With customers all over the world becoming increasingly discerning and sensitive to value propositions, it is one of the most challenging jobs for brands to connect with potential customers and encourage them to buy from you. The typical contemporary customer is now very well-informed and is less inclined to seeing and believing advertisements that only extol the virtues of the products. In this kind of situation, where advertisements are becoming less productive, it is invariably better for marketers to collaborate with influencers on Instagram. According to Forbes, Instagram is rated as the best platform for social media influencers. Influencer posts are seen as more credible simply because their followers look up to them and trust them for wise advice.
Who Are Influencers and How Do They Benefit Brands?
Social media has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade and according to reports, around 3.96 billion people currently use social media for a variety of things, including entertainment and getting information. To deal with the information overload, a large number of users prefer to trust only the brands they know and have experienced or go by the opinion of influencers they look up to and rely on for guidance. In simple terms, social media influencers are people who are known widely for their expertise or knowledge in a particular subject. Because of their star status, their posts on social media are avidly followed, often by several millions of engaged followers who trust them for their views.
Brands love to work with social media influencers because they can increase their brand reach rapidly and encourage their followers to purchase the products being endorsed. While many social media platforms are avidly used by people, Instagram stands out for its total focus on visuals and its smartphone-friendly design. Brands also love Instagram because of its high rate of engagement. As useful as influencer marketing on Instagram is, marketers cannot hope to achieve success with random endorsements. Rather, they need to put together a well-crafted influencer marketing strategy. Some useful tips:
Define Your Expectations
You need to fully understand why you are engaging in an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram because unless you know and define what your objectives are, you will not be in a position to evaluate whether the effort has been worth the investment. Even before you go about identifying an influencer with the right fit for your brand, you should clearly define the key performance indicators that will help you to allocate an appropriate budget for the campaign. If your budget is limited, you can try to buy Instagram comments instead of engaging influencers.
Remember, the goals you set should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely, or in other words, SMART. Typical goals of online marketers for using influencers are getting more followers, increasing the rate of engagement, expanding the brand reach, achieving a better CTR, and even generating more sales. The more specific your goals are, the easier it will be to measure them.
Identify Influencers with the Right Fit
Collaborating with an influencer who is relevant to your brand is important because it can be easy to waste your time, effort, and money talking to followers of the wrong profile. Also, your choice of influencer plays an important part in the minds of potential customers regarding your brand image. Unless you partner with influencers who have the same values as that of your brand, you could end up inadvertently damaging your brand reputation and credibility. Among the various things, you should check your influencers for are the number of their followers, their profile, the rate of engagement, and importantly, the quality of the engagement. You should verify that the content of the influencer’s posts and their tone matches your brand voice. Your objectives and the budget available will influence your choice of the influencer. You can choose one of the three types available; macro, micro, and nano. The classification is based on the number of followers they have. Macro influencers have the maximum number of followers and also charge you the most. However, even though nano influencers have the smallest number of followers and charge the least per post, their rate of engagement is typically the highest.
Conclusion
After you have made a shortlist of the potential influencers that you could collaborate with, you can engage with them to find out if they are willing to endorse your brand. Try to find out if they are truly interested in your products or merely doing it for the money. The more time you can invest in building up a relationship with them before offering your sales pitch, the better will your final decision be. Many of the more experienced influencers will also be able to guide you on how to better your sales pitch to get more engagement from their followers. Once you have finalized your choice of an influencer, you can work out the structure and content of your campaign with his assistance for the best impact.
