7 Tips On How To Integrate Influencers Into Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Influencer Marketing has been such a growing phenomenon over the last few years, and as more marketers look to work with influencers as part of their marketing strategy. We thought we’d bring you 7 tips on how to integrate them in to yours.
1. Integrate them in to your social media strategy
Whilst this one seems the most obvious way to start with influencer marketing, it is often one of the most misunderstood. A lot of brands think that Influencers are an answer to all their problems.
They have this idea that influencers will immediately grow sales, increase their social media following, raise brand awareness and increase retention rates. Whilst influencers can do all of these things with the right content and strategy. It’s very rare this works all at once.
We’d always recommend that you always have a very clear objective before you start your influencer plan. Are you looking for sales? Or do you want to grow your own social following and raise some brand awareness?
These are two very different strategies, so think very carefully before you start.
Video is exploding on Social Media right now, with video getting a much higher engagement rate than imagery. So when thinking about your social strategy, look to platforms like YouTube as a great way to engage an audience with video content.
Influencers are extremely relatable to their audience, remember it’s a lot more important understanding how your customers speak about your brand. Rather than how you speak about your brand.
So having influencers spread your message for you is an excellent way to have someone speak about your brand in an authentic and natural tone.
2. Have them write a guest post on your blog
Guest posting is often an extremely effective way to have influencers speak about your brand in a more informative way. With the long form nature of a blog post, Influencers can speak in a lot more detail and have the opportunity to really put forward their ideas and expertise in a way that can appeal to your audience.
It’s also an excellent opportunity to drive audience visits to site, by asking the influencer to share the post on their social media.
Lastly there is also the SEO benefit of linking to the influencers blog, and you may also benefit from their audience searching their name on google and coming across the blog post they contributed on your site.
There’s so many opportunities with this option and comes highly recommended.
3. Have them create content for your website
Influencers are now much more than just a way to share a message on social media, they are now photographers, videographers, editors and creative directors.
Influencers have been creating content for their audience and honing their skills, so why not let them create content for your audience as well? From the studies we’ve seen before in various markets, Influencer content performs far better at converting online than brand shot content. It’s often far cheaper to produce as well.
Having influencers create content for you to use yourself is especially apparent when targeting a younger audience. It’s often likely that an influencer is closer to your target market than you might be yourself. So having them create the content could speak better to that audience than something you’ve created in house.
Working with them collaboratively to create something fresh and new could pay big dividends for your brand.
4. Facebook Advertising
Many companies are now spending more and more of their marketing budget on digital ads, the majority of this now through Facebook and Instagram.
Often brands take it upon themselves to create the content for their Facebooks Ads by using imagery from their website, often captured in a studio. But does this show your product in a real-life setting?
Influencers are amazing at capturing the essence of a product in use and showing the product as it would be used in person. Doing this can often lead to far higher conversion rates, as an audience can see how a product looks in a life like scenario. As opposed to be shot to look good in a studio like environment.
This is more likely to give an audience more confidence in the real-life appliance of a product, as well as seeing it on a person deemed more like them, rather than a celebrity etc.
Tests show Influencer content performing up to 10x better than brand shot content when applied to Facebook and Instagram ad content.
5. Podcasting
Podcasting is becoming the hot topic of 2019, with more and more brands turning to this medium to engage a new audience.
For those of you not sure of what Podcasting is, think of it like hosting your own Radio Talk Show – where you get to choose the topics and control the conversation. Influencers are often experts on a particular subject matter or have a very strong view or interest which is why their audience care about their opinions so much.
They are deemed to have an authority on a particular subject, be this fashion, beauty, travel, health etc. So having them speak on your podcast is a great way to bring their audience over to you.
Often an Influencer will promote the fact they have taken part to their audience. They will often tune in to hear their favourite influencers speak and share more about their lives.
With Podcasting, you are not fighting a social media algorithm to appear in people’s news feeds. If people are subscribed to you, they will see it.
With retention rates extremely high and audio creating a new wave of opportunities, it’s never been a better time to start a podcast and invite influencers to join you.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is often a great way to engage influencers with your product and have them do the promotion for you. The cost to set up an affiliate programme is often minimal, and rather than pay fees up front for promotion. An affiliate programme allows influencers to promote your product and receive a commission for doing so.
This takes the up-front cost and risk away from you and gives influencers an incentive to push your product hard so they can earn a good commission. Often higher than their original fee should they do well.
It’s easily trackable and allows you to see who is performing well for you so you know who is performing well and who isn’t.
This gives you a lot of valuable data, as you can give different products to your top performers to see which products are best received by their audience and is a great testing bed for new promotions.
7. Events
If it’s not on social…. Did it even happen? Whilst traditionally events are seen as an offline platform, they do tend to have a digital presence surrounding them.
Be it promotion of the event in advance, reporting on the event after, or simply showcasing it as it happens. If you want your event to make a bang, it’s great to track the digital coverage around it.
Involving influencers in your offline events will allow you to create a lot of traction, be it having influencers inviting their audience to your event in order to increase footfall. Or have them cover the event on their social media for increased brand awareness.
There are many ways that involving influencers in your event can benefit your brand.
Events are also an excellent way to meet your influencers in person and start building a relationship between themselves and your brand. Influencer Marketing is about how you treat influencers as people and not just a way to promote your products or services.
The relationships you build in this space are key to your long term successes, and so by meeting influencers in person. Also hosting events for them to attend, this is a great way to showcase your brand in a positive light.
Final Thoughts
We hope that you’ve enjoyed these tips and can take away so key learnings. Remember, influencers are more than just a way to share a message online.
They are creative and incredibly talented individuals who can help you convey a message in so many different ways.
They are more than just a number, and the biggest reach doesn’t mean the biggest impact. Choose Influencers who really share your values as a business and work with the ones most aligned to your goals and ambitions.
Influencer Marketing is continuing to grow and have a measurable impact, so don’t miss them out from your digital marketing strategy.
This article was written by Bee Influence, a specialist Influencer Marketing Agency based in Manchester, you can find out more information about them here. They’re always happy to answer any questions you have regarding working with influencers, so feel free to give them a buzz!