Influencer Marketing

Influencer content campaigning is the latest marketing strategy in the digital domain for raking in profits because surveys across different successful firms have proved that the Content Marketing campaign is providing an ROI much greater than expected through normal marketing. The social media campaigning has given huge mileage to the influencer marketing for it is reaping profit at an unprecedented rate by just word of mouth promotion.

First what comes to the mind is why opting for influencer marketing? Is digital marketing losing its appeal? Well, the latter is true because of the inflation of advertisement. There is so much advertisement on the web nowadays that the audience is just fading up with these. Moreover, the competitive promotion of the same product by different online retailers is undermining the customers’ will to buy the product because they always have a sense of dissatisfaction with the deal. If that not the case, then the virus and worm attacks are keeping the surfers from clicking the banners and entering the foreign sites.

So what will be the favoured activity of the brands for tackling this crisis situation? For this, the brands need to have a very good presence in the life and psyche of the customers because only then will they have a say in the decision of buying a product. This can be achieved by accumulating information about the customers through a social platform, thus the recommendation section and the next best thing is through influencer marketing. This process is very simple as it goes. An influencer is a person who has got a great following audience and by promoting the product by the influencer, the chances of its sale multiple manifolds. The customers get a genuine urge to buy the product as they are inspired by the influencer and the process is less intrusive than general promotion.

The steps through which a successful influencer marketing campaign can be achieved are discussed below:-

  1. Audience Targeting – To funnel out the required customer base for a product, it is very important to have a proper plan. First, the brand must analyze the information about the audience and then assign the products in groups. Second, comes the choosing of the right influencer. The influencer must be somehow related to the field of the product and without any doubt must have a large base of active followers. Influencer marketing is a new concept and hence not all sectors have one. So if one’s niche doesn’t gel with influencer marketing then does not opt for it.
  2. Choosing the Right Channel – There are many social media channels. Each of these has a very different style of promotion such as photos for Instagram, videos for youtube and hashtag text for twitter. So for the brand to get the channel right is essential because each channel has a different audience and every influencer is better in either one of these sites. So to ascertain the channel is very important for the product sale.
  3. Setting a Clear Goal – The known the number of potential customers is very important in setting the expectation of a product sale. Depending upon the intended volume of sale the influencer should be appointed accordingly. For huge sale celebrity influence is required, for bulk sale, a macro influencer is required and for optimum sale, the requirement is a micro influencer.
  4. Budget – The budget allocates the enthusiasm of a Content marketing campaign. If the budget is high the brand can just hire a suitable influencer. But in cases otherwise, it is better to follow up with various influencers already promoting a similar product. Sometimes sending the influencers the product for free can make them promote your product.
  5. Recruiting an Influencer – It is the most important aspect of Influencer marketing. For choosing the perfect influencer one must recruit a person who suits best with both the product and the brand. Money does matter but compatibility of the person to the objective of the brand matters the most. For choosing one can take the help of platforms that analyze and rank the influencers or opt for self-assessment of different persons with large followers by reaching out for them through social media and lastly to look out for the best influence at the manual level.
  6. Reach Out to them – Influencer may have opted to promote the brand but it is not necessary that promotion will be satisfactory. For making the promotion completely satisfactory the brand must appease the influencer with lucrative gifts. This strategy will let the brand get a high ranking influencer to align happily with the brand and thus a great ROI for the product concerned.
  7. Make the Influencer like the Product – The promotion by the influencer becomes more genuine if the person in question himself/herself uses the product and get satisfied with it. The objective of the brand must be to gift the product to an appreciative influencer having a high number of audiences in his/her tow with a liking related to the product genre.