What is Influencer Marketing - A Definitive Guide

Oct 25, 2017 7 min read

Influencer marketing is a psychological arcade to encourage people to use a product or service by including influencers in your marketing strategy. This has been adopted as a mandatory tactic by almost every brand and company in recent years.

The reason why I included psychology here is to convey the fact that humans trust humans.

People love to follow and trust people who are popular and successful. To market to the right people, businesses need these influencers. This made businesses to adopt influencer marketing techniques into their well-written business strategy.

Zach King with his vine videos emerged as an internet sensation. With his personal brand, he has acquired millions of followers around the world. If you look at his Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, you will come to know. Later, Amazon, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and many other brands used his skills and audience reach to promote their products and brand.

His audience always waits for a new experience with every vine video he posts. Amazon recognized this fact and took advantage of it. By recognizing Zach's influence on Social media, they decided to use his skill and audience reach to promote their product Amazon Fire HD 8.

They allowed him to use his skills and create content that was appropriate for their brand and product capabilities.

And what happened next? Amazon’s product successfully reached Zach’s audience and their sales boomed.

People are turned towards influencers because their recommendations are genuine and they present the information in a creative way that resonates with the audience.

According to this infographic by Theshelf, around 65% of the brands are participating in Influencer marketing because traditional marketing is descending rapidly after the digital media took a huge position among people.

Related: How to become an influencer?

But how do you begin with Influencer marketing? Overcome the misunderstandings? Identify perfect tools?

I have answered all these questions in this blog. You will be introduced to everything you need to know about Influencer Marketing and the strategies that you need to inculcate it into your business.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

The simple concept of marketing and advertising is to reach as many people available and turn them into your loyal audience. There’s no place other than social media where you can reach that number.

Influencer marketing is still marketing.

One type of marketing is Influencer Marketing where instead of marketing to every person in the target niche, marketers position influential people who can leverage the trust between the brand and audience.

The complete guide to Influencer marketing

Nowadays, consumers are driven by known figures who create authentic content and reveal their personal trust upon a brand or product. These influencers create more genuine content than traditional marketing advertisements.

As an outcome, Social Influencer Marketing has become the most valuable tool to enhance the quality of the bond between brand and consumers. It ascended the value of Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing.

The future is clear and transparent. Influencer Marketing is an amazing technique to reach your audience at an emotional and organic level. Thus, having a brand ambassador or an influencer will definitely enhance your brand quality and personality.

According to Influencermarketinghub.com, 37% marketers are now dedicating their budget for influencer marketing and it is constantly growing with every survey.

Why did Influencer Marketing become so famous?

The complete guide to Influencer marketing

The major reason why Influencer marketing is touching the sky is because it allows you to reach general public faster than any traditional marketing technique.

Essentially, influencer marketing works because it more like a recommendation from a friend and enlightens a pinch of emotional response.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

  • Influencer marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing.
  • Influencer marketing produces real-time results.
  • Influencers have higher exposure.
  • Influencer marketing generates higher engagement.
  • Due to real-time results, it produces quick publicity.
  • It's noninterpretive and transparent.
  • Easy analytics with respect to engagement
  • Available for each and every one present.

Misconceptions about Influencer Marketing

  • Influencer Marketing is a Process
  • Influencer Marketing is not just about celebrities
  • Influencer Marketing is not a MAGIC TRICK
  • Influencers are not just media people or journalists

Marketers are not completely understanding the real concept of what influencer marketing is. This is limiting them to use this strategy as an effective marketing tool.

Let see the how Influencer marketing is misconstrued by many marketers:

  1. Influencer Marketing is a Process.

Influencer marketing is not a simple one-time technique that can be deployed to get huge sales boost. NO!

Influencer marketing is a long-term strategy that is written along with the business strategy in order to increase the value proposition of your product and brand.

You have to plan how to reach out to your influencers, your pitch and much more. It doesn't end there. Your Influencers should be involved in every aspect of your marketing strategy in order to build trust among the audience.

  1. Influencer Marketing is not just about celebrities.

Initially, it was believed that Influencer Marketing is for celebrities and athletes as they can reach a larger number of audience due to their high follower base but it was later considered to be inauthentic.

On Social Media, micro influencers can also play a significant role in reaching the audience from a specific and target audience. They can come into business strategy loop at a lower cost, which clarifies that your ROI (Return On Investment) would be larger.

  1. Influencer Marketing is not a MAGIC TRICK.

While influencers are sharing your brand to their audience, it doesn’t allow any marketer to sit back and relax. Influencer Marketing won't improve your product, it's you who will have to do.

As a brand or business, you have to be more careful because this is the right time to measure your success and strengthen your support for the audience. This is the right time to consider the feedbacks seriously and start improvising your product and customer service.

If you're sitting back and relaxing, then you’re wasting your investment.

  1. Influencers are not just media people or journalists.

Usually, marketers consider influencers to be the speakers that come on television and advertisements. Influencers are not that, they are experts in their field of work, they are teachers to their audience.

Every marketing technique aims to spread an idea and value among people and Influencer marketing comes in as a catalyst to develop a stronger bond between brand and audience.

Many marketers have successfully utilized the Influencer marketing technique while others have struggled to do the same.

As a marketer and business owner, it is your responsibility to overcome these misconceptions and misunderstanding to leverage your business reach with the right marketing strategy.

How To Find Right Influencers For Your Business?

Finding and approaching the right influencers for your business is a significant task because your decision can affect your overall marketing campaign's output.

It could impose a huge difference in the Word Of Mouth marketing of your brand.

Here are a few tools to help you find influencers from a specific niche.

1.Statusbrew

Statusbrew's social listening guides you find leads that you can convert via Social Selling, in addition, you can use social listening for identifying influencers and advocates in your industry. Not only this, you can also target the leads you have discovered by starting a conversation with them straight from Statusbrew's listening interface.

It’s a unified and complete Social media management platform from where you can publish your content, monitor its behavior and engage your audience as well.

A must try platform for businesses which focuses on Digital engagement, Social media management and Influencer Marketing together.

2. Klear

Statusbrew is a tool that help you find an Influencer

Klear is a Social Intelligence platform which helps you do smarter Influencer marketing on Social media.

Klear allows you to search for keywords and discover influencers on both Twitter and Instagram for your business. You can also filter profiles by skills and location and add all your selected influencers to a list and access them whenever needed.

The user interface is friendly and easy to understand. The statistics are really clear and transparent.

Once you find the right influencer that fits your need, all you have to do is:

  • Set your expectations by having a clear conversation with your influencers.
  • Collaborate professionally and personally.
  • Promote your product and brand in a form of campaign.
  • Evaluate the engagement.
  • Grow without limits.

Now it is your responsibility to talk and create a marketing campaign with the influencer. The key adjectives that an ideal influencer must hold are Content Creation and Content Distribution.

The complete guide to Influencer marketing

Influencers are influencers because they have been creating their own style of content for their personal branding and for their audience. If you just ask your influencers to share your content then it’s no different than a sponsored content.

For example, in the beginning of this article; I mentioned how Zach King created his own style of content to promote Amazon’s product.

This is what he is known for. When he distributes his content to his audience, it gets a huge engagement as his audience are already expecting to see the MAGIC in his content.

You need to create a strong bond with the influencers, treat them as your friends. They will happily and honestly promote your product and business better than you expect.

Eager to know from you!
How do you find and work with influencers? If you any additional idea about Influencer Marketing then please do share with me. I am eager to know from you.

Sanchit Raina

Innovator | Strategist | Blogger | I create, plan and execute Marketing Strategies, to create value for businesses | Marketing Lead

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