In most simple words, influencer marketing is the process of promoting a product, service, brand, or cause with the help of someone who has a following.
Until a few years ago, only celebrities were counted as influencers. No matter what you are selling, you would hire a popular actor to get people to recognize your brand.
Luckily, that’s not the case anymore.
Today’s influencer marketing is much cheaper and it offers way better results. The rise of the internet and social media platforms has brought more influencers than we can count. Anyone with the following of a few thousand is considered an influencer. Unlike popular actors, they also don’t charge you a lot of money for promoting your business.
This has made it easy even for small businesses to build their brand with the help of influencer marketing. This article is a brief guide to understanding influencer marketing and how you can use it to develop your business.
Finding the Right Influencers
Kevin Wright of Globex Outreach said, You can’t just hire anyone with a good following to become your brand ambassador. For example, people would take the words of an actor/model more seriously for fashion advice instead of a sportsman. Likewise, what would an actor know about a healthy diet; words of a professional and renowned athlete would have a different impact.
This is why you need to find influencers who have excelled in a niche. Many influencers have a specific type of audience as their followers. For example, there are people who give fashion advice to men. If they recommend your product, their followers will listen to them.
But if they tell you what kind of tile you should use for the flooring of your house, people won’t take it as seriously. You will need to find an influencer that gives advice about home development and remodeling if you are selling tiles.
This means the process of finding the right influencers is also not going to be that easy. You should always look at the people who follow them. If you think that most of those followers are your potential customers, then you should take the next step.
You should also beware of frauds. Make sure the followers of the influencer are legit and they are kept engaged. Don’t judge them based on how many likes they got on one post. Instead, make an average of all their posts to determine their engagement rate. Having one million followers doesn’t matter if they barely get fifty reactions to a post.
Contact them with an Offer
Influencer outreach is a profession in itself. There are professionals who help you find the right influencers and make deals with them on your behalf. Many influencers choose who they want to promote.
They have standards and they want to maintain them with the trust of their followers. They will not promote anything that they don’t like and won’t lie about anything. Some of them will first try out your product before they will decide if it’s worthy of their praise.
It’s unlikely that they will do it for free. Every influencer has his own charges. Most of them charge you per post. On average, an Instagram influencer with a following of over 100 thousand will charge you $750 per post.
If this sounds too expensive, you should know that Dwayne Johnson and Selena Gomez charge $880,000 per post. These celebrities have a large following but they are not specific to one niche.
People would listen to Christian Ronaldo for anything related to sports and health, and he charges $975,000 per post.
You will have to write a pitch and reach out to your influencers to see if they are willing to work with you. You can find their email address on their official social media page or website. Make sure you are respectable to them and offer a long-term partnership if you want a better deal.
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