Over the course of the past half-decade, influencer marketing has become increasing popular. Use Google Trends to check the search volume history for the key phrase “influencer marketing” and you will see how much its popularity has increased during the last five years.
An increasing number of companies are waking up to the fact that influencer marketing is very powerful and an important element of any digital advertising campaign. After all, some bloggers and YouTubers now have more readers and viewers than some traditional publications and TV channels.
So, how can your company best use influencers to promote your brand? Well, featured below are five tips to help you develop and deploy a killer influencer marketing campaign.
Tip 1: Invest In High-Quality Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that is always relevant and is not tied to a time limited promotion – this is the central point of many a Influencer marketing strategy. The most successful influencers invest in evergreen content as it offers great value for money and helps a business to establish credibility. What’s more, evergreen content is forever gaining visibility, which helps boast a website’s search engine rankings, and it serves as a great source of information for customers, which helps to build brand recognition and loyalty.
Tip 2: Build Relationships With Trendsetters, Brand Enthusiasts and Top Performers
Once you’ve made connections with some key influencers, you need to start nurturing your relationships with them to gain long-term benefits. If you are developing a new product, connect with brand enthusiasts and use them as a focus group to gain invaluable feedback. If you are starting a new marketing campaign, talk to influencers who have a track record of delivering good results for your company and involve them in your campaign.
Fostering good relationships with influencers can result in a mutually beneficial relationship. The influencers get to become part of a brand’s evolution and in turn their authenticity with their own audience increases when they are seen using a brand’s latest products or services in daily life.
Tip 3: Use An Agency To Help You Find Targeted Influencers
The most effective influencer marketing campaigns are those that use super-targeted, fully vetted influencers whose values and content align with those of the brand. It can take a lot of time to find those types of influencers and even more time to foster a mutually beneficial relationship with them, so many brands work with agencies who specialize in finding hyper-targeted influencers.
Agencies like Repio, for example, offer brands time-saving and cost efficient services, as they have thousands of connections with trusted influencers, who fall into a wide range of different categories. Whether you’re looking for 100 millennial mothers with children under 5 to trial a new product, or searching for ten mothers with large social circles to show up at an event in Chicago, The Motherhood Agency would be able to connect you with the right people.
Tip 4: Reuse Campaign Content In Cross-Promotions
After an influencer driven marketing campaign has ended, the content produced during the campaign can continue to deliver value indefinitely if it is redirected and used in other cross-promotions. Brands can get more people to see material produced during the campaign by promoting it on their website, social media channels and blog.
One cost-effective way to boost visibility of content created by an influencer is to use paid Facebook promotion posts. These posts are given more exposure in the News Feed than standard posts, which increases their reach and improves engagement levels.
Tip 5: Give Your Influencers The Power To Be Creative
A larger percentage of bloggers and YouTubers feel like there is often a huge difference between the type of content that their audiences enjoy and what brands think will be successful.
It is important to give influencers some creative freedom, so they can create content that engages their audiences and promotes your brand. Of course, you need to ensure that influencers understand your brand’s objectives and the intended messages behind the campaign, but being overly prescriptive can diminish the powerful human element of an influencer marketing campaign.
Remember, the reason influencers have influence over your target audience is because their lifestyles, values, opinions and content resonate with their fans. You need to trust the influencer to do what’s best when creating content for your campaign and perhaps relax a few strict brand guidelines.
