Introduction:
You probably already know the term “influencer marketing” but you might haven’t tried it yet in your own small business. Now, you may be wondering, do businesses even pay attention to influencers? Yes, as a shocking 71% of consumers believe in the opinions of influencers.
Influencer marketing has a much higher return on investment than most other types of marketing, with an average ROI of $5.20 per dollar spent. If you’re not using influencer marketing yet, your small business is missing out and likely falling behind your competitors, as influencer marketing is on the rise nowadays.
Why Use Influencer Marketing in your Small Business?
The more people see your business, the more comfortable they’ll become with it. Social proof helps build trust. And when an influencer who has spent time building trust with his audience promotes a specific brand, those consumers listen.
Not to mention, it takes time for small brands to build an audience. By tapping into an influencer’s audience, you’re saving your business valuable time in having to start from scratch.
The pros of using Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses
Authentic Content
Influencers will create something unique (whether it’s an in-depth blog post or a beautiful Instagram photo) that will be appealing to their audience. They know what their followers like and want, and can come up with creative and engaging content that fits their style, increasing the chances of your sales conversions.
Non-Salesy Advertising
advertising content by influencers feels and looks like regular posts. So people who don’t usually respond well to traditional ads might be more likely to pay attention to influencer’s content. It’s almost like word-of-mouth recommendations.
Cost-Effective
Influencer marketing can be a great way of promoting and growing your small business on a budget. For example, if you’re a restaurant, inviting a food influencer to review a meal will only set you back the cost of the meal itself or you might have to pay a little extra to the influencers. But it can result in many bookings from paying customers.
Huge Reach
Just by working with one good and known influencer, you’ll get access to hundreds even thousands of relevant potential customers. Rather than having to target these people individually, the influencer can instantly put you right in front of many people.
How to Create an Effective Influencer Marketing Campaign
Here’s how you can create an effective influencer marketing campaign:
Set Campaign Objectives
Marketing efforts can be carried out for various business purposes. In influencer marketing, one thing you often want to achieve is brand awareness. However, you can also add or choose other goals according to your needs, such as increasing website traffic or sales.
Clearly defining your campaign objectives will make the next steps easier. You can set a better strategy that is oriented towards these big goals. It is important to always consider your business priorities.
Create Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
KPIs are very useful for measuring the extent to which your campaign is successful. KPIs are not only used to see the final results, you can also carry out assessments during the campaign to decide which steps need to be maintained or which need to be improved. To determine KPIs, of course, you must have clear campaign goals first.
For example, you choose reach, views, and shares as KPIs for awareness and engagement purposes. During the campaign period, you can focus more on paying attention to these points. Make sure that the KPIs created are tied to the campaign objectives and are considered reasonable to achieve.
Determine the Target Audience
Apart from the two things above, you also have to determine who the target audience is for the campaign you are going to create. The audience here is people who not only have the same demographic but also have the same interests. Understand what your target audience group likes most.
If you sell products related to automotive, for example, try to find out various information about the automotive community. That way, it is also easier for you to find out which social media platforms they use most often. This means that knowing who your target audience is will also help you choose the right influencer.
Prepare a Budget and Management Strategy
Influencers have varying price rates. Before choosing the right influencer, you certainly need to prepare a budget. The scale of the campaign is also a consideration when determining the budget, a large campaign certainly does not cost a small amount.
Not only that, you also need to consider the time to carry out an influencer marketing campaign. This strategy will not run automatically, it needs appropriate management so that each party involved can truly commit.
Select and Contact Influencers
Next is choosing an influencer. It’s not just about creating a list of names of influencers who have a large following. You have to consider several things to get the right influencer to promote your small business.
Try using the 4C formula in the influencer marketing framework:
- Community: Apart from the number of followers, you need to pay attention to who the influencer’s followers are. Does it suit your target audience? How good is the influencer’s relationship with their community?
- Content: What content format is most suitable for promoting your campaign? Answering this will make it easier for you to choose an influencer. Choose influencers who have consistently uploaded similar content.
- Culture: Every influencer is unique. They have their own style and tone. Does it match your campaign goals? No less important, does it match your business brand image?
- Competence: This relates to the quality of the content. If the quality of the content is not good enough, your campaign performance will suffer. What is their competency when working on sponsored or endorsement content?
Maximize Creativity
At the stage of selecting influencers, you can use the strategy of combining macro and micro-influencers so that campaign reach is optimal. Apart from that, even though influencers are used to creating unique content according to their niche, you can still add other perspectives to make the content more creative. Use unexpected angles to attract the audience’s attention.
Evaluation and Analysis of Campaign Results
The final step is to evaluate and analyze the campaign results. Using the KPIs you have created, you will know whether the influencer marketing campaign is running successfully.
- To what extent have the campaigns that have been run met the KPIs that have been created?
- How does this campaign influence subsequent marketing activities?
- Regarding analytical data, you can of course choose to use professional tools to obtain more accurate data.
Final Thoughts
Influencer marketing is not just for big companies. Small brands can also benefit hugely from working with smaller micro-influencers having engaged audiences, or even larger influencers who are looking to represent legitimate independent brands. Don’t hesitate and be scared to make connections and explore all the opportunities that influencer marketing can bring to your small business.