Influencer Marketing Is The New Key To Buyer Enablement

By Author: Barath Kumar
Total Articles: 13
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Love it or hate it, the fact is that people admire celebrities and want what they have. These days’ celebrities, including social media celebrities from YouTube or Instagram, are selling their “influence” to pitch brands and products. If an influencer recommends a product, people are more likely to trust that product when it comes to making a buying decision.

Brands use influencers to drive their message to a captive target audience and for this reason, brands are inclined to use influencers who have some credibility or cachet in their specific industry to push their objectives.

In several cases, superstar influencers have helped to clear shop’s shelves of inventory solely by what they wore on Instagram, or posted on Twitter.

Build a Strategy to Market Your Product
Using influencers as a strategy to grow a business has become widely accepted as companies realize how significant and receptive their audience reach is. Even an influencer with a smaller reach but with high credibility can create a pretty big ROI for a brand.

Kickstart your influencer strategy by setting expectations about what you want to accomplish with the campaign. Is the campaign solely meant to increase brand awareness, or to build a brand identity and generate leads? Defining your goals early on helps to shape a consistent strategy moving forward.

Before reaching out to an influencer, identify the influencers that best suit your brand, as well as the ones who can most successfully reach out to your target audience.

Celebrity Influencer
Celebrities act as genuine brand ambassadors and attract prospects primarily through popularity and have followers numbering in the millions.

These can be TV or film personalities, professional athletes, or pop-culture icons.

Macro-influencers
Macro-influencers also have a large-scale following and are known for being experts in their field.

Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers are scaled-down versions of macro-influencers and make up the bulk of all influencers. They are usually unknown outside their niche, but within their niche are usually recognized as experts.

Identify Your Buyer Persona
Before you identify who will help you reach out to your target audience, you need to know who your target audience is. Spend time outlining the specific details on who you want to connect with through your campaign, and what criteria aligns with your target audience.

Create a buyer persona that includes both demographic and psychographic segmentation. Once you know this, it will be easier for you to identify the top people your audience follows and the channels they use.

Once these goals are set, start thinking about the type of influencers that will help you accomplish your goals.

Choose Your Channel or Source to Market Your Product
Once you have a solid idea about your goals and the influencer you want to use, it’s time to choose the channel that will best be able to get your brand the ROI you’re looking for.

Your marketing goal is going to be directly tied to the type of influencers you choose to work with. If your goal is bite-sized interactions, you should likely be working with influencers who are active on Twitter. If you want to emphasize the visual imagery of your product, you could probably utilize platforms like Instagram or Pinterest. If you aim to provide in-depth awareness of your product, you could opt to write blogs and have them posted on an influencer’s page or post a technical article on an industry blog and have influencers share a link to it.

Identify People or Communities with Large Fan bases Who Can Influence Your Brand
Influencers are basically specialists in a particular niche and would have already earned a high level of trust amongst their followers. Their fans trust their endorsements and wholeheartedly accept those products.

Influencers typically affiliate themselves with brands that reflect their values and that align closely with their interests so as not to alienate their fans and followers. 92% of consumers are more inclined to believe the people who are already in their circles – and influencers are a part of that circle.

Influencers enjoy a solid social media following and they do make an impact in their online community. They are also connected to a network of other individuals who are equally regarded as influencers. Their influence is authentic and because of that is more readily accepted by their followers.