With social media evolving from a social community platform to a business tool, the term “influencer” has practically become a household name. Whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, or any other popular social media channel, stories abound of influencers and their antics. As such, many brands view influencer marketing as a potential game changer for discovering new leads and increasing their growth.
So, how do you put these “influencers” to work for you and your brand? Well, with the Outreach Bee on the task, it’s not as difficult or expensive as you might think. But before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s first understand the meaning behind influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing involves brands collaborating with individuals (influencers) with significant followings on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, to market their products and services. Essentially, this marketing technique boils down to trust. You see, an influencer with a dedicated social media following is viewed as an expert in their niche, which means they can influence the purchasing power of their followers. By collaborating with an influencer, you will be using them to amplify your brand’s voice to a pre-qualified audience. This includes them mentioning you on their social media pages, guest posting, or simply engaging with you.
It’s the dream of many brands to collaborate with an influencer with millions of followers. However, this does not necessarily translate to success since there are different types of influencers today, and your kind of business will dictate the type of influencer needed to scale it. We have reviewed the common types of influencers you will find in the industry today to help you find the right influencer for your campaign.
Nano Influencers
The audience of nano influencers typically ranges between 1000 to 10,000 followers. Individuals in this category are usually new in the business and are trying to grow audiences through content creation.
In most cases, you will find that they get authentic engagement since their content isn’t polished, as they intend to produce personable content to build a strong connection with their audience. They also dedicate more effort when partnering with various brands.
However, they won’t guarantee you high engagement rates because they have a small reach. They usually work with businesses targeting specific demographics and are ideal if you are on a budget. Therefore, if your business is in this category, working with a nano influencer can ensure your message is delivered to the right audience and guarantee authentic engagement.
Micro Influencers
The following of a micro influencer usually range between 10k to 100k. Influencers in this category typically have a strong presence on certain platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.
Here you’ll be paying a slightly higher fee for marketing services because the engagement rate is high. Besides, their creative content can perfectly target a passionate pre-qualified audience in your niche.
They are usually active when it comes to one-on-one engagement with their audiences, including responding to comments on social media, meaning they can lend their authenticity to each post. For what it’s worth, their content is way less polished compared to influencers with millions of followers.
Mid-tier Influencers
A mid-tier influencer’s following ranges from 100k to 500k. They usually command a huge social media presence and partner with top brands in the industry.
In most cases, you will find that a mid-tier influencer is an experienced content creator who rose through the ranks by building a strong relationship with their audience. Although their content will be slightly polished, they ensure it resonates with their audience as well as that of the partnering brand.
Macro Influencers
Typically, a macro influencer‘s following ranges from 500k to a million followers. These are individuals who can leverage their reputation to command a huge social media following, including thought leaders, TV personalities, celebrities, or athletes. Their price tags are usually high because they’ll give your brand a broader reach.
However, you may not get the engagement rate you want with macro influencers. Besides, their content is usually more professional than that of nano or micro-influencers, making it ideal for specific brands.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers are public figures with more than one million followers. They command a huge social media presence, and their services are more costly compared to the categories mentioned above due to their celebrity status. Using their online presence, they can captivate a diverse audience, which is why they are commonly involved in large-scale brand awareness campaigns.
Companies usually task them with multiple projects, which can delay your influencer marketing campaign. Their engagement rate will be lower compared to the above categories, and in most cases, their campaigns seem unnatural.
When working with mega influencers, ensure you review all legal aspects that need to be covered. They are particularly well suited for big brands with the budget and resources to target a broad audience in order to create a sense of exclusivity.
Influencer marketing can be highly beneficial to your on-page and off-site SEO in many ways. With influencer marketing, you can boost your site’s ranking in the SERPs, increase its engagement, and gain the trust of your target audience.
For instance, influencers can help you build a compelling backlink profile by featuring your brand on their social media pages. More backlinks translate to more organic traffic. It also signals to Google that you are a trustworthy source of information, which can increase your rankings in search results.
Besides, influencers can help generate referral traffic to your site by creating content around your brand and including links to your website. The more people share your link, the more exposure you gain.
In that case, they can use your brand’s keywords when promoting content to the target audience to help build recognition. And to ensure your brand remains consistent while using this strategy, the influencer may ask their audience to create their own content and use specific hashtags when linking it.
Apart from boosting your brand’s online presence, an influencer will help you save time and money, particularly when they create content around your brand.
Unfortunately, yes! While influencer marketing can prove useful in bolstering your SEO, there are a few dangers you need to be wary of. For instance, partnering with a rogue influencer or an individual who doesn’t fit your business can be detrimental to your marketing efforts.
For starters, you will be hurting your brand’s reputation by working with a dishonest influencer because they’ll be representing your brand in front of your pre-qualified leads. Besides, working with influencers in the wrong industry can make promoting your products or services difficult.
In this regard, trusting Outreach Bee with your influencer marketing campaign can help you avoid such hurdles. We are the professionals you want communicating with prospective influencers to ensure they match your ethos. Apart from vetting them thoroughly to ensure they align with your business goals, we will also negotiate the terms of engagement for you to ensure you get the highest possible return on investment.
Whether you’re promoting a kids’ product or a premium business service, odds are you don’t need a Cristiano Ronaldo, with over 500 million Instagram followers and currently scooping up to $1.6 million per sponsored post, to connect with your target audience. The fact is: While there are certainly mega influencers like Ronaldo out there, there are also micro influencers boasting between 1,000 and 100,000 followers who are perfectly positioned to promote your product or service, whether it’s B2B (think Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn,) or B2C (think Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.)
The Outreach Bee will scour the social media landscape (depending on your brand) and engage with a host of micro influencers who would be thrilled to try your product without charging you an armload. We’ll show you which of them meets your requirements and give you the choice of whom you would like to pursue. Everything will be catered for, including planning, execution, measuring, and reporting on the results.
Here is how we identify the right influencer for your business.
Despite story after story of brands going viral across social media, too many marketing directors out there don’t believe it could actually happen to their company. Well, trust us, it can and does, and with proper targeting and a compelling video, we can increase the chances that it will happen to you as well. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and increasingly TikTok boast a widely varied audience of professionals as well as consumers who can be effectively targeted thanks to the powerful capabilities of both platforms to show the most relevant content.
At Outreach Bee, we’re experts at connecting your company with the most effective influencers at a price that remains within your marketing budget. The ROI you’ll experience from the spread of your brand name across social media, in addition to the specific marketing of your chosen product or service, would have befuddled analysts a decade ago; now, it’s yours for the taking.
Leave The Details To Us
Just tell us what you want to achieve at the end of your campaign. This will help us decide how we’ll track its key performance indicators to help you meet your goals. Once that is out of the way, we will agree upon the budget and let you concentrate on other things as we handle your influencer marketing campaign. We’ll set the price according to your requirements (whether it be monetary or simply the ability to try a new product) and work with the influencer to create a story, post, or, most likely, a video that will speak directly to your target audience.
We’ll also require you to define your target audience. Here, you’ll be telling us the demographics you want to target so that we identify the influencer who is well-positioned to reach the right audience. We’ll go through the problems you intend to solve for your audience and identify the social media platforms they mostly use to make sure your message is spread effectively.
After scouring our network of influencers and the internet, we will present you with a list of influencers willing to promote your brand so you can choose the ones you want us to engage. Usually, influencers ask for payments before offering their services; we normally pay them and give our clients the list of partnering influencers alongside their rates so they know how much they’ll be paying for the services.
Once everyone is happy, we’ll let you know when the post will be going live on your influencers’ page.
Let Social Media Work Its Magic
Upon publication, we’ll ensure that a link to the original post is saturated across both your and your influencers’ social media channels. For instance, your influencer may not have a huge following on LinkedIn, but you might have an impressive number of connections who will want to know about this video and thereby amplify its popularity just by playing it.
With very little effort on your part, you’ll get to sit back and watch as your video, and hence your brand recognition spreads far and wide across social media.
Continual Retargeting
Once the popularity of your video has peaked and plateaued, we’ll get together and come up with ways to ensure that the next one is viewed by even more of your prospects. We normally track the metrics at every stage of the campaign to ensure we optimize our strategy as required.
And upon your request and when the time seems right (and enough time has passed so that you won’t be oversaturating your target audience,) we’ll begin another influencer marketing campaign.
Final Report
Finally, we’ll compile a detailed report for our postmortem process. Once everyone is satisfied (the influencer is paid, and you have your report), we’ll build an invoice and await the payment.
The world of social media influencer marketing is still the Wild West in many ways. Some influencers have established procedures for working with brands like yours; others have not. At Outreach Bee, my team and I are uniquely positioned to represent you and ensure that what the influencer is inclined to produce perfectly matches your brand identity. Simply spare 15 minutes and chat with us to learn how influencer marketing could be a game-changer for your brand.