, but they have existed and been active on the internet for a long time. They are producers of digital content on a variety of social networks, such as Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, etc.
Each one has their own style of content and speaks in a 'close' way to their audience, which is why they tend to have a very engaged audience. There are influencers of beauty, books, movies, travel, among others. There is space for the most varied content.
In addition to creating content, many of them also share their daily lives on social media, usually through Instagram Stories. Being able to follow someone's breakfast, what they did that day, the outfits they wore and everything else that is shown ends up generating a lot of identification with the influencers and, consequently, a lot of engagement from the public.
It is this engagement that catches the eye of brands, and influencer marketing consists of working with these influencers to reach their audience. They receive the product or use the service of the interested brand and then make some posts about it on their network.
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Does influencer marketing really work?
At first, you may be a little reluctant and unsure whether influencer marketing really works, but the data doesn't lie. When done well, with an influencer aligned with the company, it does work.
Proof of this is the data from a survey carried out by the Qualibest Institute with more than 2.000 people.
Of those interviewed, 71% said they follow an influencer, 86% said they have discovered products through influencers and 73% have purchased something because of a recommendation from a content creator.
An example of how marketing influences the purchase of a product is that 55% of respondents said they research the opinion of influencers before making any important purchase.
In other words, the public is engaged and influencer marketing works, but brands need to know their target audience well to hire influencers who reach exactly that audience.
For example, an influencer who speaks and creates content for teenagers cannot be hired to advertise an anti-wrinkle product, as there will be no identification and it will not be beneficial for either party.
Hiring influencers for marketing campaigns: 4 tips
Influencer marketing can be used for the most diverse segments, after all, there are content creators of all types.
It is possible to use influencer marketing for e-commerce, brands and for those who sell their service.
Check out 4 tips below for making a good choice of digital marketing influencers.
Understand the brand's target audience
The first step to creating marketing strategies, not only related to influencers, is knowing the company's target audience, as this is the only way to create content that is aligned with them and that will have an impact.
Analyze influencers who have a connection with the target audience
Once you have a well-defined target audience, it is time to start analyzing influencers that are related to the product or service offered by the brand.
There is no point in choosing an influencer with millions of followers if he speaks to an audience that will not generate sales for the brand.
Request the influencers' media kit
The media kit is a presentation document where the influencer will include data such as engagement rate, views, audience profile, content delivery rate, etc. It is through this data that the brand will be able to understand whether the influencer has reach with the public. Therefore, do not choose the influencer just by the number of followers! One tip is to follow the influencer for a while, analyze comments on the feed posts and the way he works with “publis” – advertisements for the brands. Some are able to fit the product or service they are selling so naturally that it really conveys credibility and ends up selling and engaging more.
Give micro-influencers a chance
When talking about influencers, it is common for people to think of those who have millions of followers, but there are smaller influencers, who have 10/15/20 thousand followers and who can sometimes generate better results than the influencer with followers in the millions.
Each type of influencer is important for a stage of the marketing funnel. We can say that large influencers, with millions of followers, are important in the awareness phase of a brand or product. They will give visibility and will get a large number of people to know about your product, but their engagement is usually lower than that of micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers, experts in a given subject, will bring more credibility to a more engaged audience and consequently be able to work in the middle and bottom of the funnel.
For this reason, it is important to have a well-defined marketing strategy to work with the right content, at the right stage and with the right influencer for your marketing objectives.
Influencer Marketing: Where to Find Influencers?
The most common places to find influencers are on social media. That's where they create content and where the general public is. But there are also influencer marketing platforms, such as Squidy and Influency.me, where you can even hire influencers.
Conclusion
Using influencer marketing in a brand/company's strategies is a great way to reach target audiences in different ways.
This strategy makes the influencer's authority pass to the brand and more people want to purchase the product or service.
But despite being a great strategy, it shouldn’t be the only one used.