Influencer Marketing helps brands build authentic relationships with consumers by leveraging prominent individuals they trust. A well-executed campaign can also improve brand awareness, allowing you to reach new audiences quickly and easily.
Today, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations when making purchase decisions. And because influencers exist in virtually every industry, brands of all kinds can benefit from these strategic collaborations.
No matter your industry or business size, Zero Gravity Marketing can help you create custom influencer campaigns that bring in high-quality leads and build valuable partnerships.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing refers to a collaboration between businesses and an influential person to promote a product, service, or campaign. Years ago, these types of partnerships were reserved for celebrities, but in today’s digitally connected world, almost anyone can grow a large, niche following and become a social media influencer.
Influencers are most often characterized by having a significant reach, credibility in a specific industry, and influence over the opinions of their audience. However, social media influencers don’t need to have a massive following to provide value to brands – even those with a few thousand followers can help you execute effective promotional campaigns.
Over the past several years, Influencer Marketing has skyrocketed in popularity, and for good reason. Businesses across all industries now realize the many benefits of influencer partnerships, including:
- Improved Brand Awareness – When influencers post about your products or services on their platforms, they expose their followers to your brand. This can expand your reach to thousands of potential customers.
- Enriched Social Media Strategy –By sharing influencer content on your own platforms, you can fill in the gaps of your social media calendar easily.
- Efficient Audience Targeting – Influencers already have an established audience, so when you work with one that’s relevant to your industry, you’ll be more likely to generate high-quality leads. Plus, you won’t have to do extensive testing or research to find the right people to target.
- Valuable Partnerships – Beyond reach, engagement, and other metrics, Influencer Marketing is a powerful tool for building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. By connecting and establishing rapport with the right individuals, you can build lasting partnerships that offer a variety of opportunities for collaboration.
Influencer Marketing campaigns can take many forms, from single-post collaborations to long-term partnerships that span several months. Some of the most common types of Influencer Marketing campaigns are social media takeovers, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, product gifting, and brand ambassador programs.
Before you can begin working with influencers, you’ll need to craft a strategic Influencer Marketing plan that’s tailored to your business. One of the best ways to do this is by working with an experienced digital marketing agency who can evaluate your goals, find the right influencers, and execute campaigns effectively.
The Zero Gravity Marketing Approach to Influencer Marketing
At ZGM, our team of influencer marketing specialists can help you create Influencer Marketing campaigns that boost your business and grow your audience. Our approach includes:
- Understanding your Influencer Marketing goals. Do you want to increase your web traffic, boost your sales, or gain more social media followers?
- Researching your target audience, brand competitors, and top influencers within your industry through social listening. This allows us to find influencers who align with your goals.
- Managing influencer outreach by connecting with candidates via email, direct message, direct contact, etc., to activate them for the campaign.
- Setting campaign specifics for budget, timing, goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) we’ll use to measure and track performance, specific requests we’re asking of the influencers, how the campaign will carry out across channels, and more.
- Executing the plan and engaging with influencers on behalf of your brand, sharing user-generated content, managing the community, and monitoring campaign performance through social listening.
- Examining the performance of the campaign, reporting our findings, and making optimizations and recommendations for future activations.
To determine which type of Influencer Marketing campaign is best suited for our clients, we take into consideration which platforms their audiences use and their product or service offerings. Depending on the company, one may be a better fit than another. Five different types of Influencer Marketing campaigns that ZGM incorporates are:
- Product Placements. This involves incorporating your business’s product or logo into an influencer’s social content.
- Contests and Giveaways. Having a social media influencer host or promote a contest or giveaway is an excellent way to introduce new products to their audiences without sounding like an advertisement.
- Social Media Takeovers. With this campaign, influencers can share how they use your product or service, host a Q&A, and more, all while on your account.
- Affiliate Campaigns. This involves a social media influencer promoting your product or service to their followers and receiving a discount or payment whenever a sale or lead is generated.
- Hashtag Campaign. For a hashtag campaign, your brand creates a hashtag about your company, product or service, contest, etc. Your influencer can then build campaign momentum and drive awareness by posting content using your hashtag.
Influencer Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
As the name implies, influencers are individuals who are able to sway the actions of their followers. They typically have a specific niche, such as fashion, lifestyle, or parenting, and act as experts in their field. Influencers also have strong relationships with their audience and have built a level of trust that allows them to influence what their followers buy, watch, read, wear, and so on.
There are many different types of influencers, including:
- Mega-influencers, who are typically household names (think celebrities, artists, athletes, etc.) and have at least 1 million followers.
- Macro-influencers, who have a broad audience with 100,000 to 1 million followers.
- Micro-influencers, who have a more defined, specific audience with 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
- Nano-influencers, who have an extremely niche community with less than 1,000 followers.
To find the best influencers for your campaigns, you’ll have to conduct careful research to identify candidates that align with your goals. When searching for influencers for your brand, consider the following factors:
- Relevance – Does the influencer post content that’s relevant to your business?
- Engagement – How much does the influencer’s audience engage with their content?
- Reach – How many followers does the influencer have on social media? How many visits does their website get on a daily basis?
- Authenticity – Does the influencer’s content feel genuine? According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 37% of consumers site authenticity as the most important aspect of sponsored posts.
Each Influencer Marketing campaign is tailored to your business and goals. Therefore, the cost may vary depending on the number of influencers you partner with, their compensation, and any paid media spend to promote the campaign.
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of an influencer partnership. These include:
- Campaign Reach – Calculate reach by evaluating the number of followers the influencer has, impressions (how many times your target audience saw your messages), and the amount of traffic the influencer drove to your website.
- Campaign Engagement – Measure campaign engagement by tracking clicks, likes, shares, comments, and brand mentions.
- Leads and Sales Conversions through Referral Traffic – Determine which influencer content is driving traffic to your site by using Google Analytics, trackable links, promo codes, and more.
Learn more about measuring success for Influencer Marketing.
Influencer Marketing and brand ambassadors, although similar, both have different requirements. Brand ambassadors are everyday individuals who love your brand and what it offers. These are followers who actively use your company and are passionate about seeing your brand succeed without an incentive. Brand ambassadors may receive an incentive such as free products or a coupon code, however, most operate by word-of-mouth.
Influencer Marketing incorporates people with a substantial reputation displaying themselves on social media using your product or service. With this strategy, their online personalities are often enough to persuade their followers why they should use your product or service. Typically, influencers always receive an incentive when working with brands whether it be money, free products, and more.
Craft a Winning Strategy with Help from an Influencer Marketing Agency
No matter your industry or business goals, ZGM can create a strategic Influencer Marketing plan that puts your brand in front of the right audience and generates high-quality leads. From one-time sponsored posts to long-term collaborations, our digital strategists have the skills and experience necessary to dream up effective, engaging campaigns.
Contact us today to learn more about our services!
