Influencer Marketing: The New Word-of Mouth
Influencer Marketing
It is a form of social media marketing involving authentication and product placements from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. They are something with the power to act on the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original often sponsored content to social media platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or other online channels. Social Media Marketing is when a brand enrolls influencers who have an established credible and audience on the social media platforms to discuss or mention the brand in a social media post.
Types of Influencer Marketing Campaign
1. Host Giveaways, Contest, Sweepstakes, and Event Activations
It is one of the common influencer marketing campaigns due to the accessibility and the mutual benefit brought it. They work by marketing influencers with a product or service and give away from the followers. It gives a high degree of guaranteed growth as a share, retweets, follow-up, and comments. It is similar to and larger than yours, they will actually generate higher ROI.
Prospective customers will see this as a chance to win your products for free and you might get additional sales from people who did not win in the contest. Along with the great benefits, there are always remain potential risks. The customers or people who newly follow you as the sweepstakes begin that there will be a large number of followers and that is only there for the prize, not your brand and product or services. It might lead to a decrease in followers after the contest has ended.
The procedure for the selection of winners should be mentioned clearly in the giveaway posts to confront the frustration and anger of prospective customers. Even though you may assume the contest would not be taken too seriously by the players, you should better prepare for analytical responses from those who have not won the contest.
2. Social Media Takeover
An influencer marketing campaign takes over your social media channels and shares content during a given period, the agreement is called a social media takeover. The period basically lasts about a day and some special occasions or events, some take around a week.
This type of influencer marketing campaign requires a high level of trust since you have to lend the influencer, your security information such as a password. As digital technology is spreading every day, there is a platform named Snapchat which allows you to have influencers takes over your account stories without giving them your login information.
3. Affiliate Marketing
It is a process in which an affiliate will foster a business’s products and services and receives a commission if the affiliate earns a sale. It is a person that employs its networks and online marketing capabilities to promote products and services. Affiliate marketers are a sale and performance-based advertising method that offers many benefits to both the business and the marketer.
It is a great way to work with many influencers at once at a low cost. It will encourage a product onsite or redirect a customer from your website.
4. Sponsored Social Media Content and Blog Posts
Sponsored posts are superior and effortless and it is the most important type of influencer marketing campaign. If your content is excellent, there is a particular risk that your content will never attract enough resistance without influencers posting them.
Sponsored posts work as brands sponsor that the influencer to build promotional content for them. A brand should deliver the expectations, guidelines, or themes from your brand, so the influencers will know what you want them to do. Influencers are present on many social media channels and some of them even own private blogs or websites, you can drive your brand image everywhere continuously by integrating with well-known and reliable people.
5. Gifts, Unboxing, and Reviews
A brand giving influencers their products or services as a gift in this type of influencer marketing campaign. In return, the influencers will optionally record an unboxing video or simply review their experiences on their social media channels and it is also known as product seeding.
6. Guest Blogging
By cooperating with the influencers who also write blogs and accept blogs, a guest blogging campaign might help you promote your brand ordinary and beneficially. There are two ways to blog hosts, first to accept the blog entries and the other is to post your content to websites and blogs that relate to your industry.
7. Brand Ambassador Programs
It is an influencer who shares the content daily or regularly. It basically has long-term partnerships with the brand and the period could be several months to a year or longer. A directly paid partnership is not the only way to approach the brand ambassadors. You can also set out the product rewards or other benefits that could lead to money like affiliate marketing.
8. Pre-Release and Discount Codes
The pre-release campaigns are not peculiar to brands nowadays. Brands need to create excitement for the customers of new products coming out every year while they wait for the release. Pre-release campaigns are excellent for an influencer marketing campaign.
Companies can maximize their benefits from this campaign by assisting with influencer marketing campaigns. The sense of exclusivity that this campaign brings back to influencer marketing makes them feel extremely proud to be the first to try the product.
Influencer Marketing: Conclusion
Influencer marketing campaign possibilities are effectively endless as the consumers buying decisions are now more dependent on influencers’ marketing advice, brands have a great chance to steer the customer journey and tell the story in their way.
The influencer marketing campaign has become an opportunity for brands to utilize. It has never been easier for brands to link with customers, raise brand awareness and boost conversion rapidly and cost-effectively. Along with the constant development of social media, which requires quick orientation, consumers expect brands to communicate with them.
By identifying the influencer marketing campaigns that apparel your business the most and combining relevant influencer marketing campaigns into your strategy, you will increase your extend among prospective customers and achieve serious partnerships and connections with both influencers and audiences.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is an influencer marketing campaign?
It is a type of social media strategy that sees brands collaborate with influencers. We can explain the influencers as trusted content creators with the power to affect how their audience makes purchasing decisions.
How do I create an influencer marketing campaign?
There are five steps to a successful influencer marketing campaign and these are:-
- Use relevant hashtags.
- Split your campaign budget to use more than one influencer.
- Share your influencer’s posts.
- Always negotiate to price.
Ensure your contract includes the period of time your influencer will work with you.
How successful is influencer marketing?
90% of marketers find influencer marketing campaigns effective and 75% of marketers rate the quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing as better than the other marketing sources. 91% of marketers say influencer marketing ROI is as good as or better than other marketing channels.
How you can build a powerful influencer marketing strategy in 2021?
There have some key points to building a powerful influencer marketing strategy:-
- Documents your goals and key performance indicators, any good strategy begins with the goals.
- Understand the influencers’ landscape or before you really begin working with the influencer and you’ll want to take the time to actually understand the landscape.
- Connect with influencers.
What will influencer marketing look like in 2021?
The influencer marketing campaign is becoming a big trend in 2021 and beyond. It includes the growing popularity of micro and mini influencers, brands looking for ongoing partnerships, different types of social media platforms, more performance-based deals, and more. That is expected to reach $15.8 billion in 2021.
How do I become an influencer?
There are 7 steps to becoming a social media influencer:-
- Select your Niche.
- Optimize your social media profiles.
- Understand your Audience.
- Create and Post Relevant Content.
- Be Regular and Consistent.
- Engage with Your Audience.
- Let Brands know you’re open to Collaborations.