How does Influencer Marketing work? Strategies and Examples
Updated: Jun 14, 2021
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Influencer Marketing is growing day by day.
It’s no new news that consumers these days are more likely to trust an influencer as against a marketer, even though we know that the influencer might be paid by the same marketer.
So is an influencer the same as a brand ambassador?
Yes, to some extent but the term influencer marketing is more so used in the social media or digital landscape.
The crux of the concept lies in influencers promoting the brand to their fan following.
Now this promotion could be through actual usage of the product or just a recommendation to try out the product.
Did you know?
Influencer marketing strategies, if incorporated well, generate 8x times the ROI!!
So in this blog post, we aim to analyze the entire concept of Influencer marketing from the very basic to understanding the actionable strategies to incorporate.
We will broadly cover the following topics:
1. Who are Influencers?
2. What is Influencer Marketing?
3. Types of Influencer campaigns
4. Influencer marketing on various social media platforms
5. How to develop an Influencer marketing strategy?
6. Examples of Influencer marketing?
Let’s look at each of them
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1. Who are Influencers?
In simple terms, an influencer is anyone and everyone who can influence consumers.
Anyone who can affect their purchase decisions, thanks to his/her knowledge, authority, or relationship.
Now influencers need to be specific to a niche that your brand operates in, for example, a fashion blogger with a huge following may be approached by a beauty product.
One of the crucial things to understand here is the difference between influencers and celebrities.
Influencers have, over a while, built a great connection with their audience, and these people look up to the influencer in a much more personalized way.
That personal connection is missing when it comes to celebrities.
Even the trust factor, is a lot more when it comes to an influencer than against a celebrity.
2. What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves the process of a brand collaborating with an influencer to market their product.
The primary goal is to get more brand recognition in return.
Influencer marketing works on a psychological approach wherein when you see your favorite YouTuber wearing a specific set of clothes, or earrings, or anything in general, you want to have the same.
It’s this aspirational need of yours that beautifully gets tapped into when you come across influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing puts in the best blend of social media marketing and content marketing and hence provides really good results.
3. Type of Influencer Campaigns
Now Influencer marketing can be done in many ways, but here we have a few of them listed as per their popularity.
a) Discount Codes and Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, especially in India is growing by leaps and bounds.
And this is also a part of the bigger umbrella of Influencer marketing.
This involves influencers tying up with the brands to promote their products and also provide a discount code to their followers.
Similarly, for Affiliate marketing, there are affiliate marketing links provided by the influencers, and any purchases made through those links, lead to commissions to those influencers.
b) Brand competitions and Giveaways
Giveaways work brilliantly, here the brands provide the influencers with some products, which are then put up as a part of the giveaways, and lucky winners, from the follower base, receive them.
Competitions may be ‘sponsored by brand XYZ’ which helps in getting brand recognition.
4. Influencer marketing on various social media platforms
Social media platforms work differently when it comes to influencer marketing, in the sense, that platforms like Instagram or YouTube have a much better result probability as compared to the rest.
Influencer Marketing on Instagram:
Influencer marketing on Instagram is quite common these days and is also considered to be an ‘authentic form of marketing’ on the platform.
Back in the day, just sending one product for free did the job, but now the demands of these influencers are much more than that and hence brands need to be really picky while choosing the right influencer.
According to a recent study, it was found that 72% of Instagram users were influenced in their purchase decision thanks to the products being promoted by influencers.
Influencer Marketing on YouTube:
Another famous social media platform for influencer marketing is YouTube.
Well, it’s the second largest search engine and given the average amount of time spent by individuals on this platform, influencer marketing is bound to work here.
The best part about this platform is the fact that the niches are very well-defined here.
For example, if our product is cookware, there are numerous cooking or recipe channels that we can look at for collaborations.
5. How to develop an Influencer marketing strategy?
This has to be a very well thought process and should include the following steps:
a) Deciding on the right social media platform
Now, this is based on understanding your product offering, your target consumers, etc.
You need to know what you wish to gain through influencer marketing, is it brand recall, sales, or something else.
Where are your target consumers most likely to be found? Is it Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or somewhere else?
b) Choosing the right Influencer and understanding your budget
Do you think choosing an influencer only based on the number of followers will do you any good?
Definitely not.
In fact, these days there are so many fake followers available for a cost of as low as Rs.100
So always look out for the engagement rate before selecting an influencer.
It’s also important to analyze whether the influencer language is matching what your brand stands for.
The higher number of followers, usually the higher is the rate charged by influencers, so if you have a stringent budget in your mind, do not approach someone way out of your league.
c) Decide on the end goal and way to get there
How do you ensure that your brand seeps in subtly, without it being noticed as a brand promotion?
So you need to have the perfect messaging strategy put in place, and this will change based on the end goal that you have.
6. Examples of Influencer Marketing
1. Baggit
Back in 2015, Baggit wanted to create an engagement platform with its users to introduce a new collection.
They introduced an influencer marketing campaign by hosting an event with top bloggers showcasing their new collection and indulging in interactions around the same.
The result? The campaign had over 5,531,042 impressions on social media!
2. Taco Bell
Taco Bell, for the launch of their crispy Potaco, tied up with one of the most famous social influencers Tanmay Bhatt.
The campaign revolved around Tanmay Bhatt posting short clips with his added humor around the product.
The result? The campaign received over 24,522,245 impressions around the hashtag #MakePotatoGreat
Conclusion:
Influencer Marketing if incorporated well, can do wonders for your brand.
It may also turn out to be a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing, given the well-targeted reach that it offers.