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Influencer Marketing, easy as ABC!


Look out everyone, influencer marketing is changing the way we do business. Having a great restaurant is a good start, but without influencers to endorse and promote your establishment, your chances of being successful are greatly reduced. When it comes to picking restaurants, clothes, or even everyday products, 92% of consumers trust user-generated content more than they trust traditional advertising.

Influencer marketing does not need to be scary or overwhelming. Follow our A-to-Z guide for influencer marketing success!

A) Appearance: Do you like their style? Make sure you check out different influencer profile's, style's and their brand voice.

B) Brand: Does your influencer's brand fit your brand? You wouldn't ask a food-based influencer to come take pictures of your clothing boutique. For best results, make sure their brand fits your needs.

C) Conversation: Influencer marketing is a great tactic, but it must convert to be successful. A recent study has shown that campaigns that feature influencers experience much larger conversation rates.

D) Define Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers.

E) Engagement: It's all fine and dandy to have a ton of followers, but if your influencer doesn't have a lot of engagement they might not be worth your time. Remember, you can compromise on the number of followers, if engagement is high.

F) Finding Influencers: Finding a good influencer may seem like a lot of work, but it's as easy as 1, 2, 3. One, check out popular hashtags in your area, ex: #SanDiegoEats. Two, check out your competitor's photos and see who they work with. Three, if you have an influencer you've enjoyed working with in the past, see who they engage with.

G) Growth: Instagram has been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms and is now an almost $2 billion industry.

H) Hashtags: Communicate with your influencer about which hashtags you would like them to use when posting about your business.

I) Impressions: The more people you can reach, the better it is for brand awareness and exposure. Working with influencers increases your impression reach.

J) Jargon: Keep it simple and use authentic language in your messaging. Influencers are people just like you and me.

K) Key Performance Indicator: The five essential KPI's when it comes to influencer marketing are conversations, reach, awareness, referral traffic, audience growth and engagement.

L) Location: If you are a business that only has one location make sure your influencer is local. There is no sense in having someone promote your business if their fan base is on the other side of the country.

M) Marketing Needs: To get the most out of influencer marketing, treat it like any other marketing strategy. You need to have a firm idea of your goals and what you want to achieve.

N) Nano Influencers: Nano influencers are everyday people with a small, generally more friend-based following. They can be used to create buzz within a very targeted audience. These influencers are great for smaller, single location-based restaurants.

O) Optimize: Use your influencers to help optimize your reach, accounts, engagement, conversation and growth.

P) Participate: To help maintain your relationship with influencers, participate in their growth by continuing to engage with them even after you have finished working together.

Q) Quality vs. Quantity: Remember loading up on influencers doesn't always help your business. Make sure the content they are putting out is quality and accurate to how you would like your brand to be represented.

R) Relationship: Building a relationship with influencers is key! Remember, you are helping each other grow, so keep that relationship going.

S) Stories: For Instagram specifically, keep an eye out if your influencer is posting on their feed or just their stories. Stories are fine, but the feed is where the conversation happens.

T) Timing: If you have a big event coming up, it is great to schedule influencers beforehand, so they can help promote it. They can draw the audience to your account and bring awareness to your promotion.

U) Unity: The line between a blogger and influencer is becoming more and more blurred. Make sure your PR Team and Social Media Team work in unity.

V) Visuals: Visual content receives 94% more views than text-only marketing. Keep your visuals high- quality and relevant.

W) Why: Ask yourself why you are looking to partner with influencers. Are you trying to reach a new audience, create a niche following, or increase overall awareness and engagement?

W) X-Promote: Commonly known as cross-promoting. Use your influencers to help you promote events, contests, new items and more!

Y) You: Remember, it all comes back to you, so make sure influencer marketing is benefiting you and your company.

Z) Zeal: Keep it energetic and enthusiastic!

Hopefully, we have given you the steps and advice you need to embrace your influencer marketing. If you need you'd like help with your Influencer Marketing, give Alternative Strategies a call at: 619-858-0322 and see what we can do for your brand.