How To Make Influencer Marketing Truly Valuable For Your Business

Welcome to the age of technology where some people have found a way to turn social media into a sea of advertisements. The reason why influencer marketing is so effective is that oftentimes consumers don’t even realize they are seeing an ad, they simply believe they are seeing an influencer on their feed using a product. The saying “monkey see, monkey do” truly comes into play here. Chances are your target audience will use whatever they can to make themselves more like their favorite influencers.

• Best Way Of Reaching An Influencer

With this we will be blunt, influencers can be a pain to communicate with. It’s better you go into it knowing what to expect and oftentimes you can expect frustrations and emails going weeks without replies. Most influencers will have their email in the bio, in this case, that is your best bet. Often dms can be fickle because if the message ends up in “requested”, it may never be seen.

• Rates Of Influencers

There is no “set” rate for what an influencer should be getting paid because it depends on many factors. Thankfully this leaves a lot of room for negotiation. When an influencer gets back to you with a ridiculous rate, you don’t have to panic. Always remember that asking the person why they believe they deserve to get paid that amount is totally okay and they should have a good logical argument in response. Here are the three main factors that go into negotiation: Your budget, what exactly you want the influencer marketing to do, and the influencers' engagement rate. Let’s start with your budget, if you have a small budget you will want to start by offering gifted collaborations, it doesn’t hurt to let them know when you reach out that there won’t be much room for negation as your brand can’t afford a bigger budget. If you are able to afford a higher budget then that’s where the other two factors come into play l. When considering how much you’re willing to pay, think about what it is you’re hoping to gain from this influencer posting content. If your goal is brand awareness then maybe paying out a little extra for those macro influencers is worth it. If your goal is to have these likes convert into consumers buying the product then you should focus your budget mainly on influencers who have a following around the “niche” of what you’re selling. Lastly, always check how much an influencer's followers are truly interacting with their post. Just because they have 50K followers does not mean many people actively interact with their posts. it isn’t fair for you to be paying based on followers and not engagement.

• How To Track Influencer Marketing

You can track how well your influencer campaign is going in a few ways. The most important note is that you should always go into any marketing idea with a set goal/outcome in mind. Without knowing where you want to end up, you can’t know how to get there. If your goal is brand awareness then make sure you add into your influencer's contracts that they need to give their insights once the campaign has ended. They will be able to see the amount of likes and oftentimes views as well. If your goal is to gain more sales then make sure you’re tracking your sales daily from the start of the campaign to the end. You can also create a unique link for the influencers to post, this link will allow you to see how many times someone visited your site from it.

Long story short, Influencer marketing can be incredibly valuable if done correctly. You can create impactful brand awareness by directly targeting your key consumers. Think of it like this, these influencers have used their niche to build a following full of your exact target audience. It’s putting an ad out there without gambling about whether or not interested parties will see it. Not to mention incredibly low production costs for the advertisement.