Grow Your Business with Influencer Marketing

by Lynn Ventimiglia-Lobit

February 6, 2019

in Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing

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Looking for a Different Marketing Approach?
Try Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing may still be a fresh idea for some businesses. If you are not familiar with this concept, influencer marketing is defined as a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole on social media. It identifies individuals who have influence over potential customers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Influencer content can be compared to testimonials.

Even though Influencer marketing has encountered some negative publicity due to fake followers or influencers acting inappropriately, over the last few years it has been gaining popularity as a key way to deliver content. It can be an effective marketing tool that provides great brand visibility and ROI. On average, for each $1 spent on influencer marketing, a company receives $7.65 in business, with the top 15 percent actually generating $20 for every dollar spent. Influencer marketing can be very powerful, but before you use this tactic below are four 2019 trends you should read about first:

Influencer Marketing Expands Beyond Celebrities
Originally, influencer marketing only engaged celebrities such as reality TV star, Kylie Jenner. Celebrities, such as Kylie, command up to $1 million for a single Instagram post, making this type of marketing only affordable for large corporations. However, over the last few years influencer marketing has diversified and broadened its target markets, enabling mid-size and even small businesses to include this tool in their marketing efforts. Now the types of influencers on social media can be broken down into four different categories:
- Mega-influencers include reality celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West and Kylie Jenner who each have over 100 million followers on social media. This category includes social media superstars with over one million followers. These influencers are very costly as demonstrated by Kylie’s Instagram fee mentioned above. They may bring the star power, but they are not as interactive with followers or considered approachable.
- Macro-influencers are influencers with between one million and 100,000 followers. Macro-influencers offer years of experience working with brands to create sponsored content and is accompanied by a high level of professionalism.
- Micro-influencers have been gaining in popularity because this level of influencers includes someone with as little as 1,000 followers to all the way up to 100,000 followers. While their following may seem small compared to mega-influencers, it is key to note that their authenticity is high, which is particularly important to younger generations, such as Millennials and Gen Z.
- Nano-influencers have fewer than 1,000 followers, but they offer immense influence in a narrow market, which can serve niche businesses very nicely. This type of influencer can be ideal for small businesses too.
The Use of Video has Grown in Importance
You have probably been hearing about the importance of video for a while. Consumers like video because it is an easy to digest and engaging way to receive content. Marketers like it because it can provide a great ROI across multiple channels. Search engines love videos because they see them as high-quality content, providing fantastic SEO results when they are optimized properly. Currently, video represents more than three quarters of all internet traffic. And, with the speed and bandwidth that 5G will provide soon, video will become even more widely used. YouTube has been known as the social media platform for video, but now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn all cater to video content. Influencers are leading this video trend in social media, often posting videos that demonstrate certain features of a product. However, it is critical that these influencers are authentic and engaging while including brand mentions throughout the video. Influencers are posting video most regularly across a variety of social media platforms. And, now with IGTV, an off-shoot of Instagram, these influencers can even post videos up to an hour long versus only 60 seconds on Instagram.
The Deciding Factor Should NOT be the Number of Followers
Originally, influencers most in demand were also the influencers with the highest number of followers on social media platforms. However, over time it was discovered that this metric for selecting an influencer may not always be the best, leading to the rise of the different influencer marketing categories, and the use of a broader set of metrics in the selection process. It is important that today’s influencers are aligned with a brand’s values. An influencer must engage people that match a company’s target audience and connect with them via their most used social media channels. Authenticity and being real often hold much more weight with most target audiences than other factors.
Consider Multiple Influencers
Instead of spending all your budget on one mega-influencer, you may want to consider using several micro-influencers instead. They have a targeted and smaller reach, but with several different micro-influencers you can gain visibility across a variety of audiences, increase the level of engagement, garner more mentions, and have fun seeing how the different influencers represent your product. However, dealing with more than one influencer can be tricky, and make your campaign more complicated. It is important to set clear expectations from the start and then give these influencers some creative leeway to work their “marketing magic” with their followers.

Grow Your Business with Influencer Marketing

These are just a few of the 2019 influencer marketing trends that you should consider before utilizing this marketing tactic. The diamonddog Marketing team has worked with influencers to drive brand visibility for many types of companies. If you are interested in learning more about influencer marketing and how to incorporate it into your plan, please feel free to contact us at info@diamonddogmarketing.com or 847-269-1422.