Influencer Marketing

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing, as its name suggests, refers to a set of activities whose purpose is to promote the product by influential people (influencer is equivalent to the English word influencer, and in Persian, the word influencer is also used to refer to it).

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Influencers usually share their opinions and suggestions about the use of a particular product with their followers on social networks and thus promote brands.

When it comes to influencers, the first thing that attracts our attention is their Instagram activity. The social network where the young generation is very active and it is possible to promote many products.

Although Instagram is considered a relatively popular social network, there are also influencers who are active in other important social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Aparat, Telegram, etc.

In addition, the activity of these people is not limited to social networks, there are bloggers whose activities and content they publish are much more influential than other bloggers and they are considered a very suitable choice for promoting activities related to advertising.

The thing about this marketing method is that when we read information about a particular product, we can see that a famous person is using it.

What is an influencer?

Any person who can influence others is called an influencer. In the world of social networks, people who have a large number of followers with a lot of interaction on their behalf are called influencers.

These people can greatly influence the interests and needs of their followers. Influencers can be divided into different categories based on the number of followers.

Of course, keep in mind that there is no standard or law for these categories, but according to an unwritten rule, they are divided into the following categories:

• Nano-influencer: People whose page has less than 10 thousand followers are called nano-influencers.
• Micro-influencer: People whose page has between 10,000 and 100,000 followers are called micro-influencers.
• Macro influencer: These are people whose page has between 100 thousand and one million followers.
• Mega influencer: these people have more than one million followers.

Types of influencers

In general, influential people are divided into three categories. Your choice between them depends on factors such as budget, brand and product.

For example, if your line of work is manufacturing and selling gardening tools, someone like Kim Kardashian would not be a good fit for you.

1. Famous influential people (celebrities)

Celebrity endorsement of products and recommending them to others is the oldest form of influencer marketing.

This activity started when celebrities like American actor and director John Wayne and American actor and director Paul Newman started promoting different products (John Wayne for cigarettes and Paul Newman for Coca-Cola).

Obviously, working with people allows you to reach a large number of people and present your product to them, but there are also obstacles to this activity that you should consider:

• This activity will cost a lot; Outside of Iran, almost one hundred thousand dollars are paid for each advertising post of famous people;
• Consumers no longer trust such advertisements (it has become a bit difficult to gain their trust compared to the past);
• If the celebrity you choose doesn’t have anything in common with your target market, you probably won’t get the sales boost you’re looking for.

Of course, “accidental (or casual) celebrity endorsement” still has commercial results. It means that a celebrity is accidentally exposed to others while using a particular product (eg, in between a photo or A film of him is released).

•  Macro Influencers

These people have many followers (maybe millions of followers). The difference between them and famous people is that they are experts in their field of work.

Chances are that if you share the name of such a person with others on the street, they will not recognize him, but they are famous in their field.

Cooperation with these people requires significant expenses. In addition, they do not befriend and cooperate with anyone, because any activity on their behalf can overshadow their reputation and credibility.

• Micro influencers

Most of the influential people are in this category. Like the previous category, they are not known to the general public, but a special account has been opened for them in their field of work.

These people have more followers than you and I (10,000-500,000 followers), but in the end they are not enough to demand astronomical salaries from you.

Of course, this lower number of followers does not reduce their values, because they are known as competent employers in their field of work and have the ability to increase audience attraction for you.

Regarding choosing influencers, try as much as possible to look for those who have a loyal audience and strong influence. Also, their fans and followers should be similar to your brand’s audience.

Benefits of influencer marketing

As we discussed in this article, influencer marketing is designed to eliminate the negative feeling or advertising fatigue.

With influencer marketing, you can indirectly encourage your audience and potential customers to buy your product. Many companies have used influencer marketing along with other advertising methods at the same time in order to have the greatest impact on their audience.

Influencer marketing has many benefits for businesses. This method creates an effective marketing strategy for you and helps you achieve your business goals.

You can also reduce your advertising costs to some extent. In this section, we take a deeper look at the benefits of influencer marketing:

1. Increase brand awareness

40% of marketers use influencer marketing to expand their brand and usually get great results.

Influencers can tell the story of your brand to their followers, list the benefits and value offered to the customer and get to know it better.

Essentially, talking about your brand on popular social media pages expands your brand while increasing followers’ willingness to buy from it.

2. Improving the content strategy

Influencer marketing is a golden opportunity to breathe life into your social media posts. You can repost influencers’ posts or ask their followers to comment on your posts and products.

3. Getting quality leads

Many brands use influencer marketing to generate leads to attract customers. 72% of these brands believe that influencer marketing has generated more quality leads for them than other marketing channels.

Consumers tend to feel better about products recommended by their favorite bloggers, and are therefore more likely to buy them.

In addition, certain types of content, such as reviews, may be more effective for customers in the middle stages of the sales funnel.

4. Being affordable

Influencer marketing is very affordable compared to many other advertising channels. Other methods require a regular budget.

For example, in Google Ads ads you have to pay for each click. If your account is not charged, your ads will disappear immediately.

But with the influencer marketing method, you spend once and if you have used the right strategy for it, you can benefit from its results for a long time.

In addition, by choosing the right influencer, you can spend less. In addition, the rate of return on investment in influencer marketing is higher than other methods.

Studies show that brands earn more than five dollars for every dollar invested in this method.

5. Strategy and targeting in influencer marketing

Doing influencer marketing without a goal and strategy is a big mistake. A mistake that can drain your entire budget.

If you don’t have a strategy, you will get confused among the many methods and probably choose the wrong way. In this section, we will present the step-by-step method of developing an effective marketing strategy:

6. Define your goals

Like any other advertising campaign, an influencer marketing campaign can be implemented to achieve different goals.

You should define your campaign goals in advance and determine your approach based on those goals. Be sure to consider measurable indicators for your goals.

This will help you measure the success of your campaign and change your approach or take action for future campaigns with detailed information.

For example, you can determine the number of visits to your page on social networks, the amount of follower attraction, the amount of increased interaction with the page, the amount of incoming traffic to the site, and other such things that can be measured as follows. Indicators It is better to consider a goal for each campaign content, because setting multiple calls to action will confuse the audience and reduce the likelihood of their engagement.

7. Choose the appropriate social network

These days, using Instagram for influencer marketing campaigns has become a common practice among different brands.

But that doesn’t mean Instagram is right for your business. You should choose the best social media platform based on your customers’ interests, brand value proposition, and goals.

For example, if your business is B2B, LinkedIn is a good option for you. Of course, sometimes there is no way except trial and error.

To find the right social network, it’s not a bad idea to try them all to find the best and most productive network for you. For this, you can run small and cheap campaigns in each and compare the results.

8.  Determine the campaign budget

This step is one of the most fundamental steps in developing a campaign strategy, because achieving your goals depends a lot on the allocated budget.

Influencers usually price their ads based on the number of followers, how long the campaign runs, and how it’s run. If your campaign budget is limited, you may find it more beneficial to target influencers with fewer followers.

9. Choose the right influencer

If you do not choose the right influencer, all your previous work and efforts will be wasted. To get the desired result from your campaign, you must choose an influencer who understands your brand values ​​and can describe them to your audience. Slow

For example, if you have a major fashion brand, you shouldn’t go to the blogger store. Also, make sure the influencer you’re targeting doesn’t have fake followers, and some influencers have more hate than fans.

These influencers cannot get you many customers.

Why is using influencer marketing essential for brands?

Traditional methods of advertising are over and hard hitting marketing techniques no longer work to convince customers to buy.

Statistics show that 92% of people trust recommendations to buy from others (not brand ads). According to statistics published by Google in many countries, the click-through rate on banner ads is only 0.06%, and many people even They prevent them from being displayed by using ad blockers.

With these interpretations, as a person who works in the field of marketing, how should this problem be dealt with?

It is quite clear that the answer to this question comes from the activity in the field of social network marketing. Business owners spend many hours on social networks, tweeting on Twitter and sharing different content on Instagram and other similar activities, but It should not be forgotten that only a few hundred followers of such activities will not give the desired result.

The above content, in addition to the five main reasons that will be mentioned below, makes the importance of using influencers in marketing-related activities even more important:

• Consumers trust the recommendations of influential people: 83% of consumers trust the recommendations of people who have used the brand’s products (rather than the brand’s own advertising) to buy products (or receive services) and 66% trust the opinions that other consumers share with others on the Internet. they intervene; In Iran, the same statistics can be considered approximately.
• Influencer marketing is sure to increase the return on investment: according to statistics published by Advik, influencer marketing campaigns in the United States generate $6.85 in revenue for every dollar spent, which means a very high result for this type of advertisement. is
• Influencers make the brand better known: another advantage of this method of marketing is to bring authenticity and credibility to the content published by the brand and strengthen its effective presence in social networks;
• The increasing development of the use of social networks in order to promote marketing activities: among the platforms used in social networks, Instagram is the most important in the field of influencer marketing with 12.9 million content sponsored by different brands published on it in 2017. (This number is expected to increase in the coming years). The market size of Instagram has a value equal to 1.7 billion dollars, which makes the importance of this platform more than before.

Ad blockers: In 2015, the use of ad blockers cost US and European businesses $21.8 billion, and this figure is expected to increase to $35 billion by 2020. In Iran, these ad blockers have grown over time.

How do influencers promote business?

Influencers are known as brand advocates and use social media to draw their audience’s attention to specific brand activities.

An influencer who has enough credibility among his audience can convince them to buy the desired product. In general, using the content provided by the influencer can promote the brand, promote business, and build customer trust. attract the brand

There are two ways to use the influence of these people: organic use of influencers’ content (without having to pay) or paid use.

Although with the first method, the desired results can be achieved to some extent, but it is clear that the payment of salaries causes more activity of the influencer (and therefore a better result).

An influencer usually drives business activities using the following methods:

• Writing an article or making a video introducing a particular business product or service;
• Advertising brands in their social network user accounts;
• Publish brands’ content on their website as guest posts.

If a brand has enough luck, it will likely find a number of influencers willing to advertise for free; Simply because they are interested in its products.

Common mistakes of influencer marketing

Although influencer marketing seems simple, there are many tips for success. Since there are so many influencers active in the social media world today, many people make the mistake of approaching them. Some common influencer marketing mistakes include:

• Before choosing an influencer, make sure that his followers are not fake and have high interaction with the page. Paying attention only to the number of followers of a page is wrong. The most important point in evaluating a page is to pay attention to the level of interaction on that page.
  • You don’t always have to go to famous influencers with lots of followers. In some cases, even influencers with followers and lower costs will have better returns for you.
  • Always go in with a strategy to execute any marketing campaign. Without a clear strategy, you are likely to get lost and waste your budget.