How to Attract More Customers with Influencer Marketing

Modern consumers have become cynical towards advertising, which has opened the door for influencer marketing.  Influencer marketing has changed the marketing landscape, forcing businesses to leverage this new way of communicating with their audience.

Why has it taken off so much? Because 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations above all other forms of advertising. Influencer marketing is dominating the marketing industry as people don’t trust ads from brands and instead rely more on reviews, testimonials and word-of-mouth recommendations.

Social media has been instrumental in driving the growth of influencer marketing. People nowadays don’t look at companies to inform them about what they want or need, they look to other people who they perceive to have a level of expertise or knowledge.

The key to using influencers in your strategy is to choose the right ones to engage your audience. The following are some practical ways to help ensure influencer marketing works for you in order to attract more visitors to your website and boost your conversion rate.

Consider Your Audience

The ultimate goal of your influencer marketing strategy is to convert your visitors into customers, so your marketing campaigns should all be built around them. In order to do this, you have to understand your audience, their behaviours, likes, and motivations.  This insight will inform what channels you should be looking on and the content that they are most interested in. This will in turn, let you start looking for influencers in the right area, on the right channel to engage your audience.

Choose the Right Influencer

There are a number of things to consider when looking for an influencer.  While the niche they operate in and relevance to your business are obvious considerations, you should also look at how the influencer addresses their audience. Depending on your niche and what you are trying to achieve with your influencer campaign, you may need someone who can encourage people to take action, a thought leader, or an industry insider.

Seek Out Influencers

Once you identify the influencer or influencers that you want to target, you can take steps to establish contact with them.  You want them to notice you and act as an advocate for your particular brand, which can take a bit of work. The best way to do this is to get on their social networks and see what is happening. You then have to ensure your brand is in line with the content that the influencers are providing for their audience.

Bear in mind that you can also do this the other way around. You can use social media to find out which influencers are already talking about your brand and collaborate with them.

Once you’ve found the right influencer or influencers, the next step is to get on their radar. You can do this by following them, sharing their posts and referencing them on your channel. For B2B businesses this can be through an introduction on LinkedIn. If they start to notice you, over time, they will be more likely to recommend and promote your company.

Start Creating Content

When it comes to influencer marketing, content is vital. More content means more visibility for your brand, which means more traffic, better conversion rate, and more leads.  This content can’t just be created by your business; it has to be created by influencers and even by their audience. There are several different ways you can get influencers to generate content for you, which in turn, engages their audience in the conversation about your brand.

• Reviews: An influencer’s audience trusts their opinion. As such, asking the influencer for a review of your business is an extremely effective way to promote your products or services and boost your sales and leads.
• Contests: Creating a contest with an influencer can create a huge buzz around your brand, get people talking about your business and generate sign-ups and leads.
• Paid-Posts: Sponsoring a post is one of the easiest ways to have your brand seen or heard by a larger audience.

A content marketing agency has expertise in content writing. Find out what they can do for your business when it comes to influencer marketing.

Measure Your Success

When it comes to digital marketing, everything can be measured. Using social media analytics, you can see levels of engagement on every single post to see what’s working best.  Google Analytics is also an effective platform for monitoring demographic data and data specific to the channel(s) you are using for influencer marketing. You can even see specific stats such as the time of day and days of the week that have been best in terms of visitors and shares.  All of this data should be collected and analysed in order to develop and optimise your campaigns.

But be aware …

While influencer marketing can be very successful, it’s important to be aware of the risks. If the influencer gets bad publicity due to their behaviour, your brand may be affected.  In addition, there is a risk that the influencer can come across as inauthentic when they are doing promotions, which often happens if they are not given creative freedom for the campaigns.

Get in touch with Digital Squad, a digital marketing agency Auckland, to find out how we can help you boost your digital presence using influencers and other online channels. We also provide Google Adwords Management, Content Marketing Auckland, Remarketing Strategies and Facebook Marketing Auckland.