What is Influencer Marketing? A Beginner's Guide

Types of Influencers

Influencers come with various degrees of reach, and depending on your brand’s goals, you may want to partner with influencers who have followings of a specific size. Here are the four primary categories of influencers:

Mega Influencers

Mega influencers are individuals who have a following of over one million people on social media platforms. These individuals are typically celebrities or other public figures who have built massive followings due to their status in society.

Mega influencers are the most expensive type of influencers to partner with, but they can obviously provide immense exposure for your brand. Collaborating with a mega influencer can help you reach a broad audience quickly, making them ideal partners for helping companies build brand awareness at scale.

Macro Influencers

Macro influencers have social media followings that range between 100,000 and one million people. These individuals are usually popular content creators who have built loyal followings based on the content they create and share.

Partnering with macro influencers can be more cost-effective than partnering with mega influencers while still providing access to very large audiences. Macro influencers can also offer more targeted exposure than mega influencers, as their followings are usually more focused on a particular niche.

Micro Influencers

Micro influencers are individuals who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers on social media platforms. Micro influencers are typically subject experts who have built devoted followings based on their expertise in a particular niche.

Partnering with micro-influencers can be an effective way to reach a highly targeted audience. Micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement rates than macro or mega influencers, making them great options for brands looking to drive conversions.

Nano Influencers

Nano influencers have followings of fewer than 10,000 people on social media platforms. These individuals are often everyday people who have built significant followings based on their passions or talents for a particular subject.

Partnering with nano influencers can be an affordable way for businesses to reach highly targeted and highly engaged audiences. While nano influencers may not have followings on the same scale as larger influencers, they tend to have the most engaged audiences, making them valuable options for brands looking to drive conversions on a budget. Furthermore, the “everyday person” status of many nano influencers can help to persuade discerning consumers who are naturally wary of celebrity endorsements.

Advantages of Influencer Marketing

There are many advantages to adopting influencer marketing as part of your marketing strategy. Here are just a few of the most prominent benefits:

Build Trust and Credibility

Influencers have spent considerable time and effort building credibility with their followers, so when they recommend a product, their followers are likely to trust their judgement. Partnering with influencers who have built this credibility with their audiences can immediately lend the same credibility to your brand.

Reach Your Targeted Audience

One of the most significant advantages of using influencer marketing is that it allows brands to reach highly targeted audiences. Depending on the type of influencer you partner with, you can easily reach a specific demographic, interest group, or geographic location that you want to target.

Improve Brand Awareness

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness. Influencers can promote your products and services directly to the most relevant audiences, ensuring the right people hear about your business. This increased exposure can help improve brand recognition throughout your target market.

Drive Conversions and Sales

Influencer marketing can also drive sales. Aside from the added brand exposure influencers provide, they may also encourage their followers to try your products or services by taking advantage of special discounts or promotions. This makes it as easy as possible for their followers to take the step toward becoming a customer and can result in increased conversions for your business.

Provide Authentic Content

Influencers are often content creators who promote products through authentic content that resonates with their audiences. By associating your brand with high-quality influencer content, you can showcase your products and services in a more natural and authentic way and make them more appealing to potential customers.

How to Start Using Influencer Marketing

Here’s how you can begin to incorporate influencer marketing into your business’s marketing strategy:

1. Define Your Goals

Before you start working with influencers, you need to clearly define your goals. What do you hope to achieve by partnering with influencers? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or improve engagement? Defining your goals will help you identify the type of influencer you should partner with and the metrics you should track to measure your progress.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

To find the right influencers, you need to understand the audience you’re trying to reach. Who are your target customers, and what social media platforms do they use? Create audience personas to get clearer pictures of your ideal customers. Understanding your target audience will help you identify the type of influencers that will resonate best with them.

3. Find the Right Influencers

Once you have defined your goals and identified your target audience, it’s time to find the right influencers. There are many different online tools available that can help you identify the best influencers for your brand based on their following sizes, engagement rates, and niches. You can also search for influencers manually by using hashtags or keywords related to your product or niche.

4. Reach Out to Influencers

Once you’ve identified a few potential influencers, it’s time to reach out to them. You can send them a direct message on social media, email them, or use an influencer marketing platform to connect with them. When reaching out to influencers, be sure to personalise your message and explain why you think they would be a good fit for your brand.

5. Collaborate with Influencers

Once you’ve found an influencer to partner with, you’ll need to collaborate with them on the type of marketing content you’d like to create. You can provide them with guidelines and talking points or let them create content on their own. Be sure to provide them with all the information they’ll need to promote your product accurately, and communicate openly about how you’d like the process to go.

6. Measure Your Results

Last, but not least, it’s vital that you track the results of your influencer marketing campaigns. You can monitor metrics like engagement rate and conversion rate to determine how effective your influencer marketing efforts ultimately are. Analyse this information carefully and use the insights to optimise your future influencer marketing campaigns.