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What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves well-known figures on social media (‘influencers’) presenting a business’s products to their typically large followership. The aim here is to have these personalities leverage their ‘influence’ to convince the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions who follow them to try out a brand. Influencers do this in exchange for something, usually money or free samples of the promoter business’s products.Steps to Attracting New Customers with Influencer Marketing
Here are some steps you can take to win over new customers through social media influencers:Know Your Audience
You need to understand your ideal customer to correctly decide what kind of influencer would appeal to them. If your audience is big on sports, you may want to reach them via a sports figure or opinion shaper in that space. And if they are keen on entertainment, you may go for personalities within and around that domain instead. The style of communication and reputation of the influencer also matter greatly; they should be people whom your buyer demographic can identify with and appreciate.Research the Influencer Ecosystem and Reach
There’s no shortage of social media influencers. However, they aren’t all the same (as we’ve already pointed out). The range, in terms of following, is quite broad. For example, there are nano-influencers—persons with between 1,000 and 10,000 followers; micro-influencers, with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers; macro influencers, who boast of 100,000-1 million followers; and mega influencers, who have a following numbering in the millions.Review Influencer’s Engagement Levels
When weighing options, look beyond follower counts to how many people engage the influencer’s post on average. This indicates just how much the influencer can get their audience interested in what they have to say. Some nano-influencers may achieve greater levels of audience engagement than many macro-influencers. You should market your products with persons who have a decent audience engagement ratio.Sign up for the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
Match Your Needs with Influencer Types
If yours is a sportswear brand, you’ll want to promote it with a sports or fitness influencer. And if you’re a retailer for major mobile device brands, you may have a tech influencer mention your outlets to their followers. Hunt for social media accounts that regularly post content about your business’s lines of interest, and see if you can convince them to share information about your offerings with their audience.Come up with a Budget
You need to have a budget for your influencer marketing campaign. You may have to pay the influencer (or influencers) whose services you seek. Even if you aren’t paying cash, you will probably have to give them something else in exchange for their telling the world about what you do, and that will cost you some money. Putting together an accurate budget requires that you investigate the fees typically charged by the type of influencers you’ll be working with. You could inquire of a few of them to find this out.Negotiate Terms
Having narrowed your options to accounts of certain sizes and in a specific niche, your next step would be to discuss possible terms with them. Things you’ll talk with them about will include final fees, the nature of the promotional content they’re going to post, and how many times they’re going to post. While you should certainly grant your influencers some creative freedom, it’s also important to ascertain that their content will be interesting enough to draw the interest of your kind of audience.Choose an Influencer
After collecting quotes and details from multiple influencers, compare them and go for one that meets your needs and most effectively balances out all your concerns. When their post(s) goes live, be sure to reshare them so that they get seen by even more people.Be Ready to Attend to New Prospects and Customers
If the posts put up by the influencer you’ve hired prove successful, you’ll soon begin to get inquiries from people who saw them. You and your team should be prepared to answer questions promptly and guide new customers to properly use your products. Being ready for this increases your chances of converting a lot of the buzz and traffic that influencer posts generate into paying customers.Register to attend the CN Business Mixer
Final Words
You can achieve a lot with influencer marketing if you’re smart about exploiting it. The tips we’ve shared in this article should help you do exactly that, and open up the doors for more customers to patronize your business.Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
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