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Influencer Marketing: What Sorcery is That?
I bet you must have heard “influencer marketing” at least once if you, by any chance, do anything related to marketing.
In this blog post, I will address all the questions about influencer marketing and how to do it properly. I’m sure many of you do not even know what it is.
Let’s say that it is the last resort if your marketing efforts fail to bring traffic to your website, and in case you already have a few references in your back pocket, you might as well start with influencer marketing.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Well:
Let us start with a simple example. We know marketing can be explained as “spreading the word,” right?
If marketing is spreading the word, influencer marketing is asking industry influencers or famous people to spread the word.
Here is a quick example right off the bat.
Whenever you see that a famous personality inaugurates a new outlet, most importantly, someone with influence on the same niche, that is an example of influencer marketing.
So what do you do in influencer marketing? You design your marketing activities (digital and physical) around that person.
For a better understanding, here are a few examples from some very famous PR events:
- Motorola Moto Z and Moto Mods Launch – YouTube influencers were found to run a campaign for Moto Z, and those vloggers ran some impressive campaigns and won 122,000 clicks for Moto Mods.
- Anthem of US Marketing Campaign for Bedrock Real Estate, Detroit – This event was not about internet celebrities, bloggers, or vloggers, but local celebrities: famous rapper Big Sean made an emotional statement and recommended Bedrock.
- M&M 2016 Flavor Vote – This is another example of a television and film celebrity instead of an internet celebrity. M&M let the loyal customers and fans select the new flavor, and the official campaign manager was Emmy award-winning actor Tony Hale. You might know him if you watched “Stranger than Fiction.”
So:
These few examples are good enough to explain to you what influencer marketing is.
Influencer Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
To choose or not to choose is a perplexing question.
While we know that influencer marketing works like magic (because you bribe a famous person to market your sh***y product or service), let us not forget that there exists the science that we know as traditional marketing.
Does it digital or physical (conventional methods)? It works, so it only gets harder and harder to decide whether to go for influencer marketing or conventional one.
Few Differences:
- Traditional Marketing is called conventional because companies have used time-honored marketing tactics for decades. Even digital marketing tactics are not new anymore. There is a decade of trial and error behind them. It has more options to hit the nail.
- Since the young generation is the target audience for most products and services (e.g., web design target audience is millennials in online business), influencer marketing works like magic compared to traditional tactics.
- The best thing about influencer marketing is a third-party endorsement. You cannot deny the importance of getting a referral from a third party. If a baseball player praises those baseball accessories you sell, that means an immediate boost in sales.
- However, a problem with influencer marketing which you never have in traditional marketing, is the expense and time it takes to bring a third party on board. Also, what if they do not have time to do it when you need it? This is where traditional marketing comes to rescue you.
- Influencer marketing has another essential point; you can trust it because the person talking well about your brand is someone with a good reputation or closely related to your niche.
- Traditional marketing’s most vital point is the budget. From a meek Facebook ad to an email marketing campaign, nothing takes as much money as an influencer marketing campaign. Even if you skip celebrities and pick Instagram models or YouTube vloggers, the price they will charge you will be much more than having a two or three-fold traditional digital marketing campaign.
- In terms of ROI, traditional marketing cannot beat influencer marketing. It is only because of the trust and fan-following factors. One endorsement from one celebrity can give you an ROI that a full-stack digital marketing campaign cannot. It all depends on how you market that endorsement.
Is Influencer Marketing Effective?
Well:
I’ve kind of already answered that question. Take a look at the examples where big brands used influencer marketing.
However:
We can take a look at this question from another angle.
Why do we need marketing? Claude Hopkins believes that marketing is meant to single out one man out of a hundred and that man should be no one but our target customer.
Let us admit that conventional or digital marketing without influencers has failed to make it possible.
Even Facebook’s laser targeting tool fails to reach the exact kind of person who will buy your product or your client’s product.
This is the exact problem that influencer marketing addresses. For example, suppose your product is edible, and the target demographic is teens. In that case, you can hire a teen star (male or female) to endorse the product, which will directly approach the target audience.
Simply put, it helps the brands locate and directly advertise to their target audience.
It is helpful because it uses the sense of loyalty that a celebrity’s fans have for them. And this is precisely where it becomes tricky as well.
If you make a wrong assessment, pick a male celebrity to attract a male audience (usually considered a flaw because men love women, even if it is an ad about shaving cream). Your influencer marketing will only turn out to be a big-time failure.
What’s Micro vs. Macro in Influencer Marketing?
The terms “micro influencer” and “macro influencer” are not very well known to commoners who do not try influencer marketing.
Let us try to understand what micro-influencer marketing and macro-influencer marketing are.
As we know, micro means small, and macro is large. In everyday use, micro is a prefix used for a small-scale thing, e.g., micro business, and macro is used for large scale, e.g., macroeconomics.
So:
Considering these examples, here is what micro and macro influencer marketing are and which one is better compared to the other.
Micro Marketing
A micro-influencer is a person whose impact is on a small scale. They are the people who do not have an approach to a vast audience and do not cover a business’s entire audience.
If you ask me for an example, they are vloggers, bloggers, Instagram models, and somewhat famous podcast guys.
They are the people who can approach from 10,000 to a maximum of a few hundred thousand followers or audience.
The best example of such influencers is tech review, guys. Now if the best of them have a few hundred thousand viewers on YouTube, you can use them for your tech products.
Brands dictate they use a particular product in a review and endorse it. The impact is negligible in this case.
Macro Marketing
Now we’re talking!
Macro influencers are famous people. They can be from social media, but they are renowned as F.
We mostly have athletes, models, actors, singers, etc., in this category. Simply put, people with a huge fan following are found in this group, and thus their influence is also huge.
For example, Kylie Jenner did some influencer marketing for Bumble BeeHive and got one million+ likes for Bumble.
Micro vs. Macro Marketing
As explained, a micro-influencer is small-scale, and a macro is a big-scale influencer.
There are pros and cons for each of them.
For example, a macro influencer reaches out to many target audiences, bringing in colossal ROI and traffic.
But on the other side, if you use a micro-influencer narrow down the market and want to have all the shebang with the budget, a micro-influencer is the best choice.
Quick Tipmicro-influencers I’ve talked a lot about all the critical aspects of influencer marketing; here are some quick tips before I say goodbye:
- Identify micro and macro influencers who belong to your niche and who can affect it.
- Create your campaign around a story that should involve that influencer.
- Spot on the analytics and see how influencer marketing is affecting your audience.
- Ensure that social media features the campaign on all great handles, e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Make sure that you run social media and Google ads based on the campaign
I am pretty sure you can do more with less if you follow these tips. Best of luck!
