Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire / hire / pay influencers to get out the word for you. Above in the header photo you can see the likes of Brian Fanzo, Victoria Taylor and many others who came to the recent Social Media Summit. Brian is the man if you want to get in front of millennials….also Victoria. Both are very active on snapchat and other platforms.
I was at a launch of #wrap4homeless last week with Meaghers Pharmacy. They launched an initiative to raise money for the Peter Mc Verry trust. The hashtag trended in Ireland because of the power of these influencers on snapchat, instagram and twitter.
Very wise move by Meaghers pharmacy. They know their audience. One snap on snapchat from an influencial beauty blogger can cause an influx of sales from their website. One tweet can cause a ripple effect and others will share it out and Retweet it. Meaghers invited all of the digital influencers they already had relationships with and encouraged them to spread the word about a worthy cause. It was a room full of bloggers, digital influencers and a room full of mobile phones being held up, being spoken into and numerous photos and tip tapping on phones.
Oh and they looked after us too with some gorgeous goody bags to take home with us, which I wasn’t expecting to be honest! I was there because I know Oonagh and her team, they have been clients and they sponsor my radio show too. So I was happy to be there. Huge fan here as a result (I shall be doing my shopping online with them for sure) and I will be telling my network all about it too.
When you engage and build relationships with influencers, Instead of telling 10 people about your brand they are potentially (depending on the amount of followers they have) reaching thousands of new potential customers and new brand advocates for you.
84% of consumers saying they always or sometimes act on recommendations from people they know. (source Nielson) So if they know like and trust you, they will happily Retweet and share what you say.
If you want to reach your customers through an influencer, find out who the top influencers are for your audience. If your target audience are aged 16 to 25 you need to find an influencer on snap chat. If it’s aged 35 to 55 and over 55 then you need to find influencers on Twitter and then you fine tune it down to whether its young mums, SMEs, Women in business, millennials, Leaving cert students, college students….whoever is in your target market and your ideal customer.
It’s time to embrace these influencers and don’t underestimate the power of these social media savvy bloggers. My own daughter (17) follows some of the beauty and fashion bloggers and wants to buy the products the bloggers are talking about. If people know like and trust you, they will listen to what you have to say. As an influencer there is a duty to be true to your values and only promote what you truly believe in. And the ones with the most influence usually follow this rule.
View full report here.
As the world has shifted to social media, consumers look at fellow consumers to inform their purchasing decisions. Also, every website visit, social like, and picture posted online can be stored and analyzed, yielding oceans of data that turns into valuable insights about your target market and your advertising performance. (source: Adweek ….10 reasons why Influencer marketing is the next big thing.
The influencers are influencial because they know their audience, they ‘get them’ and know what works and what doesn’t. I know straight away for example within a few minutes of posting a blog post whether it is good or not or whether that post will do well. If it does well, I know that I can update it at a later time and I will put the best one on my newsletters etc.
So if you want to reach your customers and you know who they are, start looking at who they are influenced by and who they are listening to. Get directly in front of your target audience and watch those sales grow!
This post was originally published by Samantha Kelly on her LinkedIn profile.
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