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As a start-up, you’ll be wanting to ensure that your marketing strategy is one that can make a strong initial impact, but at a low budget.
I’m sure that you have been looking at different social media marketing techniques, and if you’re reading this post – then have probably already considered influencer marketing. Keep reading to learn about why this type of campaign could be perfect for your start-up.
The benefits of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing isn’t such a new thing anymore. In a study from Influencer Marketing Hub, results showed that 90% of respondents believe that influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing.
Brands, from big to small, have been reaping the benefits for years and we have seen a large proportion of marketing budgets being directed towards these campaigns.
Most notably, brands are boasting an incredible return on investment, with influencer marketing campaigns being fairly low cost, but gaining great results. So, here are a few of the main benefits that your start-up could gain from working with influencers:
1. Increase brand awareness
One of the greatest benefits of influencer marketing is the opportunity to increase brand awareness. This is very frequently a goal for start-ups, and influencers can help to meet this goal. By working with several nano and micro-influencers, your product and brand can be put in front of a variety of groups across different locations and categories of your choosing.
2. Increase content creation
Creating content takes investment in time and labor efforts. By working with influencers, you can benefit from a large increase in new content, as well as resharing of existing content. As this is an influencer’s career, you can typically expect high-quality content to be created, which you can also share on your brand’s social media pages.
3. Reach a wider audience
In case you haven’t noticed, we would definitely recommend working with nano and micro-influencers as a start-up. By doing so, a much wider audience can be reached by selecting influencers of different categories, where content will be displayed to a total variety of audiences.
4. Direct to your target audience
Before commencing your campaign, it’s important that you have underlined your goals and determined your brand’s target audience. With this in mind, you can search for influencers that have an audience directly aligned to that of your brand. This way you are reaching a group of consumers that are most likely to be interested in your product.
5. Build trust and loyalty
Working with influencers builds brand loyalty and trust. If you opt for long-term partnerships, consumers will continually see your brand being promoted by their favorite influencers. The trust that they have in this influencer will then take effect on the way in which they portray your brand, having familiarised themselves with it through the content from the influencer.
Content ideas
You have probably seen a whole range of promotional content on social media platforms, and are wondering how to determine the best for your brand. Instagram is generally considered the hub for influencers, with 67% of brands using Instagram for their influencer marketing campaigns, due to its highly visual nature.
Instagram influencers will engage in all sorts of promotional content ideas such as unboxings, giveaways and competitions, reviews, and tutorials, to name a few. These are the media channels that you can consider for content to be posted through:
- Posts – the original media format on Instagram, typically used for posting highly appealing photos and videos that remain on an influencer’s profile indefinitely.
- Stories – available for only 24 hours and generally a cheaper alternative. They often seem like a less ‘forced’ form of advertisement, regularly using CTA’s.
- IG Live – generally used for authentic content. Influencers do Q&As and live unboxings and first impressions.
- IGTV – used for longer video content. You will find reviews that require in-depth descriptions, tutorials, and demonstrations.
- Reels – this is the newest feature from Instagram. This is their direct competition with TikTok, offering short videos like before and after looks, quick step-by-step recipes, etc.
Through these different media types, influencers can help to reach your business goals with the type of content that they share. For example, as an e-commerce, you may opt for offering influencers a discount code from which they will earn a commission.
This way, they can post all sorts of content and include their discount code in a caption, encouraging their followers to use the code to get money off their purchase. Check out our writing tips for the perfect branded content for Instagram, for some extra ideas!
Finding Influencers
When you’re ready to find influencers to get started on your first campaign, we would recommend that you head over to Heepsy.
An influencer marketing platform is a great way to ensure that you are looking for influencers that have an audience matching that of your brands’. You can use dedicated filters to narrow down your search, making sure that you are able to reach your desired audience.
Next, you can analyze influencer profiles to understand their audience demographics, interests, and authenticity metrics. This is a crucial step to ensure that you are not marketing towards consumers that will be uninterested in your product, or even to a fake audience.
You’ll want to make use of the ‘lists’ feature with Heepsy. After finding a few influencers that you are interested in working with, you can create a list for this campaign in order to compare their metrics side-by-side. What’s great is that you can have several campaigns set up at once, therefore keeping yourself organized in one place.
What to look out for
When analyzing influencer profiles, there are a few important things to be aware of, which is why it is so effective to use an influencer marketing platform. The number of followers is the least important thing here. Instead, you’ll want to pay attention to engagement rates, and audience metrics.
For example, a high engagement rate like you can see below, shows that the influencer’s followers are interacting with their content, due to an interest in what is being posted. This is what can result in higher conversions.
It can be easy to assume that an influencer is a perfect match because they fit in with your exact target audience demographic. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that their followers do too. Check their audience location, age range, gender, and interests. An influencer that is 21 and living in the US, could actually have an audience that is in the 35-45 age range and living in Spain!
Conclusion
Hopefully, by getting this far, a few of your initial queries about influencer marketing have been answered. It’s pretty simple, really. However, to ensure that you are creating the most effective campaign, you need to spend time understanding your goals and doing a little bit of research.
Social media usage is only going to increase over the coming years, and with that comes the rise in influencer marketing. So, we would suggest that you get started on your first campaign sooner than later!