The majority of experts agree that 2017 is the year for influencer marketing. As many as 87 percent of marketers look to launch a minimum of one campaign in 2017. There are plenty of reasons for this marketing strategy to be surging. For one, social proofing has become essential.
According to a professional research firm, people in the USA are exposed to as many as 5,000 different advertisements daily. Any consumer that is constantly exposed to new advertising this much ends up experiencing “banner blindness.” This ends up causing them to tune out the excess advertising. Nowadays, as many as 47 percent of consumers now use adblocker plugins on their browsers. Because of this, the majority of businesses and brands are straying from the use of targeted advertising strategies and moving more towards organic methods like influencer marketing.
While it’s a great time to get into this type of influencer marketing, you do want to consider the following to ensure that you give your company the best chance to succeed with it.
- Consider Your Brand
Before seeking out influencers, you need to look at your brand as a whole. A lot of industries have influencers that are much easier to identify than some of the others. For instance, fashion brands and even beauty brands heavily use influencer marketing. As many as 60 percent of these brands have a current strategy in place, and as many as 21 percent are looking to craft campaigns in the future. Other brands work very well with this type of marketing that includes consumer tech, health and wellness, and more.
- Finding the Right Influencers For Your Brand
One of the most difficult parts of influencer marketing is effectively finding the right people for the job. As many as 73 percent of people say that pinpointing the right influencers is one of the most difficult aspects of getting into it. As soon as you’ve found the right influencers, they ultimately become an integral extension of your brand.
Therefore, you need to ensure that you are doing your research to find the right one. Looking through their post history will do wonders to help you find one that aligns with your vision and brand’s mission. While you can find influencers without a large following, you won’t likely be able to recover from a social media faux pas.
- Don’t Worry About Smaller Follower Counts
You may think you only should be looking at influencers with huge follower counts. The truth is, you should be looking beyond the A-tier. The most important thing that you want with influencer marketing is high-level relevance. This is much more important than getting more of a reach. Therefore, you want to niche down to find someone that reaches your ideal target demographic no matter how big or small their reach is. One way to look successful is to work the site metrics a bit. You can choose to buy Instagram likes to boost your profile and do this – making you look popular and bigger than you are.
- Creative Freedom
The people you choose as influencers have a level of reach with your target market for a reason. Because of this, you will want to allow them to use their creativity with their posts. Don’t pigeonhole them in their creativity or else you will find that the marketing won’t be nearly as effective.
- Track Everything
When you are doing any sort of marketing, tracking the metrics is the most important aspect. Otherwise, you won’t be able to tell what’s working and what isn’t working. You want to use tools like Google Analytics and other automation software to ensure that you are acutely aware of where your traffic is coming from and whether or not your influencers are a net profit to your business.
