What is Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is now an accepted method of online or digital marketing. It has been a buzzword for some time now and is frequently referred to by mass media. Nonetheless, people still don’t fully appreciate what Influencer marketing is all about. Some people hear the term for the first time and instantly ask, What is influencer marketing?. 

But let’s first explain about influencers. 

Who are influencers?

The fusion of traditional and modern marketing technologies is Influencer Marketing. It takes the concept of advertising through famous personalities and puts them in a new content-driven marketing campaign. In influencer marketing, the key differentiator is that partnerships among brands and influencers are the products of the campaign. Yet influencer marketing doesn’t include famous people alone. 

It revolves mostly around influents, many of whom would never be identified in an offline environment. We described an influencer as someone who can influence other parties’ buying decisions because of their authority, experience, role or relationship to their public.

One of the significant weaknesses of mainstream media is that it does not understand the difference between famous people and online influencers.

It is also necessary to note that the influencers have developed an enthusiastic and keen audience.

It’s not by chance that these people are following influencers, not the brand. In reality, your brand doesn’t care less about the audience. They only care about the influencers’ opinions. Do not seek to enforce rules and procedures on an influencer. There is the audience, and they can walk away and take with them their fans. 

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer Marketing involves a brand that works with an online influencer to market one of its products or services.

Some marketing collaborations with influencers are less tangible – brands work simply with influencers to improve brand recognition. YouTube stars are an early example of influencer marketing.

This is a simple case. It’s easy to picture a successful corporation teaming up to sell a product — even if the advertisement is a 10-minute video series instead of a 30-second TV commercial. Yet people wouldn’t be thinking about influencer marketing.

And the key is an influencer in that word. Influencers can be everywhere, unlike celebrities.

They can be anything, and that makes them accessible through their comprehensive web and social media follow-up. A famous fashion photographer can be an influencer on Instagram, a well-read cybersecurity blogger who tweets or a trusted marketing manager on LinkedIn. There are influential people in every industry — you have to find them. Some of them would have hundreds of thousands of followers (if not millions). 

In many cases they may have only 10,000 followers, but if they have built a reputation as experts in their profession. Then they can also be considered as influencers. They are the people who make the most engaging social contributions on their subject, depending on their field of expertise. They post the best pictures, make the most fun posts, and hold the most insightful online discussions.

Who works in influencers marketing

• Think carefully, how your approach to influencers.

• Organize plan and budget, spend time on research.

• Decide how you find influencers – find them organically, subscribe to a network, or work with an agency.

Establish a timetable

• Is the influencer interested in calling or newsletters monthly / quarterly/annual?

• Integrate the PR strategy, product release schedule, etc.

• In behalf of leading executives, send emails. Plan executive travel schedules and organize a face to face meetings.

What Influencer Marketing is Not?

Influencer Marketing does not only involve finding someone with an audience and offering them money or exposure to make them tell good things about your brand. This is the purpose of viral celebrities. 

Influencers are people who have spent time building their own identity and developing their audience; they protect their image and the people they trust. They are people who have patience and emphasis on success in social media, an organic follower at a time — people like this do not want to market influencers purely for money.

Influencer marketing is not about immediate results either. This is like the Social Media and Content Marketing strategy, where the marketing does not explicitly sell the services or products. It’s about showcasing your authority, reputation and leadership in your business. It’s about being synonymous with whatever you do, as when people say that they go to Xerox, rather than to photocopy it.

With Social Media Marketing, this is a slow game to acquire loyal and committed followers. It’s hesitant to think that joining hands with an influencer would be an easy path into his followers’ hearts and minds — though, and it’s not that easy. You have to win their confidence and admiration as you ally yourself with influencers. But how does this happen?

What doesn’t work in Influencer Marketing?

Generalize your approach to identifying and using growing influencers. Not all influencers are of one dimension: tailor your approach to the particular influencer. Only look at the influencer ‘s success. Influence means not just success. Remember that your goal is to motivate your customers to take a specific action. Do not necessarily say a niche influencer is the people with the most followers.

One basic rule: marketing affects influencers.

Modern social media marketing allows a brand to build its identity on any channel it wants, so they can see who their brand champions are as time passes, so their follower bases expand. These are clients who like content and share or reference the brand in a post. By personal care and as part of a somewhat segmented network of all brand champions followers like this can be further nurtured. Marketing campaigns for this community concentrate on ways to keep the word going.

One problem with this strategy is that some of the supporters of a brand don’t have enough supporters to influence. Most average citizens do not necessarily operate on social networks. Many people have a small network of perhaps a few hundred mates and partners representing all sorts of feelings. In the meantime, marketers have trouble curating and producing content that they hope will resonate meaningfully with their fans while staying committed to day-to-day interactions.

This dispersed approach to social marketing produces predictably, unreasonable outcomes, instead of trying blindly to catch likes and fans, creating different pieces of content out and see what sticks. Influencing marketing teaches us that our time has been better spent directly on marketing and influence people whose loves and dislikes we know — they are in alignment with ourselves. This means engaging with these people across social lines — not only supporting and caring but reflecting on and displaying knowledge and personality. It can also mean curating or producing content that is chosen by the hand to draw influencers’ attention. Although the primary reward is the influencer audience, the target market for brands includes the influencers themselves.

You can lay the foundation for two things as a brand:

1. The first thing is that you can get early exposure to their fans by directly engaging respectfully and constructively on the social pages of influencers. You don’t support them; you flash your face as a member of their culture and increase your reputation.

2. The second act is that they’ll know you when you suggest some powerful marketing partnership. Influencers are not celebrities by themselves, but their online life may look much like one in the real world of a famous person. Several interruptions created by people they don’t care about, who want a piece of time, to support them or pitch. You must be able to separate yourself from the noise they get from emails and tweets. And when you meet them eventually, they’ll already know what you’re doing and see if your brand is suitable for their audience.