When was the last time you were exposed to traditional marketing such as print media or television advertising? We know this is not the case. Social media influencer marketing is an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy. To make it work, you need to work with the right influencers. In this blog, we will show you how you can do social media influencer marketing in 2022. 

Benefits of Social Influencer Marketing

Due to the loss of traditional marketing, digital marketing is increasing day by day. As we mentioned earlier, influencer marketing should be part of your overall digital marketing campaign. Marketing with social agents has several advantages, let's look at five of them:

 

1.     Pull it, don't push it:

If you're a marketer, you've probably heard of the "pull and push" strategy. 40% of social media users use ad blockers, making it difficult to promote products or services to customers. Social media influencer marketing is based on a pull strategy where users actually pull products and influencers act as intermediaries.

 

2.     More reliable than traditional marketing:

Successful people invest a lot of time in gaining the trust of their supporters. It certainly won't happen overnight. Influencers create a compelling story that draws in their followers. If supporters are genuinely active, they form part of a long-term bond with their influencers. When such incidents occur, he instills devotion and faith in their hearts. They follow people and trust their advice and recommendations.

 

3.     Niche targeting:

In order to sell their services or products, every brand needs to constantly meet new audiences. But, it is important to understand who you are trying to influence before you approach people with your products or services. You should always try to entice and distribute your products to a target audience who is very interested in your offerings. If you target a niche audience with specific demographics, you can improve your chances of effectively marketing to them.

 

4.     It's about value:

Why do you think influencers around the world have millions of followers? Is it just an excuse to spend more time on social media or watch more interesting content? In fact, most people follow an influencer in the first place because they feel there is some value or worth in learning from them.

 

5.     It's Not Expensive:

While social marketing is indeed effective, it remains a relatively inexpensive marketing method. But, most companies are unaware of the costs associated with social media influencer marketing. This is why they don't include it in their overall marketing strategy.

 

How to find a social media influencer for your brand?

This part is really interesting because there are more than 500,000 active influencers on Instagram alone. This means you have a lot of potential for influence. This means that you must try to find the right effect. So let's find out how to find the right influencer for your brand:

 

●      Set clear goals:

We have said many times that failure to plan is failing to plan. If you want to start thinking about joining social media influencer marketing in your business marketing strategy, you need to ask yourself a few questions: 

1.     What is it worth to your brand?

2.     Which social media platforms do most of my potential target customers spend their time on?

3.     What do I want to achieve from the influencer? (eg, sales, reach)

 

Once you have dealt with these questions, move on to the next step. 

●      Understand your target market:

You can dine with ads for everyone. You need to talk to the right people with the right tools to achieve an effective approach. The first step in this campaign is to determine who your target market will be. Developing a specific target market is a great way to introduce who you are trying to reach. Once this is done, create an appropriate group of influencers. This will help you know the characteristics that your influencers are looking for.

●      Studies:

Once you've chosen your target market and influencer list platform, it's time to research those specific influencers. It should be remembered that your brand reputation is now under threat, a wrong move can damage your business. So dig deep and narrow down the list of influencers as much as possible. 

●      Go personal:

Direct text is a good starting point. If you notice an email, use that as well. Don't just send a standard DM or bulk email. Sending individual emails to each influencer may take a little longer. But it will show that you are serious about your future relationship. This will increase your chances of reaching a deal.

 

Working with influencers in B2B 

Influencer marketing delivers high ROI. American communications experts estimate that every dollar invested in an influencer marketing campaign returns an average of $6.50. This is higher than the ROI of other commonly used marketing methods. Not surprisingly, nearly 60% of marketers plan to increase their budgets in this direction within the next year or two.

 

61% of B2-B consumers trust social media recommendations from their friends, family, or influencers, and only 38% of consumers trust brand social media recommendations. This is because the average cost of an order in B2B is often high, and purchasing decisions are not made instantaneously and may involve many people at once.

 

Effective influencer marketing helps B2B companies to:

●      Brand building

●      Audience engagement

●      previous generation

●      Customer acquisition

●      Maintain and increase customer loyalty 

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you develop your influencer marketing strategy:

 

Establish goals, and KPIs and set a budget

It's hard to start a campaign without knowing where it will lead. In other words, clearly defined goals must be set. Avoid setting measurable or impractical goals, such as simply "increase brand awareness" or "retain more customers." 

After defining a goal, the next step is to assign appropriate quantitative and qualitative KPIs to each goal. 

After that, it is important to determine the budget: write everything there - from the cost of cooperation with influencers to the promotion of the created content.

 

Get to know influencers

Let's say you're building an AI-powered CRM platform. Obviously, it's not relevant for you to ask lifestyle bloggers to tell their audience about your product. Instead, you need to find influencers whose audience needs a new CRM tool to grow their business.

 

Before you start looking for new influencers in your niche, try to find brand advocates you already know. For example, among your employees. IBM did just that, encouraging its employees to share meaningful tweets on their accounts about the company's latest products and innovations.

 

Alternatively, it is wise to use existing customers.  They are already familiar with the benefits of using your products and services, and when they recommend your brand on their website or social media profiles, it is considered trustworthy. Also, such methods can significantly reduce your budget for marketing campaigns.

 

Another option is to identify industry leaders, content creators, and speakers who are already talking about your brand. They may already tag your brand in their social media posts. Or they may mention your product in one of their blog posts.

 

Analyze Influencers

This step includes evaluating potential influencers in terms of their: 

●      Social media is reach

●      Audience engagement metrics

●      Stories of collaboration with brands

●      Presence on communication channels other than social media

●      Content

●      Assess their audience composition and find out if it resonates with your target customers and your business goals in general.

 

Maintain relationships with influencers

After identifying the influencers you want to partner with, you need to build strong relationships with them. This process becomes easier when you work with someone who is already familiar with your brand and product otherwise, you have to start from scratch. 

To friend an influencer, follow them on social media, share a post on your blog, leave a comment on one of their posts, and more. The idea is to get influencers' attention before approaching them with a collaboration proposal. You can try incorporating them into your content, such as using statistics or quotes from their posts, or even contact them directly for comments on your story. Such an approach will help lay the foundation for a strong partnership.

 

Attract Potential Influencers with Top-Rated Content

This is another good way to get started with B2B influencer marketing. Instead of reaching out to influencers in your industry, you can lead your brand in creating content. This, in turn, will encourage industry leaders and other respected individuals to partner with you.

 

Monitor the situation

Monitor your KPIs to determine if your marketing campaign delivers the desired results. For this purpose, you can use various monitoring tools like Google Analytics, Brand Analytics, etc. Also, use social media analytics data.