As an influencer marketing strategy, the practice of identifying and partnering with the right influencers is growing in popularity among brands. Influencers are generally understood to have the ability to directly or indirectly influence the behavior or beliefs of their audience—and they’re often those with large online followings.
In this article, you will learn how to connect your brand with the right influencers. Read on to discover what that means and why it matters—as well as actionable advice for creating an Influencer Marketing plan that works for your company.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that uses influential people on social media to promote a product or service. It is a type of collaborative marketing, in which a business will partner with social media personalities who have small and large followings to create promotional content for their brand. It’s up to the influencer to use his or her targeted audience to create positive awareness around the product or service, as well as generate sales. There are a few key elements to keep in mind when discussing influencer marketing in general.
Why is Connecting With the Right Influencers Important?
Probably the most obvious reason why brands should actively seek out influencers is to increase brand awareness. Influencers can help your brand reach new audiences, expand your reach, and encourage people to engage with your product or service. Moreover, influencer marketing is a form of advertising that is less intrusive and more engaging than traditional advertising. Indeed, most people find influencer brand messages more appealing than traditional advertising. It has been said that brands that partner with the right influencers can expect higher engagement rates and less negative reactions from their target audience.
How to Find the Right Influencers for Your Brand
The first step to connecting with the right influencers for your brand is to understand what makes a good influencer. Generally, brands should be looking for influencers with high engagement rates and a strong connection with their audience. Influencers can be micro or macro, the audience size itself is less important than the engagement rate. Often, micro influencers have stronger engagement with their audience than macro influencers.
There are a few different strategies you can use to identify the right influencers for your brand. There are a number of research tools that can help you find the right influencers for your campaign. They can help you to identify influencers in your industry and see how many times they’ve been mentioned, shared, and linked to over time. Many influencer marketing agencies will already be subscribed to such tools and know how to leverage them.
When in Doubt, Run an Ads Campaign
If you’ve identified potential influencers but aren’t sure if they’d be a good fit for your brand, you might consider running an ad campaign as a way to test the waters. You can use Facebook Ads Manager to test different types of ads to see how they perform against different influencers. Once you’ve selected the types of ads you want to try, you can then use Facebook’s targeting features to find the right influencers to run those ads against. You can use Facebook’s built-in targeting features, or you can hire a third-party company to help you run your ads. To find a good ad agency, you can look for ones that specialize in Facebook ads.
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned what influencer marketing is and why it’s important for brands to actively seek out influencers. You also discovered three key elements to keep in mind when discussing influencer marketing in general. Finally, you learned how to identify the right influencers for your brand. Now that you understand everything that is involved with influencer marketing, it’s time to create an Influencer Marketing plan that works for your company.