Oshin Kamble
Word of mouth is a concept that all of us are very well aware of. Influential marketing as an idea stems from here. In the initial stage, this concept was really easy. It involved making the right friends and promoting your brand through them. They would talk about you in a positive manner and basically identify the right consumer base to sell your product to.However, in today’s social day and age, every other person has become an influencer. But, as they say, the expertise can only lie with a handful. So, once you know your market and have identified your influencers, you can try out the following ideas to make the most of influencer marketing.
In order to leverage influencer marketing for events, you can go to conferences. The quality of face to face conversations is much higher than a simple brief sent on digital platforms. Andy Crestodina says that success is a result of opportunities. This comes from the relationships you make and events are a great platform to build these.
Content is always going to be of the highest quality. When looking for influencer marketing, look for influencers who pay special attention to content quality. Prioritize your content and use it to identify the right marketers. Once you start creating content which is pertaining to the people you have chosen, then it would become beneficial for both. Needless to say, even your target audience would be very happy with the kind of content that is produced in tandem with your influencer.
One of the worst mistakes that brands make is approach influencers without a sense of strategy. Nearly, 99% of people just rely on influencers to take their brands ahead without any real core to the whole campaign. However, if you have a good marketing team, then build campaigns in accordance with your product messaging. Use influencers as a part of your campaign and place them in your strategy. This would help in the smooth running of your processes.
See, at the moment, all of us aim at the number of followers an influence has. However, some deep research will make you realize that the quality of followers is also important. It is very much possible that a person who you have rejected on the basis of lesser followers will convert direct sales for you as compared to the influencer with the highest number of followers. Basically, everybody is a who’s who in today’s day and age- you just need to figure out whether the audience that follows them is your target consumer base or not.
Information is readily available nowadays. But, still, a social validation of a product or a brand makes it much more appealing to your consumer base. Building trust in return for influence ensures that the positive name of brand stays in the circle for a long time and is not limited to a minor monetary exchange. Hence, build trust and build relations with your influencers. Don’t treat it like a barter- instead of like a long term relationship that you need to nurture.
In a nutshell, influential marketing is only as tricky as you want it to be. With a concept like this, sticking to the book definition is not really helpful. Instead, you should go a little beyond the tried conventions and use influential marketing to your advantage. Mold your strategy as per your target and exploit the power of social marketing through influencers in the best way possible.
