Every marketer possesses distinct strategies, but to truly boost conversions with influencer marketing, it’s crucial to adapt and evolve.
While many adhere to traditional models, modifying practices to cater to diverse projects and needs, this approach can become limited without incorporating emerging marketing techniques.
With today’s digital trends, Influencer marketing stands out as a prime example. Social media has been a promotional stalwart for years. The juncture at which it intersects with conventional endorsement advertising offers vast potential.
Embracing this amalgamation is vital, but many still grapple with its application in their promotional endeavors.
Why Influencer Marketing?
Businesses keep doing the same mistake again and again: They discover a traffic generation strategy (in the vast majority of cases that’s Google search) that works for them, start growing exponentially and then instead of reinvesting into discovering more growth opportunities they keep feeding from that single source until it stops working for them.
Unlike most of online marketers may think, Google search is not the only source of traffic and awareness. There are more ways to generate clicks and sales:
The power of word of mouth should never be underestimated. People buy from people and via people’s recommendation. That is where the power of influencer marketing comes into play.
Influencer marketing is essentially the newer form of celebrity endorsement. We all remember sitting around Saturday morning and seeing a commercial for Proactive come on the screen, with a flawless skinned A-list actress trying to convince us that she had a problem with acne at some point in the past.
Think of influencer marketing as a more down-to-earth, simple version of that idea. You are taking the equivalent of celebrities in the digital realm (YouTubers, social media stars, bloggers, etc.) and having them push your brand into the spotlight. They endorse you to their fans which can be in the literal millions, and you reap the benefits.
The bigger of those benefits is creating a solid, trusting customer base. That base includes the influencer(s) that you have managed to snag. It is a mutually beneficial relationship that can vastly increase your conversions.
How To Boost Conversions with Influencer Marketing
Now that you understand why influencer marketing is so great, we can start looking at ways to incorporate it into your campaigns and get those conversions really growing. These are by no means exhaustive, but consider them your starting point. It won’t be long before you begin to see results, and can build on them.
Know Your Influencers Well
Embarking on the influencer marketing journey without a clear understanding of your target audience is like setting sail without a compass.
It’s crucial, before any campaign kickstarts, to deeply comprehend the demographics you intend to appeal to. It’s more than just knowing their basic identifiers like age, gender, education, and income brackets.
It’s about delving into the intricacies of their desires, the solutions they seek, and sometimes, identifying needs they haven’t even recognized themselves.
This deep-rooted understanding forms the bedrock of effective influencer marketing. After all, if you don’t understand your audience’s heartbeat, how can you expect an influencer to resonate with them on your behalf?
Who do they watch you YouTube? Do they prefer Netflix or Hulu? Do they use Tumblr? Reddit? Facebook? Snapchat? Instagram? Do they like dogs or cats better? Do they put ranch on their pizza?
It might seem like overkill, but the better you know your audience the more direct your trajectory will be when finding the perfect influencer to reach them.
Talking to your audience is almost always the first step to understanding them better. I’ve always been an advocate of surveying tools to help you better understand your niche community.
Moreover, surveys provide so many opportunities beyond the obvious audience research. For example, you use them to actually build connections with influencers (by providing them with various perks in exchange for taking the survey).
And afterwards, you can turn the results into a solid linkable brand asset and invite all the participating influencers to spread the word. That’s what Moz has been doing, quite successfully, with their “Search Engine Ranking Factors“:
- Invite niche influencers to participate
- List those influencers as contributors on the landing page
- Build trust and turn your brand into the niche knowledge hub which, in turn, brings more conversions because buyers now know who they are buying from:
Featured tool: I know there are a few obvious surveying tools out there but I’ve recently discovered Wyzerr which is probably new for most of the readers. It lets you build fun interactive quizzes that are actually enjoyable to take, so you are likely to get many more responses with it:
Work out a Flexible and Effective Rewarding Strategy
I have just mentioned perks above and this is something you need to put some thorough thought into.
I am approached by so many companies on a daily basis: they invite me to check their tools out, participate in expert interviews and compete their surveys. Sadly, there are so few companies who actually get the “rewarding” part.
Don’t get me wrong: Not all influencers will insist on being rewarded. Most of them will simply want you to be polite. No one likes being used. Never demand.
That’s why I emphasized being flexible in the heading above. Don’t go to each influencer with the same cookie-cutter approach: Some of the influencers will want to be paid while others will get offended when you offer them a pay. Some possible perks include:
- Exclusive access to your tool;
- Free trip to your conference or meetup;
- The opportunity to get featured together with other prominent niche influencers, etc.
Don’t miss the opportunity to thank your influencers after your campaign is wrapped up. Simply sending out a thank-you card or a branded coupon card can go a long way. It can very cost-effective too. Stock photography can come for free (here’s a good list) and designing a card is easy with sites like Canva.
Remember a proper “Thank you” notice is yet another opportunity to engage those influencers in sharing your brand around. As an example, here’s me sharing Buzzsumo’s gift basket because I was truly surprised and excited:
There will be different rewards for different influencers, so there needs to be a tool that could help you manage the process properly. Salesmate helps organize and scale your influencer onboarding. It lets you clearly see which step of influencer onboarding your managers are at and what works for different influencers in terms if incentives:
Salesmate integrates well with all my favorite apps too, so it’s nice to be able to keep everything under one roof.
Important note: When working on your rewarding strategy, keep in mind the legal aspects of online endorsement. Kerry O’Shea Gorgone gave a solid outline of disclosures influencers should be using when endorsing anyone online:
Learn The Power Of Micro-Influencers
You don’t have to always be looking to get the guy who has a million Twitter followers to promote your brand. How about the gal with 100k? Or that teen blogger who has managed to build a steady ad-revenue through their beauty blog? Influencers come in all sizes, and that is where micro-influencers come in.
They don’t have the reach of the most popular social media mavens, but they have a dedicated audience and are often easier to secure. Plus you can build a relationship with them that goes beyond just marketer/talent.
It all comes down to how engaged their community is rather than how many followers they have managed to build!
Tools like Klear and Twitonomy will help you both discover and analyze the reach of niche (micro-)influencers. They both work for Twitter. Here are more ways to discover influencers beyond Twitter.
You may also want to up your social media engagement by investing in Facebook ads and target your influencers’ followers. You’ll be sure to generate many more leads from your advertising campaign if you incorporate your influencers’ identity (logos, pictures) into your display advertising. Of course, you need to get influencers’ permission first.
This table offers a concise way to compare and contrast the attributes of macro-influencers and micro-influencers, allowing marketers to make informed decisions based on their campaign goals and budget:
| Aspect | Macro-Influencers | Micro-Influencers |
|---|---|---|
| Number of Followers | High (often in the millions) | Moderate (typically ranging from 10,000 to 500,000) |
| Ease of Engagement | May be harder to secure due to high demand and busy schedules | Often easier to approach and collaborate with |
| Audience Engagement Level | Might be lower due to the broad and diverse audience | Typically higher with a more dedicated and niche audience |
| Cost of Collaboration | Generally higher, often requiring significant budgets | More affordable, offering better ROI for smaller campaigns |
| Longevity of Relationship | Might be more transactional; one-off campaigns | Potential for longer-term partnerships and collaborations |
Aim Higher: Focus on Building Loyalty
Brand loyalty is always a must, and influencer marketing really helps you to build it. They already have a relationship with their audience, and they are putting you forward as trusted within that relationship.
You are reaching them through someone they already know they can and should listen to. If you can prove to them that trying your brand out was a positive decision then you have a chance to hooking them for life.
Influencer marketing campaign shouldn’t really focus on the actual ROI (conversions or sales). There’s much more to it: The long-term goal should be to build trust which always results in a natural increase in conversions.
Building a brand ambassador program is a natural extension and a goal of an influencer marketing campaign.
Jeff Bullas (speaking of influencers) did an awesome breakdown of how you can use brand ambassadors by utilizing visual content.
Conclusion
In the vast realm of marketing, there are a myriad of strategies to propel our brands into the spotlight. The end goal? Conversions.
This ultimate aim can sometimes cloud our vision, making us lose sight of the intricate steps that lead to this culmination.
By segmenting our strategies and understanding each fragment’s unique role, we gain a clearer perspective on the entire campaign.
Influencer marketing, with its intricate dynamics, plays an instrumental role in contemporary promotional strategies. It’s like a bridge, seamlessly linking brands with proactive, deeply-engaged audiences.
While it might not encapsulate the entire marketing ecosystem, envision it as the crucial seasoning that enriches a dish’s flavor profile. Its strategic importance cannot be sidelined.
When aptly integrated within the comprehensive marketing canvas, and complemented with a meticulous selection of the right influencers, there’s an undeniable potential to skyrocket conversion rates.
This approach offers brands a genuine, resonating touchpoint, crafting a profound impact precisely where a brand’s message needs that extra thrust.
Do you have any tips for using influencer marketing to boost conversions? Let us know in the comments!
Influencer Photo via Shutterstock
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