Google’s main mission is to provide relevant and up-to-date content for all searchers. Marketers’ main objective should be to do the same, simply tweaked to their own offering. In the age where millennials make up the majority of brands’ target markets, there’s no longer an excuse to avoid influencer marketing. How much activity your social media channels receive can protect your online reputation in the long-run, therefore choosing both credible and relevant influencers to advocate for your brand will bring you right on track.
Engagement Matters Most
When choosing the perfect influencers to back up your brand, it’s not simply about the number of followers they have on Instagram or Facebook. Let’s key you in on a little secret: Some influencers pay for followers. That’s why if you see that they are lacking engagement on their photos but have hundreds and thousands of followers on their profile, it’s probably a scam. Either way, marketers today prefer engagement over impressions any day. We’d rather have 1,000 loyalists engage with our brand with the intention of purchasing versus 5,000 placid consumers who scroll past your post in a millisecond.
Use Social Monitoring Devices
Connecting with influencers via social media monitoring platforms such as Hootsuite, where you can type in a keyword or profile in order to monitor their interactions, will allow you to chime in to their conversations every once in a while. This may lead to a greater opportunity where the influencer warms up to your brand and decides to launch into a campaign with you, or become a part of your influencer program. You may decide to send them your products to try out and give honest feedback to their followers.
Companies of All Sizes Are Doing It
Companies small and large have used influencer marketing to get ahead of the game and spread awareness concerning what they do best. Montreal-based swimsuit company (and swimwear is an uber competitive industry in and of itself) June Swimwear dubs their influencers by “Team June”. These women embrace the brand’s sports aesthetic by either living out a surfer lifestyle or travelling for work. Their influencers will then take photos of themselves in their June swimwear abroad their travels to then be posted on June’s Instagram profile.
Other brands such as Tarte have taken influencer marketing to the next level by flying out over a dozen famous YouTube and Instagram stars to tropical destinations. There, they partake in fun activities and bonding moments between each other in which everything is recorded on their channels of choice. From Bora Bora to Turks and Caicos and Hawaii, the influencer entourage has made a great splash on social media concerning the brand’s new sea-themed product line that adorns mesmerizing mermaid and turtle packaging.
Use the 4-1-1 Tactic
If you want to make a large impact with your audience, then you should follow the 4-1-1 strategy that social media mavens have effectively used to grow their businesses. For every one piece of promotable content that you publish, make sure it is backed up by four influencer-driven posts and one personable, behind-the-scenes type of post. This is the key to unlocking a world of opportunities for your company’s growth. And it’s worth the investment as studies have revealed that for every $1 invested in influencers, the average company will receive $6 back in revenue. Now that’s an ROI we like to see!
Be Research Savvy
The rest of your company’s marketing teams can use some insight from the Marketing Communications department since these are the managers who see first-hand how customers are interacting with your brand. Take the pedestal and explain to your branding and product development teams what’s going well for your company, what your weaknesses are based on the competition and in which ways you can increase your competitive advantage.