Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which influencers are used to promote a brand to a larger audience. This blog article is an influencer marketing guide for 2022. 

Influencer marketing

As you have a sound understanding of Influencers we can discuss influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is one of those terms that means exactly what it says on the term. It indicates that firms collaborate with influential people to assist them with online marketing.

Influencer marketing, at its most basic level, is a sort of social media marketing that relies on endorsements and product mentions from influencers.

Influencers have a large social following and are regarded as specialists in the field.

Influencer marketing strategies try to discover the key people who function as influencers in your niche.

And you can approach them about collaborating on brand promotion & sponsored content.

Only celebrities and a few professional bloggers dominated the influencer marketing campaigns a decade ago.

But now there are countless influencers around the world businesses can reach out.

Influencer marketing works because social influencers have a high level of trust among their followers, and their recommendations act as social proof to your brand’s prospective consumers.

Who are the influencers?

Before getting into Influencer marketing, we have to understand who is an influencer. 

An influencer is someone with the ability to influence others’ decisions.

An influencer has a large follower base on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook & TikTok. 

There are influencers in niches like fashion, photography, digital marketing, health & fitness, music & more. And they are actively engaged with their audience. 

There are four types of influencers for your influencer marketing campaign. According to your product/service & objectives, you can select any influencer. 

• Mega Influencers. 
• Macro Influencers. 
• Micro-Influencers.
• Nano Influencers.

1.Nano Influencers (1k-10k influencers)

Nano Influencers have 1000- 10000 followers on their social media platforms. Nano Influencers have a large follower base with high engagement.

They promote the brands & products they love & use. So, their followers value their honest opinions & recommendations. 

They have a good relationship with their followers and take the time to engage with them to strengthen those bonds.

Nano Influencers are a great cost-effective option if you have a small or mid-size business with a limited budget. 

And also, if you need to test a new product with a new niche, it is better to use nano influencers. 

Instagram is a great place to find nano influencers for your business.

Following are some examples for Instagram Influencer.

2.Micro-Influencers (10k-100k followers)

Micro-Influencers have a 10k-100k follower base on their social media platform. Even though micro-influencers have a pretty large audience, they still tend to engage with their audience. 

Influencers at this level prefer to concentrate on a specific niche. They usually have a targeted audience and high interaction rates. 

It makes it easier for brands to work with these influencers to develop specific sponsorships.

If you want to generate more targeted leads, it is a good idea to use micro-influencers as the best option. 

As micro-influencers specialize in a niche, they can deliver better marketing messages to the audience. 

3.Macro-Influencers (100k-1M followers)

Macro-influencers have a 100k-1M follower base on their social media platforms.

Macro influencers are internet celebrities who may be social media influencers, bloggers, vloggers, or podcasters.

Macro influencers not only have a massive following, but they’ve likely built that following through months or years of maintaining relationships and expanding followers. 

Because of their larger following, they will almost certainly have a low level of engagement.

Macro influencers are excellent for promoting your brand, products, and services. 

You can leverage this relationship to expand your brand’s reach and increase engagement rates. 

Macro influencers can help you reach a broader audience and improve your brand’s reputation because they have a large follower base.

You can find macro-influencers on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok & Facebook. You can look for hashtags relevant to your industry or niche to find them.

Mega Influencers have more than 1 million followers & usually, these mega influencers are celebrities like actors, actresses, and singers.

You should have a higher marketing budget, if you want to get mega influencers for your brand.

Through mega influencers, you can attract a broad audience & it is not a niche audience. 

If you want to increase brand awareness & reach many potential customers, mega influencers will be a good idea. Because, they can bring your brand in front of millions of eyes. 

Mega influencers are usually well-known so finding them is not difficult. 

Rather than searching for brand mentions and hashtags for your brand, product, or specialty, look for accounts that qualify as mega influencers and see if any of them work for your company.

Steps to create an Influencer Marketing Strategy. 

1.Identify your goals & objectives. 

An influencer marketing campaign with a goal can be successful for sure. Let’s look at five influencer marketing goals you should consider. 

Increasing brand awareness- 

Increasing brand awareness is a significant goal of influencer marketing. You need to increase the awareness of your brand if you want more customers. 

Boosting website traffic –

Boosting your website traffic is also a critical influencer marketing goal. Try to attract more relevant traffic that can turn into conversions. 

Drive sales-

By doing influencer marketing, your final goal is to increase your sales.

2.Identify your target audience.

Identifying your target audience is also essential in your influencer marketing strategy.

First, you have to define who your target audience is for this influencer campaign. 

You can develop audience personas to understand who your target audience is. 

Are you trying to reach more of your current audience? Otherwise, are you trying to reach a new audience?

When you identify this, you can search for influencers that match your target audience. 

If you are trying to promote an electronic item & you use a fashion-related influencer, it will be a total waste. 

If you need to get maximum results from the influencer campaign, you should work with an influencer who matches your target audience.

3.Consider the rules & regulations related to influencer marketing.

Well, this is not compulsory in every country. In some countries, there are rules & regulations related to influencer marketing. 

For example, the United States & United Kingdom are two countries with rules for influencer marketing.

So, when planning influencer marketing, do your research well to get maximum benefits. 

4.Three R of Influencing. 

The influence should have three components: relevance, reach & resonance. 

Relevance means the influencer should be relevant to your brand/ product/industry. 

If you choose the wrong influencer, it will be a waste of money. 

Reach is the number of people you could reach through an influencer.

It should align with your goals. If you need to increase your brand awareness, you should select an influencer with a large audience.

If you want to test a new product, even a nano influencer would be sufficient. 

Resonance is the level of engagement an influencer can get to your brand. Engagement from followers is essential. 

5.Making a list of Influencers.

Now you have identified your influencer campaign goals & the target audience. 

The next step is to make a list of appropriate influencers you can collaborate with. 

Not every influencer you see on the internet can be a trustworthy one. People buy followers on Instagram for money & it is not a good practice.

So, an influencer with purchased followers is not worthy of investing. 

Engagement is the key component you have to think about & check. You can check if your influencer has more likes, comments, shares or views for the content shared. 

If Yes, that means the influencer has a loyal follower base. 

And also you should check the relevance to your brand/product. As explained before, this is a key factor. 

6.Research, Research & more Research. 

Research what your listed influencers are posting. If they keep a balance between sponsored posts & organic posts, they are good influencers. 

The followers do not like to see only the paid content on influencers’ profiles.

Doing your research before reaching out to the influencer is easy & for the influencer. 

A good understanding of what that influencer is promoting is essential.

7.Contact the influencers privately.

When you decide that an influencer is suitable for your brand, you should reach out privately. 

A direct message is a great way to start when you’re ready to suggest a relationship. If you can locate an email address, use it. However, do not send a mass email or message.

Writing a personalized message to each influencer may take a little longer.

However, it will show that you are serious about the potential collaboration. As a result, your chances of making a deal will improve.

Provide as much information about your brand as possible.

You should tell influencers what you want your influencer campaign to achieve. Make it clear how the influencer will gain in addition to cash payment.

8.Communication.

Regular communication with the influencer is essential until the campaign is over.

When creating content, the influencer should convey the message you need to tell your target audience. So, this is a necessary point you should consider. 

9.Measure Results.

To measure the results of a campaign, you need to understand its worth in terms of return on investment. 

If you use the branded content tools on Facebook and Instagram for your influencer campaigns, you’ll have access to insights for both feed and Stories posts.

You can access these through Facebook Business Manager.

You could also ask the influencer to send you insights on reach and engagement levels for each post. 

Influencer Marketing Tools

1. Hootsuite.

Hootsuite search streams help you discover influencers relevant to your industry across multiple channels. 

When you create a list of influencers, you can add them to this tool & check what they share.

2.Right Relevance Pro.

This software can find top influencer content depending on the topic and area.

It can be used to find thought leaders and possible influencer partnerships depending on the quality of the content they post.

This tool will search & export influencers over 40k topics.

And it will search & share articles & other content for over 40k topics. Apart from these features, it has many more benefits you can get. 

3.Facebook brand collab manager.

With this tool, you can build your brand by leveraging well-known creators & public figures. 

Meta Brand Collabs Manager makes it simple to identify the perfect influencers and gain actionable information on their most engaged followers. 

And you can collaborate on branded content that promotes through targeted advertisements. 

This tool is free & you can join & use it free.

Influencer marketing strategies according to your goals.

1. Product Reviews.

Influencers can use their posts to promote your company’s products or services.

It should, however, be more of a review in which the influencer talks about their experience with your products.

2. Doing Giveaways or Contests.

Collaboration with influencers to conduct giveaways and contests is an excellent approach to increasing brand awareness. 

It exposes your brand to a new audience that could potentially become your customers. Contests and freebies might assist in attracting a large audience.

If your influencer marketing goal is to increase brand awareness, you should use contests to encourage content sharing. Use branded hashtags to increase brand exposure.

3. Affiliate marketing & discount codes.

Affiliate marketing & discount codes will benefit both the influencers & their followers. 

The best way to accomplish this influencer marketing goal is to use affiliate marketing and discount codes.

You can give a personalized discount code to encourage people to buy. And then, you can provide an affiliate link to the influencer to track sales. 

These are only a few strategies you can do Influencer marketing. 

Common mistakes in Influencer marketing.

• Work with an influencer who does not match the brand’s target audience. 
• Try too much control over the content that the influencer shares.
• Select an influencer who will ruin the brand’s reputation. 
• Try to make the influencer content like an advertisement.

Conclusion.

According to influencer marketing hub, 40% of marketers use influencers to increase brand awareness. 

Influencer marketing offers you a fantastic opportunity to reach millions of potential customers. 

Influencers will share about your brand & the experience they had with your brand across a large audience. 

Advertising & sales campaigns are not effective as before. Now people are used to more modern ways of marketing. 

Working with influencers is a great way to bring your brand in front of millions of eyes.

If you want your Influencer campaign to be successful, you need a proper strategy. Without a proper strategy, it will be a failure. 

This blog post provided you with an ultimate guide to influencer marketing.

When you create an influencer marketing strategy, use the steps given in this blog post. 

If you need any help in planning your influencer marketing campaign, reach out to us at any time. Our team at DigiFix is more than happy to help you to grow your business. 

Check out the below articles for more similar content:

Influencer Marketing in Digital Business.

How to use hashtags effectively?

How to do content marketing effectively.