What Is An Influencer In Marketing?

An influencer in marketing is a person who can affect the opinion or behaviour of a group of people, usually their followers, on social networks. Your influence can be remarkable in quantity (number of followers) or quality (a specific niche or segment of the population follows you and trusts your judgment).

The most common action of the influencer in marketing is for a company to partner with one of these prescribers to promote or recommend the company’s products or services among its followers. In return, the company will pay the prescriber’s fees.

Actions with influencers are already a reality today in digital marketing strategies and for users of social networks: 72% Follow influencers on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.

Also Read: Ecommerce Trends In 2021 To Keep In Mind For Your Business

What Is An Influencer For Marketing?

The influencer in marketing fulfills the primary function of recommending a product or service to his followers in networks. It works well as a promotion with a somewhat more organic and natural appearance than traditional advertising. 

Some of the typical actions that can be taken with a marketing influencer include:

• Sponsored Content: The influencer recommends the company in one or more publications on their social profiles.
• Reviews or Criticisms: Some influencers have specialized in criticizing products or services in specific industries. 
• Giveaways: The influencer conducts a giveaway on social media for lots of a brand’s product. 
• Product or Content Design Collaborations: Occurs when an influencer designs a product line (for example, a clothing collection).
• Long-Term Ambassadors: A relationship is created over time (of several months or even years) between the brand and the influencer. The latter becomes the visible face of a business. 
• Takeovers on The Platforms: In other words, the brand gives the influencer permission to publish their content on the brand’s social networks for a specified time, announcing this action on their profile. 
• Affiliate Marketing: The influencer provides a code (sometimes a discount) for his followers to use when purchasing on the website of the company being advertised, taking a commission for each purchase made with that code.

Advantages Of An Influencer In Marketing

1. Build Trust And Credibility In The Brand

The principal value of an influencer in marketing is the trust that his followers put in his judgment, his opinions and recommendations. Therefore, when one of these prescribers aligns with a brand, this credibility is transferred to the brand that they are recommending. 

2. Relevant Target Audience

Finding an influencer whose audience aligns with that of a business involves getting your company’s message to the type of person most likely to purchase your products or services. In other words, it is a perfect segmentation. Therefore, not only the number of followers or engagement matters but what profile they have.

3. Language Other Than Advertising

The influencer in marketing must be able to recommend a product with a natural and close language. In this way, even if a product is prescribed and is a paid collaboration, its appearance differs from that of a conventional advertisement. Instead, it works as an organic message, much like a word of mouth recommendation would. 

4. Improve Your SEO

If the influencer links from their website or social media profiles to yours, they are an authoritative domain and boost your SEO efforts. Although influencers can help a company stand out, turning to them without a consolidated digital presence is like starting the house on the roof. Users who discover the company must have a website or social networks that provide confidence to transform the influencer’s recommendation into more sales. 

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They did not convert a large enough number of customers. Prospects into customers. Since they discovered this new strategy, they have broken the old codes regarding marketing and sales. But what are the reasons why software companies are moving towards inbound marketing and soliciting an inbound marketing agency to help them? We explain everything to you in our article.

Software publishers often need to create and manage hyper-growth once they have passed their software solution’s development stage. In addition to generating leads quickly so that their activity is profitable, they also want to create new customers in masse! By definition, inbound marketing allows you to multiply your leaders and increase the probability that these leads will turn into customers. Therefore, inbound marketing responds perfectly to software publishers’ desire to want to make their software visible to as many people as possible.

Also, in these dynamic startups, the teams are often small. Software publishers do not always have the in-house skills to develop an adequate marketing strategy, but above all, they do not want to specialize in this branch and remain focused on their core business. This is why many software publishers decide to use the services of an inbound marketing agency. This saves them from having to resort to a recruitment process, and they can rely on the help of experts in the field who will be able to support them for as long as they wish.

Finally, software publishers are highly digitalized companies, for whom communication is a key point. They have an authentic digital culture and therefore know what they want in terms of communication. However, they need to be supported because they do not master inbound techniques. Thus, they are sensitive to everything digital. In particular, they are the first consumers of social selling to understand social networks and derive benefits from them.

The benefits of inbound marketing for software publishers. Software publishers are moving in large numbers towards inbound marketing strategies, in particular, because they have understood all the services that they can bring them. Who says inbound marketing says marketing automation! Such software makes it possible to qualify a database, which is often very important among software publishers. By modifying this database, they can then send personalized content to each of their prospects: send the right message, at the right time and to the right person.

This allows them to bring their prospects into a lead nurturing process to feed them little by little, depending on their progress in the conversion funnel. The number of contacts is no longer a problem since they can manage a reasonably large database without much effort. Thus, thanks to a marketing automation software set up in the context of an inbound marketing strategy, the marketing and sales teams will save a lot of time thanks to automation, allowing to simplify the management of leads.

Inbound marketing thus makes it possible to individualize the relationships that the company maintains with each of its prospects, according to the stage of the purchasing cycle in which they are. Therefore, personalizing the customer relationship makes it possible to move opportunities forward at their own pace in the conversion funnel and give them time to understand on the one hand.

The benefits that the software can bring them and, on the other hand, to understand the software’s features and technicalities. As part of an inbound marketing strategy, premium content such as webinars, white papers, and demos are put in place that makes it easier for prospects to understand the software. This type of content aims to alleviate the technical difficulties that some software may present and educate prospects on particular topics.

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So can you, but the strategy is older than you might think. Celebrities and charities have long acted as a pair. Charlize Theron was endorsing nonprofits before the new millennium even had time to sprout, and Bono was using his popularity to add marketing muscle to charities all the way back in the Eighties. The internet has created microcelebrities that come at a cheaper price, so influencer marketing isn’t a new tool—just an evolved one, and it has plenty to offer the social entrepreneurship landscape.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a hybrid of celebrity endorsement. It relies on the power of online popularity to market to their (usually sizable) audience. In a sense, you’re renting their digital property to gain publicity, but it’s not as simple as hiring the first influencer who crosses your path. Every micro-celebrity is a brand in itself, and when you associate your business with them, everything that they do rubs off on you. Your choice of online influencer needs to fit your niche like a beautifully-tailored suit.

Modern audiences are marketing-averse. They’ll avoid advertising content wherever they see it. Every ad is greeted with distrust, so the marketing world has had to create new ways to reach them. Enter the influencer. Internet personalities are able to market stealthily to your audience, gaining their trust on your behalf. They can improve your brand recognition in ways that ordinary advertising can no longer achieve, and if they share your charity’s values, they can deliver turbo-charged effects.

The Charitable Side of Instagram

Instagram is one of the most important influencer biomes on the internet, so it’s no surprise that the nonprofit world has been drawn to it. Influencer marketing for charities is a powerhouse tool, so all the best social entrepreneurs are using it. Blake Mycosie’s Toms has a potent presence there, as does Adam Braun’s Pencils of Promise. Charity water, Doctors Without Borders and Mercy Corps have some of the site’s biggest followings. The social network just works, and part of its effectiveness can be attributed to its tools. It offers:

• Captions: Videos and images can be paired with captions of 2, 200 characters. That’s significantly more than Twitter’s allowance, so it’s ideal for nonprofits who rely on storytelling to appeal to their audience.
• Strong branding potential through profile images and rich, image-based pages.
• Strategic links that are ideal for fundraising.
• Hashtags that can increase your reach exponentially, offering true viral potential.
• Instagram Stories: A new feature that allows you to share many moments in a single story.
• Instagram ads: A favorite tool among nonprofits. One in every three users responds directly through Instagram ads, so they’re a powerful link to your nonprofit’s site.

Also Read: YouTube Tests The Generation Of Chapters Using Artificial Intelligence

10 Tips for Working with Influencers to Help Promote Your Charity

Build a trustworthy reputation

Even spelling mistakes and typos can cause cracks in your reputation, so ethical errors in your marketing campaign can grow into a PR crisis. Make sure you use transparency and full disclosure. Nonprofits need to balance reality and ethics, so your influencer is legally required to disclose a brand relationship. It’s up to you to make sure that happens. Keep your campaign honest and you’ll win the support of your audience.

Build a beneficial relationship with the right influencer

The use of influencers for not-for-profit must, first and foremost, match your brand and its values. For that reason, choosing the right influencer will require plenty of due diligence. Common ground is essential. If your work is irrelevant to your ambassador’s social media presence, your campaign won’t appeal to their audience.

Preserve the authenticity of your influencer’s message

Once you’ve discovered the right brand ambassador, it’s time to build your influencer campaign, which will generally appeal to their audience more if it’s authentic to their usual voice. Influencer campaigns are the polar opposite of traditional marketing in that sense. Remember that it’s your influencer who your audience trusts, so your campaign must encapsulate their personalities.

It’s time for influencers and charities to carry their results into a new revolution.

4) Don’t Ignore Micro Influencers

Micro Influencers are the new A-listers. They typically have a following of between a thousand and 100,000 followers, but they also build stronger relationships with their readers. That makes them no less influential than their macro alternatives. In fact, their understanding of, and connection with, their followings can make them even more powerful than those with a million followers. That’s just the kind of ecosystem you need when you’re a nonprofit.

5) Move beyond brand awareness

It’s natural for marketers to treat branding as their field’s biggest trump card, but that can overturn all the great results your influencers can achieve for you. Content creators who prioritise monetisation earn the very same mistrust that audiences once reserved for advertisers. Your campaign’s strategic goals must align with the trust and relationships your influencer has built with their audience. This isn’t the time for salesy language or pre-written content. Build on the strength of your campaign by convincing your influencer of the importance of your cause. That way, their authentic voice will shine through.

Extract value from your influencer’s content

Content is precious. Every line comes with an important SEO value, building your search engine rank while funnelling traffic towards your site. Don’t forget to build ranking factors into your influencer’s content. Keywords, outbound links, and geotargeting take mere minutes to include, so don’t miss the opportunity.

Look for real passion

Almost 70% of influencers do what they do for the money alone. That leaves a meager 30% behind who have genuine passion for the topics they broach. Seventy percent of influencer audiences follow their favorite influencer because they like their honesty, authenticity, and openness. Those are the traits with true monetary value, and even more social benefit. A great nonprofit concept might capture the top Instagram influencers even if you’re still a small fish in a large pond. Still, it’s best to stay aware of your potential. If you’re a brand new nonprofit in a traditional field, you’re not likely to attract Selena Gomez or Daily Dose unless you put significant work into marketing to them.

Engage with your audience

Few enterprises bother to engage with the very audience they’ve paid to attract, and on Instagram, that’s a woeful mistake. Don’t take the “social” out of social media. Answer your audience’s questions and get to know your supporters. Create your own Instagram page and engage from your account. You might just become the next Toms, with a million followers to boot. In other words, your brand might become a social media influencer on its own steam.

Beware the fake influencer

It’s easy to build a following if you have the time to spam for readers and the money to buy followers. The size of your following is no indication of its power. Only organic readers are going to listen to your influencer’s content, so do your due diligence. Study all their social media accounts and look for buzz away from their feeds. True influencers make diamonds from grit, so their engagement ratio will be high. To check that ratio, divide their total engagements by their total followers, multiplied by 100. Most influencers have a ratio of at least 3%.

Aim for more than just exposure

While every campaign should prioritize its unique goals, exposure isn’t enough. Not all readers are at the same stage of brand awareness, so it’s time for some good, old-fashioned target marketing. Use a standard buyers funnel to place your potential readers according to their exposure level. Impressions are useless if your influencer isn’t moving your audience to the next phase of your funnel. Conversions matter, even in the nonprofit sector. A typical nonprofit marketing funnel is:

• Attraction: via engaging content, SEO, social media, and pay-per-click advertising.
• Education: Via lead nurturing, engaging content, landing pages, and outbound marketing
• Conversion: Via calls to action, online forms, and remarketing.
• Retention: Through track nurturing, custom emails, and engaging content.
• Creation of brand ambassadors and repeat donors.

Influencer marketing can cover most stages of your funnel, but it won’t cover anything if you don’t know which stage you’re working on. If you create target audience personas as well, you’ll be able to hit your target with an impressive amount of precision.

It’s time for nonprofits and influencers to carry their results into a new era: An era in which causes captivate audiences at a high enough level to start a revolution. With Instagram’s biggest influencers at your side, you can change the world.

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“Advocacy Marketing (brand ambassadors) is already a cornerstone of brand strategies. More and more companies understand that the objective of marketing is not only to attract new consumers but also to become brand advocates, ”

Trends in influencer marketing 2020

1. Select influencers beyond reach 

The influencer marketing will follow the steps of digital marketing in which they are based on very complex data and programmatic solutions, where the data is key in planning and decision-making, since evaluating influencers based on basic metrics such as the number of followers and reach is somewhat obsolete. 

For this reason, brands must know where those followers are from, how many they will be able to reach if they are related to them … and not just stay to identify the reach of the influencer.

Thanks to the algorithmic nature of social platforms, influencers can be evaluated from other factors such as the number of followers in the target, the percentage of false followers, the engagement ratio, or the growth rate, among others.

2. Evolution of formats: from image to video 

Video is the leading format of the branded content of 2020. Statistics in the industry suggest that the audiovisual format will represent around 80% of all internet traffic in 2021. Whether in the form of stories, tutorials, step by step, or product reviews.

And is that, the influencers become now more than ever producers and distributors of content. Since, for brands, the content generated by these creators is a very profitable and efficient way of distributing their message and video content among masses of audience and therefore they will resort to influencers with strong learning in audiovisual production. 

3. Objectives beyond Instagram and YouTube

Emerging channels such as Tik Tok or People can be the best allies for brands to focus their advertising and influencer marketing on them, although traditional media such as Instagram and YouTube continue to be maintained.

This growth in new social networks will push brands to diversify their strategy and expand the content on new platforms that represent good opportunities to reach a target that is difficult to reach and convince: Millennials and Generation Z. 

At this point, creativity by influencers and personalization of campaigns will be essential to gain a foothold in new platforms.

4. Impact on sales 

The new objective is the conversation because until now it had been difficult to demonstrate the direct return on sales of influencer marketing. Therefore, new tracking methods, discount coupons, or fees that vary according to conversion and other strategies should be used. In addition to reach and engagement, the ROI of influencer marketing will also be measured this year in leads, interactions, views, visits, and, finally, sales. 

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