How much time do you spend daily on social media? If you're anything like us, more time than you'd like to admit. In this time, you've most likely started noticing more and more advertisements directed towards your interests. As consumers, we've started tuning out certain banner placements due to all of our previous experience on social platforms. This could be causing some of your more successful ads to begin going static. But what if you could advertise your products and services through a source with tens to hundreds of thousands of loyal followers? Introducing...
The Influencer
Social media influencers have become an ever-growing resource for marketing companies. An influencer, in a broad sense, is a key leader on any social media platform that possesses a large following and puts out posts that receive healthy engagement on a regular basis. For this reason, brands and their marketers have a rich opportunity to increase brand awareness, sales, and all other goals in a new and unique way.
Put simply, the main goal with influencers is to find the right audience. Whatever audience the influencer currently has that you're working with will be your audience upon posting. If you can find someone with high visibility in the industry or target market your brand or company is trying to reach, this is the ideal approach.
Major Influencers
There are many famous personalities online with millions of followers. These vary and can include successful athletes, film stars, business owners, and many more. If you follow any social media profiles that fit within these categories, you will routinely notice them sponsoring products or services on social platforms. Endorsements like these, off of one social post, can lead to substantial brand awareness and sale increases. You will typically see major influencers working with larger brands and businesses, unless it is a product they use in their every day life. Although this type of exposure can have a great impact on your business, major influencers can be very expensive.
Is your product very niche, or is your budget not large enough to afford a major influencer?
Micro Influencers
Instead of working with one major influencer, it could be more financially viable for your business to work with multiple micro influencers. Micro influencers tend to have thousands of followers rather than millions. Although their audience is smaller, they tend to be more loyal and follow their social threads more closely. This can lead to a more intimate relationship with their followers, which in turn makes the influencer a more reliable resource for recommendations. Another positive is that micro influencers can be located locally. This could lead to personal store visits and additional collaborations.
Although influencers of all sizes can be beneficial to your business, they can at times be difficult to lock down for sponsored advertisements. It's important that you take the proper channels of communication to set up a deal, as well as having your assignment laid out in it's entirety. When working with influencers for the first time, it tends to be in your best interest to coordinate with your marketing team.
If you have any additional questions regarding influencers and how they could benefit your business, be sure to contact the social marketing experts at Informatics today!
