Under the Influence
Have you ever bought something just because a famous person said you should? I don’t know about you, but Spiderman was a formative influence on me growing up. Hell, he still is. While advertising is still big business, it's time to stop smirking at influencer marketing and take a look at how it can help us and our companies accomplish our goals.
Influence Your Marketing
Our topic today is a bit meta, but it’s an intriguing question. How do you get someone with influence to provide exposure for your agency, so you in turn can get exposure for more clients? That’s right, it’s influencer marketing. But if you aren’t going to be able to swing bringing Matt Damon in to advertise your cryptocurrency app, how can this work on the scale of your shop? Let’s explore what you can do to get some attention from the right people.
Get Ready…
It’s easy to say you want Kim Kardashian to offer you public praise. I’m not exactly sure why you’d do that, but in any event you’d need to know what exactly you hope to gain from influencer marketing. Since you’re likely branching out into something new, you need to know how successful your efforts are and if it’s worth the investment. Determine your KPIs before you even get started.
Get Set…
Chances are you already follow a number of people who have large followings online. Some of these may be so-called traditional influencers, who already promote a variety of companies. Others may have a smaller following (but still larger than yours) and haven’t acted as an influencer before. Someone like a local author or artist might be a great place to start.
Try starting small, offering them a service you can provide in exchange, like a new website that better advertises their work. That can increase their influence, and thus increase yours as well. Or if they want cash, it might not set you back too much. According to InfluencerMarketingHub, these microinfluencers can be had for as little as $100 per Instagram post, going up for other projects like YouTube videos.
Go!
Once you’re all set with your goals and your influencer, you’re ready to execute the campaign. Determine the scope, duration and all those fun details, and then it’s time to sit back and let the likes roll in. Finally, analyze the ROI and determine whether to try it again, or even try for a bigger fish with the next campaign.
Here are a few other ideas for trying your hand at those sweet, sweet influencer benefits.
Talk to Your Clients
Maybe some of your (satisfied) clients have already tried influencer marketing of their own, or know celebrities who already use their products and have some connections you could leverage to promote your own shop. See if any of them have connections and are willing to make an introduction.
Engage in Conversations Online
You’re probably already talking to people online about digital marketing, so you can just start looking a little bit more into who you’re engaging with to find who’s really directing the conversation -- in other words, who the influencers are in these communities. Then it’s a matter of asking if they’d be willing to help you promote your shop.
Finally, while these don’t have a great success rate, you can always just get into online conversations with the mega influencers and see if they’re willing to give you a shout-out or collaborate on a project together. If you can stand out with a clever idea or establish a connection, you never know. If you can find someone with a connection to your area, that might improve your odds.
Influencer marketing is complicated, and like other forms of advertising there’s no magic formula for success. But it’s a reality in today’s business world, and it’s one more tool worth trying to give you a competitive edge.
Most of us are bad about promoting ourselves so the idea of paying someone else to do it may feel even worse. But if you stay true to the message and let the influencer be themselves you never know where it could go.