You can still benefit from influencer marketing if you’re a small business. You’ll need to know how to find an influencer that fits your brand before contacting them. From there, you’ll need to know how to engage with the influencer to keep them interested in promoting content on your behalf.
Reading these small tips would be an excellent place to start with influencer marketing. You’ll learn how to drive sales through influencers in no time. Let’s begin!
1. Always Define Your Marketing Goals First
You must lay out your marketing goals before you start looking for influencers. You’ll be able to determine quickly if your strategy is working or if you need to change your plans. Solid marketing goals will help you decide what influencer strategy will work best for you.
Do you want to increase website traffic, brand awareness, or sales? You can even have a combination of goals with your marketing in mind. Defining them will help you meet your objectives, while not defining them is sure to make you waste your time.
Here are some of the most common goals that small businesses want to achieve through influencer marketing campaigns:
- Increasing website traffic: This strategy focuses on bringing more direct traffic to specific pages you run, intending to make more conversions. Having the influencer provide links to your website in their content is a great way to start.
- Increasing brand awareness: The strategy focuses on making an impression on social media so more people become aware that your brand exists. You’ll want the influencer to talk about your brand often to help spread awareness.
- Increasing sales: Many small brands want to make more sales through influencers. Promo codes and product endorsements from the influencers can help.
- Building customer trust: With this goal, you want your audience to trust you more. Influencers can help spread confidence and increase your credibility to customers.
- Growing your brand’s social media: Lastly, if you want to expand your social media, an influencer can help you make content for the page while promoting it on their account.
Having a few established goals will help you evaluate your strategies. So, make sure to have at least two of the above goals in place for your influencer strategy. TikTok influencers can help you meet all of these goals.
2. Think About Who Your Audience Connects With
Next, you’ll need to consider your target audience and who they connect with the most online. Your influencer should be someone they admire and trust.
It’s best to start by coming up with buying personas for your target audience. A buying persona is a detailed profile representing your ideal customer. It’s a fictional person, but it should consist of a ton of research.
Once you’ve built a buying persona, consider how the influencer would align with them.
3. Choose an Influencer in Your Niche
Now, it’s time to start researching influencers. You’ll need to ensure that the influencer’s audience overlaps with yours somehow. Usually, it’s best to work with influencers within your unique brand niche.
Influencers will have access to people in your target demographic if you go for a similar niche so that you can save some time and effort. Plus, you’ll know that your strategy will be more impactful.
You’ll want to spend time researching ones to ensure they have an audience you want to draw in. It’s also essential that you make sure they engage well with their following. You can use plenty of online tools to determine how effectively an influencer engages with their community.
Keyhole is a platform that offers this service. You can use it to find influencers in your niche through its keyword analytics. Some other platforms include Hootsuite and SocialBlade. No matter what tools you use, you’ll need to conduct ample research into any influencers you’re interested in working with.
4. Create Content With the Influencer
After reaching out to an influencer, you must make content with them. You want the content to represent your brand’s identity well while engaging your audience. You mustn’t change the influencer’s natural style, or it could distract your audience.
Some types of effective content include:
- Product reviews
- Interviews
- Tutorial videos
- Social media posts
Your content needs to be compelling and authentic. So, it’s best to let the influencer work their magic and then check on what they’ve come up with after to make sure it’s appropriate for your brand.
5. Focus on Communication
Next, you must ensure you have an open line of communication with the influencer. They need to feel comfortable contacting you with questions about the content. You’ll also need to set clear expectations for the partnership.
That way, the influencer knows when to submit deliverables, post videos or photos, and what messaging you want them to use. With more communication, you’ll earn the influencer’s trust faster, making them more likely to build a long-term relationship with you, which is ideal.
A long-term partnership with an influencer will offer you more consistent exposure and help you build more trust with the influencer’s followers. So, the longer you can work together, the more it benefits your brand.
Focusing on communication will help you meet your goals with the influencer. You must consider the two of you as a team, not an employee and employer, for the best results.
6. Follow Key Performance Indicators
While working with influencers, you must monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs). In doing so, you’ll get to see whether the campaign you’re running is working. You can adjust as needed and continue tracking to see how the changes impact the strategy.
Some KPIs you’ll need to monitor include engagement, click-through rates, and conversions. When working with an influencer, you generally want these areas to increase. With small brands, the increase should be slow but steady.
Expand Your Small Business With an Influencer
An influencer can help your small business grow. You’ll want to choose who you work with for the best results carefully. From there, make sure that you establish clear communication to help you meet your goals with the influencer.
Many small brands have seen success with influencers; you can too!