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Influencer marketing is a great strategy for businesses of all types to reach their audience. Rather than only using traditional marketing or advertising tactics, influencers with a proven audience can help sell your products or services because their audiences trust their recommendations.
While there are plenty of positives to influencer marketing, it’s important to understand how it works before you decide whether it’s worth pursuing. This includes the different types of influencers you can choose from, benefits of an influencer marketing strategy, and tips on how to select the right influencer to represent your business.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing as we know it today was born on social media. This marketing strategy taps into a person or public figure’s social channels to help sell a product or service to their audience.
Influencers may be everyday people or professionals in their field. They’re often perceived as experts in their own niche interests, whether that’s apparel, accessories, food, art, music, or culture.
Before social media platforms, many businesses used brand ambassadors—who were often public figures, celebrities, or athletes—to help sell their products. Brand ambassadors still exist today in large-scale marketing campaigns, but many businesses have instead turned to influencer marketing campaigns. These campaigns can be smaller scale and content is often created by the influencers themselves, which limits spend and can be seen as more genuine.
Types of influencers
It’s important to understand the different audiences you have access to based on the size of an influencer’s following. Influencers don’t always have an incredibly large following. Many have relatively small audiences, but represent a relevant or highly engaged niche for your business.
Targeting a specific influencer type may yield better conversion and ROI for your business.
There are four primary influencer audience sizes.
Mega-influencers: These influencers usually have over 1 million followers. They’re often very well-known people or public figures.
Macro-influencers: This includes influencers with a following between 100,000 to 1 million.
Micro-influencers: These people have a large enough following to be well-known in some circles, around 10,000 to 100,000 followers.
Nano-influencers: The smallest influencer set is those with under 10,000 followers, often representing more niche groups or interests.
Benefits of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing taps into a form of word-of-mouth marketing by having an influencer speak about your business or products. Influencer marketing helps generate positive associations between your brand and a new or larger audience, since an influencer’s followers are more likely to trust them.
Building brand awareness with new audiences
A primary reason to reach out to influencers for a marketing partnership is for brand awareness. It brings in a wider audience than the following you’ve already established on your own social channels or through organic website traffic.
It can also help you reach crossover audiences that might not be in your immediate niche. Some people may never have found your business had you not partnered with an influencer they like.
Establishing trust and credibility
Once an influencer has built their following, no matter the size, there’s a level of trust and credibility they need to maintain with that audience. Following a stranger on the internet usually requires some compatibility on subject matter, taste, or point of view. Partnering with an influencer whose opinion resonates with their audience, by extension, makes you more trustworthy to their followers too.
Better return on investment (ROI)
Budgeting for an influencer partnership has its own set of considerations. But, for the most part, influencers are jacks-of-all-trades and often prefer to script, produce, and film their own content. This is done in large part to maintain a consistent creative vision and voice.
You also don’t necessarily need to pay an influencer to get them to mention your product. Some smaller influencers and content creators will accept free products to review. You’re out the cost of the product and delivery if it doesn’t work out, but it’s less expensive than a paid partnership.
What this means for your business is you don’t always have to use a significant portion of your budget to produce, film, and market with influencers. That could lead to a healthier ROI and lower financial risk.
Customer and product research
Social media and the influencers on those platforms can provide businesses with a lot of data about their customers. Depending on what kind of partnership you have with an influencer, you can work with them to get insights into where your customers are coming from and how they’re engaging with your business, where they buy the products from, or which products resonate with them.
Relationship building
The great thing about influencer marketing is that you can cast a wide net for the influencers you work with to support your business. You can build a campaign with several different influencers and build relationships with each to help support and foster your business’ journey. If you continue to work with an influencer over time, it could open up other opportunities, like custom projects or other marketing campaigns.
How to choose and engage influencers for marketing
With an abundance of influencers to choose from, it can be overwhelming trying to decide who would be best as your marketing partner. Remember: You don’t need to work with the biggest influencers, just one that has an engaged audience. And you may need to try a few before you find the right ones to work with.
Keep these few tips top of mind while finding influencers for your marketing efforts.
Search every platform. There are so many places for you to find the right influencer. In addition to major social platforms, check Reddit threads, Substack notes, X or Bluesky posts, or comment sections for additional ideas. Followers will often link or share their favorites.
Think about long-term potential and mutual growth. Do you want an influencer only for a short-term deal? Consider how you can grow alongside the influencers who showcase your products to their followers.
Consider how serious they are. You want to have an influencer who is as serious about their work as you are about your business. People who follow deadlines, take feedback, and take their role seriously are much more likely to take your business seriously, too.
How to measure the success of influencer marketing
If this is your first time with influencer marketing, you may not get it right on your first few tries. The following data points are useful in measuring the success of any influencer marketing efforts.
Reach: This is the number of people who saw the content. For example, how many people watched a video would indicate reach.
Impressions: This is the number of times content was shown or viewed at a given time. If a video ad shows up in someone’s social media feed but they don’t actually stop to watch it, that’s an impression.
Engagement: Audience engagement is measured by likes, comments, shares, and saves of a post or video.
Brand mentions: This covers how often your brand is being talked about across the internet. Brand mentions goes beyond direct tagging, and includes links or references to your brand in forums or blogs, for example.
Revenue: Use analytics or affiliate tracking tools to see how much revenue your business has brought in during a set campaign period. Tracking revenue will help you determine your ROI for using an influencer.
Clearly define your goals for each of these metrics before engaging any influencer for a marketing campaign. If you’re not meeting your goals with a specific influencer campaign, consider whether a change in the content, product featured, or the influencer is needed.
Common influencer marketing mistakes to avoid
To optimize your influencer marketing tactics, it’s important to focus on connecting with the right audience. There are a few common missteps that can get in the way of this.
Choosing the wrong influencer
Pick an influencer who represents both your brand and the audience you’re trying to reach. For example, a gardening influencer may not be the right choice for promoting evening wear. There are opportunities for crossover, but you’ll largely want to engage with influencers who have a connection to your industry, audience, or your business. Do your research to ensure you’re not reaching out to the wrong people.
Prioritizing audience size over engagement
An influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers may only get a few hundred likes or comments on a post. Follower size does not always equal a good engagement rate. Do some research on the influencers you’re interested in to understand the type of content that resonates with their audience and whether it suits your brand and goals.
Incomplete briefs
You’ll need to let your influencer(s) of choice know the exact parameters of your campaign or marketing opportunity. Those often come in briefs, which detail the goal of the campaign, products or services being sold, how it will be measured for success, product benefits and how it’s different from competitors, and how many posts are required. Without all of the necessary information, your influencer may end up doing something out of sync with your brand or the intended goal. With the right details, you can develop a mutually beneficial partnership that helps both of you achieve your goals.