Influencer marketing is not for you? Think again!

Celebrities who advertise brands have been a thing for a long time. But influencers promoting your brand (or rather, specific products or services – and thus, indirectly, your brand) are a completely different story. As you may have guessed by now, being this lesson number 9: It’s much more personal. For two reasons.

Number one: It’s all about credibility. The right influencers for you are the ones who are truly into your products or services, and your offer fits perfectly into the demographic group they’re representing. They may stand for the customer personas you’re reaching out to – but in any case, you’ll find the respective profiles among their followers.

Secondly, it´s just like a good conversation should be: bidirectional. The followers give immediate feedback, ask questions, give ideas. Not only does this mean a great engagement, but you get to know your prospects and clients a lot better – and their needs, when it comes to optimization of your product.

This feedback is a plus you couldn’t get otherwise with the same quality, even when paying for it. And more often than not, they may give you ideas for new products, upgrades – or even just for another color which will sell even better.

It’s noteworthy that bigger isn’t necessarily better for your goals, when it comes to influencers. It can be, though. Nano influencers, who have only between a thousand and 10,000 followers, have a much higher engagement with their audience and often interact with each follower personally – while mega influencers with more than a million followers can’t provide the same personal engagement level, but offer greater exposure and reach. Nano influencers may not require much more payment than free access to some of your products, while the latter can charge up to more than a million USD for a single post.

Typically, a campaign will either cost more manpower, to manage multiple “smaller” influencers – or a higher budget, for one of the big shots in the influencer scene. Which strategy is right for you, doesn’t depend only on your resources, but even more on your goals and the nature of your product / service. For example: Is it highly specialized, for a well-defined, limited audience – or do you need to reach out to a broader one?

Even without special circumstances as those of 2020, the average time spent on social media is known to be about 2 hours and 22 minutes daily, and soaring. Thus, influencer marketing becomes an increasingly important part of a holistic data and personalization strategy. Its usage needs as much of an elaborated approach as any other aspect.