You love your business and think it’s the best thing ever invented since sliced bread.

But others, i.e. your target audience, don’t seem to agree. Sales are flat, customer enthusiasm is low and your reputation, while not bad, is not that great either.

You realise that you need to do something to supercharge your business, boost your sales and profits, and earn some much-needed goodwill.

However, you don’t have the budget or resources to launch a large-scale marketing or advertising campaign.

So what can you do?

Try Influencer Marketing!

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing, as the name suggests, is the use of influential people who have a good social media following and are considered experts in their particular niche.

Influencers may or may not be ‘celebrities’ in the offline world. However, they are called influencers because their presence on social media ensures that they have a ‘voice’ that their followers listen to, trust and even recommend to others. Any person, group, brand, or place could potentially be an influencer.

Why does it work? Because your customers trust the word of ‘real’ people rather than corporate marketing/sales jargon! With an influencer’s help, you can have access to a much larger ‘captive’ audience than you would otherwise. And because the exposure is more ‘targeted’, Influencer Marketing can generate higher ROI for your brand. Furthermore, it provides a more strategic way to position your brand’s image and identity among your audience, and thus increase awareness and recall.

The key to successful Influencer Marketing is to identify the right influencer for your industry/niche/brand and make use of them to promote your products or services in a non-salesy, non-pushy way.

Micro Influencers & Macro Influencers

With Influencer Marketing, numbers (reach) matter. However, reputation, loyalty and trust matter even more.

Micro influencers are those with 10,000 or fewer followers. However, their influence can be just as effective as a macro influencer’s because their audience is usually very loyal, engaged and dedicated to the person and the brand they represent. For a small business, micro influencers can be very cost-effective. They will also be more willing to work with you (less tantrums and fewer demands!).

A 5-Step Process to Use Micro Influencers to Grow Your Small Business

Step 1: Identify and find the most relevant micro influencers

Analyse the social media landscape to find the most influential profiles based on geography, category or other demographic data that is relevant to your brand.

If you’re not sure where to start, think about your industry. Influencers for every industry tend to congregate on one or two social media platforms. For example, fashion and food influencers tend to ‘live’ on Instagram; while Digital Marketing influencers are more likely to be found on LinkedIn.

Your audience also matters. If most of your targeted customers are on LinkedIn, you’re wasting time and money focusing on Facebook.

Once you identify some influencers, review factors specific to them such as:

• Engagement: Check their most recent posts. Are people engaging with them? Are they liking, commenting and sharing?
• Audience: Who is their core audience and does it match with your target audience? There’s no point working with an influencer whose audience is college students if your product is aimed at homemaker women.
• Voice and style: Do they match with the voice and style you want to adopt for your brand?

Finding the correct match between platform/influencer/audience is one of the keys to successful Influencer Marketing.

Step 2: Develop your Influencer Marketing plan

Set goals for your campaign. Often, goals are less about increasing sales and more about increasing public awareness about a brand.

Why do you need an influencer for your brand?

What do you hope to achieve with the campaign?

How will you measure its success?

After establishing goals, identify the key influencers in your niche by researching demographics and target markets. A simple search on Google and social media sites can reveal who has influence over consumers in a particular brand niche. Decide how many influencers you want to target and select those that best meet the goals of your campaign.

Step 3: Make contact

Approaching a micro influencer is usually not as daunting as approaching an A-list celebrity but first impressions still count.

Instead of approaching them directly, spend some time engaging with them online. Comment and like their posts. Ask questions and provide suggestions. Put yourself forward by offering value to their community.

Then send them an email or DM. The direct approach can also work but easing in is usually a better strategy.

Once you make your approach, introduce yourself and outline your goals. Make sure you explain how working with you will benefit them and their audience.

Step 4: Build a relationship

An influencer is not like your employee. They can be temperamental, demanding and occasionally unreasonable. However, there are benefits to having a micro influencer working for your brand, so building a relationship with them is crucial.

Also remember that no influencer is going to do the job of advocating your brand for free (although micro-influencers are more affordable than macro influencers). You can offer an influencer free gifts in exchange for their advocacy and promotion, but you may also want to consider a financial incentive. The amount will depend on your budget and how much they charge for each action. Do you want a simple re-tweet (very low cost) or a creative Instagram story (medium cost)? Or are you looking for video content or a podcast (high cost)?

Micro-influencers know their audience better than you do, so collaboration is the key to a successful campaign – whether it’s regular posts, sponsored content or even contests. The goal is to form an organic, genuine relationship that is not based entirely on endorsing and selling. Influencers who are treated with respect become genuine advocates for the brands they write about.

Step 5: Monitor your progress

Once your campaign is up and running, monitor it regularly.

Revisit your goals and tweak them if required. If the plan is not having the desired effect, you can try reaching out to new influencers. Court the influencers who continue to remain effective so that they keep supporting your brand on their blog, page or website.

Remember that influencers are people too. They are not perfect and neither are you. However, as long as you are professional, choose the right influencers and design a campaign that harnesses their influence, there is no reason why Influencer Marketing should not work for you!

Cynergi provides marketing and media services to help businesses gain knowledge and skills for growth and progress. Our services include Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing and Corporate Gifting. To know more, contact us today