What is influencer marketing? Could it work for my business?

Chances are if you’ve been online at all these past few years, you’ve heard of influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is the act of hiring an “influencer” with a larger or loyal following in a particular niche, to promote a product or service for another business. After all, people are more likely to buy a product with a personal endorsement from a trusted source, as opposed to traditionally marketed products.

Word-of-mouth advertising is the most trusted form of advertising, so is it really surprising that influencer marketing has grown so astronomically since the rise of social media?

Think about it. You could spend money on ads on these platforms, which may or may not work, or you could get a trusted individual to promote your product to their loyal followers, many of whom are within your target market. The impact that your influencers’ clout has on your target market is much greater than any ad spend you could muster.

So, how can you make influencer marketing work for your business?

1. Choose the right social media reach
2. Find your ideal audience
3. Take a natural approach
4. Set the objectives, budget, and track it

Use these four steps to get into influencer marketing and see the results roll in!

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

1. Choose the right social media reach

Let’s get real… you’re not Pepsi and you can’t afford Kendall Jenner as an influencer.

So, realistically, you need to find an influencer or influencers, whose social media reach make sense for your brand.

You will need to do some price comparison and shopping around for your influencer, but there are platforms for that (plus, your marketing agency can help here, too).

In order to find the right influencer for you, make sure their followers are “legit” by asking for their engagement statistics. If you find someone with 100K followers getting less than 100 likes per photo, you know something is wrong and this person has likely paid for their followers. 

It’s always better to hire 3 influencers with 10K real followers each than someone with 50K fake followers.

2. Find your ideal audience

Find an influencer who embodies your ideal consumer. Think about it. You’ll want to hire someone who could basically be your brand representative if you were hiring a permanent position.  

You want someone with a good personality who fits everything your brand embodies. Ideally, they’ve used your product before and already love it!

If you have some brand presence you can search your tagged photos or brand hashtag to find people using your products who may be a great fit for your influencer program.

3. Take a natural approach

You want someone who’s feed is not chock full of ads. Then the appeal of influencer marketing starts to dwindle if the audience knows they’re being sold to on every single post.

You want someone who only partners with brands they believe in, and as a result, has a gorgeously curated feed. You want them still posting their own personal brand and wonderful personality and your product should fit right in as if it were in their own feed naturally.


Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

4. Set the objectives, budget, and track it

An influencer marketing campaign would be nothing without objectives, budget, and results.

Work with people who fit your budget (don’t try to lowball someone on their rates) and people who have reviews or testimonials from other brands. Agree on the number and schedule of posts, whether you’ll approve the posts ahead of time, and when you want to discuss the results.

There are a number of tools available for campaign tracking and if you’re working with someone who has done this before, they’ll likely have a recommendation.

This will also show you where you can tweak your strategy in the future, if one post performs better than others, for example.

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On average, for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, the return is ~$6.50 in sales. While these are promising odds, you need to make sure the influencer and their personal brand align with your business values and your brand messaging.

Finding the right fit can be a challenge but as you grow, you may even have people reach out to you to become influencers for your brand!

Focus on the people who already use your products, if you know who they are, as they will be the ultimate champion for your brand if they already use and trust you.

For help with your next influencer marketing campaign, or to find out if influencer marketing is right for your brand, check out some of our influencer marketing packages.