Influencer marketing is all the rage in the world of digital marketing today, and not without good reason! With the world increasingly spending more and more of its time online, it’s no surprise that their shopping — and related recommendations — also happen in the online world. According to one survey, 78% of adult women used at least one social media site.
Influencer marketing companies are in the business of making this exceptionally fertile ground in digital marketing work for you. If you’re considering taking a dive into the world of influencer marketing for your business, it’s vital to have a good sense of how to choose the right influencer for your brand. This is where a reliable influencer marketing company can be immensely helpful. Keep reading to learn more about how you can choose the right influencer for your brand.
A Choice Between Great Reach and The Right Niche
Influencer marketing companies often work on a simple principle of choice when putting together influencer marketing strategies for brands. According to them, you can either choose a great reach or a great niche. In other words, according to influencer marketing companies, the choice ultimately comes down to partnering with an influencer with a large and diverse follower base or an influencer with a small and specific follower base.
- Great Reach
Influencers with great reach, according to influencer marketing companies, can help boost the visibility of your brand. However, partnering with these kinds of influencers can be an expensive affair, and more importantly, your marketing efforts will not be as targeted as they could be precisely because you are casting a wide net.
- Right Niche
On the other hand, when you partner with an influencer operating in a niche that operates with your brand, you get a much more concentrated form of digital marketing that targets precisely the customers that will be most interested in your product or service. Not only do you get a close and often personal and very authentic relationship with your audience, according to influencer marketing companies, but it is also significantly more cost-effective and offers greater conversion rates.
- Choosing The Right Influencer for Your Brand
Once you have made the first vital decision — as attested to by the best influencer marketing companies in the business — it’s time to consider a few other factors. An influencer marketing company will conduct an assessment for you that includes the following criteria to determine the best partnership for your brand.
- Relevance
Choosing an influencer that plays well with your brand is vital to an effective influencer marketing strategy. A good influencer marketing company will draw up a list of influencers that have the right image, range of interests, and followers that work well with your brand’s offering. While it’s easy to choose the most viral influencer on Instagram right now and simply work with them, this won’t necessarily work if they don’t align with your brand’s image and offerings.
Choosing an influencer relevant to your brand will ultimately be a crucial step in building trust with your audience. If you’re a bakery selling birthday cakes, you wouldn’t want to partner with someone who markets dieting pills, right?
- Knowing What Your Customers Want
Before choosing any influencer for your marketing strategy, influencer marketing companies recommend getting a clear and thorough sense of who your audience is and what they want. A number of digital marketing techniques and tools, such as buyer persona creation and customer journey mapping, can help you get this understanding.
Knowing who your customers are — how old they are, where they live, what they do online, etc. — can help you narrow down the types of influencers they interact with online. This is a vital step in choosing the perfect influencer for your brand.
- Good Engagement Rates
One of the primary reasons for using influencer marketing is reach and engagement. Thus, finding influencers with consistent engagement rates is vital to choosing who you will partner with. An influencer marketing company will typically evaluate traffic, likes, follows, and conversion rates to ensure that you will get the returns you want from your partnership.
- Knowing The Influencer’s Content and Style
Understanding the type of content an influencer posts — their style, their aesthetics, the types of content they post — is vital to choose one that fits your brand’s goals and image. After all, in many ways, influencers build their own follower bases by building a brand around their personality and posting style. The best influencers have a consistent posting style and schedule that aligns well with what their followers want.
Following potential influencers, you are considering working with is a great first step in vetting their content as it relates to your business. When you take the time to do this, you not only build a foundation for a solid partnership, you create the space to set out your brief and find alignment in your vision and your goals.
- Vet Influencers Thoroughly
You don’t want to partner with someone who is buying followers, for instance, or misrepresenting their engagement metrics. You also don’t want to end up with an influencer with a shaky reputation. Therefore, it’s crucial that you carefully research and vet any influencer you are considering working with in your digital marketing strategy. A good influencer marketing company can do all this for you and present you with a thoroughly researched and vetted list of the best influencers for your brand.
The Upshot
Influencer marketing can be a potent marketing strategy when implemented with care. However, choosing the right influencer for your brand is a long process that must be undertaken with the utmost care. Doing your due diligence is crucial to making a choice. An experienced influencer marketing company like AdLift will gladly do all the heavy lifting on your behalf to help you find the perfect influencers to partner with for your brand. This allows you to enjoy the endless benefits of influencer marketing while focusing on what you do best: running your business.
