I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of Influence Marketing. If by chance, you haven’t heard, you will certainly be familiar with the term “influencers.” In today’s article, I bring you some thoughts on this marketing strategy.
What is?
Influence Marketing is a digital marketing strategy that consists of using people with a wide network of followers on social networks to promote a certain product or service. These people, commonly known as “influencers”, are dedicated to creating content with the aim of influencing their followers to have some kind of reaction to the brands they work with (most often, the intended reaction is the purchase of a product/service). The brand-influencer relationship can be established in two ways:
- paid partnership – the influencer is paid to create content for a particular brand;
- partnership with non-financial compensation – the influencer receives the product free of charge in exchange for publicizing it,
What type of business/company can use Influencer Marketing?
Since this is a strategy that does not always involve financial investment, each and every company, regardless of sector or size, can, and should, invest in Influencer Marketing to promote their products/services. The only “requirement” that must be respected is the context in which the company operates – for example, it may not be feasible for a small company that has just opened its doors to bet on Influence Marketing.
How do you prepare an Influencer Marketing campaign?
To use Influence Marketing successfully you must have a well-defined strategy, with “head, torso, and limbs”. These are the steps you should follow to create your campaign:
#1 – Define an objective and a target: as in the use of other marketing strategies, it is necessary to clearly define the objective of the campaign and the target audience you want to reach. Lack of target and audience definition will jeopardize the campaign’s success as it can lead to incorrect identification of the best influencer for the campaign.
#2 – Choosing the influencer: after defining the objective and target, you are now prepared for the next phase: choosing the influencer. There are 5 categories of influencers you should know: nano-influencers (up to 10 thousand followers), micro-influencers (between 10 and 50 thousand followers), intermediate influencers (between 50 thousand and 500 thousand followers), macro-influencers (between 500 thousand followers and 1 million followers) and mega-influencers (more than 1 million followers).
One of the aspects that must be taken into account when choosing the influencer is that the number of followers cannot be the only selection criteria. An influencer can have a very large network of followers but have a low engagement rate (ratio between the number of followers and the number of interactions with their content). Therefore, other aspects that should be taken into account are the influencer’s notoriety in their segment and the reach and relevance of the content shared by the influencer.
#3 – Message definition: you must clearly define the message you want to convey, without interfering in the content creation process – the content that the influencer shares must be genuine, authentic, and congruent with their profile, otherwise the campaign will not it will work because the followers will not identify with the content shared.
#4 – Measurement of results: it is crucial to ask the influencer for a report at the end of the campaign to measure the results obtained, making a comparison between these and the goals set initially.
How have influencers and brands dealt with, and continue to deal with, the pandemic context?
From the point of view of brands, Francisca Costa Gomes, Publicist & PR at Keep it Real, felt that brands were afraid to communicate, so many campaigns were canceled and many others were left on standby. Miguel Raposo has been working in the Influencer Marketing area for several years and, in his opinion, the confinement due to the pandemic did not bring much news to influencers, as many of them already worked from home.
What the pandemic brought again was the need to reinvent the content created and the formats in which it is presented. During the last year, most of the content created was aimed at entertaining those who are at home – multidisciplinary workshops, online training, nutrition and healthy eating tips, recipes (remember when everyone started making homemade bread?!), among others.
What are the benefits of Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing has immense benefits, starting with increasing the sales value of brands. In the fifth edition of Business Talks (an event by Goweb Agency), Francisca Costa Gomes listed the main benefits of this Marketing strategy:
- adding value to the brand;
- increased trust in the brand;
- conquering new customers;
- the loyalty of current customers;
- reinforcement of brand positioning;
- reduced costs compared to a traditional advertising campaign.
To conclude this article, I leave you with some tips to start your Influencer Marketing strategy:
# Clearly define your digital strategy and campaign objectives;
# When choosing the influencer, you should not overestimate the number of followers; you must rigorously analyze the shared content to make sure it fits into your brand’s segment;
# Pay attention to the structure of your website: if you work with a large influencer you must ensure that your website is capable of supporting thousands of visits at the same time.
# Never interfere with the content creation process – the influencer must have the freedom to create the content according to their profile, respecting the connection they have with their followers.
Now that you know what Influencer Marketing is and its benefits, are you ready to invest in this strategy? 😉