Influencing The Future

Way back when, even if we didn’t know it, we were all being influenced by celebrities selling us vacuum cleaners, weight loss gimmicks and everything in between. 

Fast forward to modern-day marketing with the power of social media and influencer marketing is now a massive million dollar industry.

How Did We Get Here?

As a society, we are easily influenced, even if we think we aren’t. We follow brands and individuals whose values and ideals align with ours. We purchase books, recipes, branded merch and music, we subscribe to podcasts, mailing lists and purchase memberships. We filter the content we consume based on our lifestyles and beliefs and place a certain amount of trust in the brands that we follow.

So if our favourite brand was selling black bags with their logo on it we might even buy them.

Can you imagine the amount of exposure your product, business or service would get if one of your favourite brands promoted us to their audience? Right?

Welcome to Influencer Marketing.

I Can’t Afford Kylie Jenner

Despite popular belief, influencer marketing isn’t all big-name celebs and million-dollar budgets. Civilians like us with real-life budgets are using influencer marketing with great success for all sorts of things.

There are different types of influencers:

• The Mega Influencers (The Kylie Jenners with a $1 Million price tag per post)
• The Macro Influencers ( Mega wannabes with 100k-1 million followers)
• The Micro-Influencers ( 10k – 100k followers )
• The Nano Influencers with less than 10k followers on social media

So if you have a real-life budget and are looking for a personal influencer experience for your clients or customers this is the type of influence category you want to look at. Influencers with smaller audiences have more time to connect with and interact with comments, messages, emails and inquiries, unlike the big-budget version who most likely don’t do any of that.

Before You Sign on the Dotted Line

Research is KEY. The industry is so big now that there are so many crooks and cowboys hanging about waiting to take your money. So make sure to do your own research before committing to a contract.

Don’t hesitate to ask for data and analytics from previous campaigns along with a portfolio of their work when requesting a press kit. Go through their posts and see if they are already posting about similar things in your industry and what kind of engagement they are getting.

Be aware that spammy type comments things like a low engagement rate vs follower count are red flags for a bogus account.

Influencing the Future

The landscape of commerce is rapidly evolving and every time you look up, it seems to have redefined itself. eCommerce was revolutionary and continues to be, growing branches like sCommerce (social commerce) which uses social media platforms and tools to drive eCommerce conversions.

And what drives social commerce?

Influencer Marketing.

Test out this marketing strategy by teaming up with a business buddy in your industry and cross-promote each other’s brands, products and services in a giveaway or promotional campaign. If you like what you see and you picked up a few conversions, it could be time to test the influencer marketing water.

If you are still not entirely sure which direction to take, you might want to start with a Crisp Apple Strategy Session so you can define a strategy that will help you get the most bang for your buck.

Get your info pack here.