Influencer marketing – who, what, why?

As mentioned on one of the previous posts, word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is one of the best ways to reach customers, as people are effected by others’ opinions in the decision-making process. Influencer marketing is a type of WOM as it focuses on using influencers to represent or advertise your brand to their large social media following (Single Grain, 2016). Establishing a mutually beneficial relationship allows the company to reach a wide target audience. The followers trust the influencer and can therefore be more willing to buy your product.

Although social media is increasingly important, only 1% of companies use influencer marketing as part of their digital marketing strategy (Davies, 2017).

 

Why should you add influencers as part of your digital marketing strategy?
People are effected by other people’s opinions when making decision. Social media has risen to being a more important way of getting information than traditional outlets. Therefore, making sure your company has a strong media presence can have a big impact (Davies, 2017).

 

Finding a suitable influencer

Adding influencers to your marketing strategy is a good way to get a worldwide audience (East, 2016). While having an influencer with millions of followers might seem like the best option, having influencers with a smaller but a more engaging following could be much more cost-effective (East, 2016). As seen below in Kendall Jenner’s Instagram post, she is an influencer for Calvin Klein and clearly showing this to her followers with the use of hashtag ‘Ad’. While using influencers such as Kendall Jenner can seem appealing, it might not be the most cost-effective option.

waking up in @calvinklein #mycalvins #ad

A post shared by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on

Using anyone from the Jenner family will cost your company a small fortune. While having an influencer with over 80 million followers might seem like the best option, having influencers with a smaller but a more engaging following could be much more cost-effective (East, 2016). Micro-influencers are cheaper and could have a more engaging follower base which could be more profitable to the company.

Daniel Wellington is another example that uses Kendall Jenner as an influencer. Their cooperation includes Jenner having the company as her Instagram caption, as seen below.

Kendall Jenner’s Instagram caption

Daniel Welington also utilizes micro influencers such as Lea Lein. This is a way of them to reach their German audience better and with much lesses cost (Forbes, 2017). Lea has 20k followers which is a lot less compared to Kendall. This also shows how different their ways of advertising Daniel Wellington are, obviously wanted by Daniel Wellington.

Finding an influencer with the following that represents our target audience is crucial. It is also important to ensure that the content the company is trying to sell matches with the influencer’s.

 

Tips

In order to make the relationship and marketing strategy function effectively, the company needs to communicate expectations. These include:

-Content –> what kind of content do you want the influencer to convey? Are you giving them creative freedom?

-Intended audience –> who are you trying to reach?

-Expected ROI –> how do you calculate this?

-Timeframe –> how often are posts posted?

-Output –> when should the posts be posted? How and where? Which social media channels?

 

 

References:

East, E. (2016) 5 Best ways to work wih influencers. Digital Marketing Magazine. [Online] <http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-features/5-best-ways-to-work-with-influencers/3811> (Accessed 15th of May 2017)

Davies, J. (2017) Only 1 % of Brands engage with social media influencers. Digital Marketing Magazine. [Online] <http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/social-media-marketing/only-1-of-brands-engage-with-social-media-influencers/4340 > (Accessed 15th of May 2017)

Gill, N. (2017) Influencers: who are they? What do they do? Digital Marketing Magazine. [Online] <http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-features/influencers-who-are-they-what-do-they-do/4180>  (Accessed 15th of May 2017)

Suhrawardi, R (2017) Digital markeitng startegy and the rise of micro influencers. Forbes. [Online] <https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccasuhrawardi/2016/08/30/digital-marketing-strategy-and-the-rise-of-the-micro-influencer/#43d9f4a121c5 > (Accessed 15th May 2017)

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