Let’s face it: We have all been influenced by someone or the other at some point in our lives.
Perhaps, a celebrity, a cool older sibling, a close friend or a favorite professor.
Consider the number of times you have come across a popular influencer on Instagram, flaunting the latest pair of trendy shoes, or any other ‘in’ product in the market (detox teas, anyone?), following an influencer discount code for their followers.
Without a doubt, influencer marketing is a key driver in the marketing world and has the potential to give a brand the additional push in the right direction.
According to a study, an estimated 87% of people using Instagram have reported taking the purchasing decision (action) following learning about a product’s information on the popular photo-sharing application; this is through either by following a brand’s Instagram handle, going onto a brand’s website or by buying through the platform first-hand (Jahangir, 2021).
What is the meaning of influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is primarily the typical endorsement by a well-known personality (a ‘celebrity’ if you will), however, it is one that is set in a content driven and modern marketing promotion
In a nutshell, the term ‘influencer’ refers to people having sophisticated personal brands, along with eager, credible followers.
Influencers can be conventional celebrities or even fairly regular individuals who have been able to gather on social media, a huge number of devoted followers.
Therefore, influencer marketing is termed as the practice of determining, assessing and engaging such influencers who will create dynamic discussions regarding your brand with your customer base as well as prospective customers.
(Libert, 2019).
As professional marketers, we at The Thought Factory know the value of a good influencer. We offer Influencer marketing services to help you gain reach in a targeted audience or niche and can drive campaign performance, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting sales.
What makes a person a good influencer?
It is worth noting that influencer marketing goes beyond just gaining a large number of likes/tweets. It’s not just having a cult following and simultaneous number game. An authentic influencer’s real power lies in two factors:
Is influencer marketing the right fit for you?
Influencer marketing can be used for both; B2C and B2B businesses, however, this strategy is definitely more effective in some scenarios than others.
For instance: if your business involves selling skincare, influencer marketing seems to be an ideal choice.
Since YouTube and social feeds are continually buzzing with people trying the latest trending beauty and skincare products, therefore, opting for the influencer route to promote your product offering clearly seems to be a wise decision.
On the other hand, if your business is about tile distribution, for example, applying influencer marketing strategy may not bring in as efficient results.
Although this does not mean that it may not help your business in some way or the other, but there are much bigger discussions on social media platforms encircling specific industries.
Therefore, determining whether your business has a role in those discussions is an answer that only you yourself can distinguish.
Finding the right influencer for your campaign
Measuring influencer marketing success
Some effective ways of measuring include:
Promo Codes
A superb means of tracking attribution is by providing unique promo codes to influencers- every time a consumer utilizes a code (given to them by a particular influencer), you can correctly and directly attribute the income to its roots.
As professional marketers, we at The Thought Factory know the value of a good influencer. We offer Influencer marketing services to help you gain reach in a targeted audience or niche and can drive campaign performance, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting sales.
Hashtags
Use hashtags by creating a single hashtag that is fixed to an influencer and encourage them to kick-off on their social media handle. You can then trace from there onwards how the hashtag is faring with the influencer’s audience. Supposing if you are unable to particularly match it up with sales, you can still observe your influence go through social media.
UTM Parameters
As a business, you need to allocate certain parameters to URLs that are shared by the influencers you are working with, in order to trace attribution as well the actions of website visitors arising from the influencers.(Libert, 2019).
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