The influencer marketing trend continues to grow as each year more brands are either looking to add it to their marketing strategy or increasing their marketing budgets to further accommodate it. This article from Tech.co, Top Brands Are Moving Advertising Dollars to Influencer Marketing, addresses four reasons brands should be paying attention to influencer marketing: Ad-blocking software, authenticity, diversified audiences, and measurable ROI.
Continuing with our series of taking the advice given to marketers about influencer marketing and turning it around for influencers to use themselves, we believe two of those reasons outlined in the article are particularly important for influencers to pay attention to if they want be the kind of influencer that brands are looking for.
Authenticity
“Where marketers can have a difficult time thinking outside “brand language,” influencers offer a fresh perspective on how to translate your brand values in a way that elicits a response from your consumers or clients.”
As an influencer, your advantage comes from the simple fact that it is not your responsibility to make sales. Your responsibility is to authentically share your story about your experience with the product or service. Because of that shift in responsibility, you are immediately approaching the product differently than a marketer does. You’re not trying to sell your readers anything, you just want to share something that you find valuable with them.
Your relevance as an influencer comes from how you’re developing a rapport with your readers through sharing your life with them. You’re providing them with the stories, recommendations, and insights that you find interesting and edifying. And you’re bringing integrity to your writing by being transparent about the work you do with brands. All this gives you the opportunity to speak authentically and authoritatively. Your audience trusts your endorsements because they trust you and brands hope that trust will transfer to their products.
Measureable ROI
While the article specifically references metrics, such as cost-per-engagement, that are mostly relevant to those in marketing departments doing cost analysis, savvy influencers will embrace this need for numbers. It’s true that companies are increasingly getting on board with influencer marketing, but they still want to know, in measurable terms, how it will benefit them. Fortunately you have a lot of information at your fingertips that you can use to visually show them that you are worth the investment.
Thanks to website tools like Google Analytics and the availabilty of analytics from Pinterest and Facebook, you can create case studies or recaps of successful brand partnerships. By going beyond website traffic numbers and including data like how many times brand sponsored posts have been viewed, pinned, shared, and commented on, you can show that your content is engaging and extends beyond the pages of your blog. Even better, if you have a sponsored post that continues to receive significant traffic and engagement months, maybe even years later, use that information to demonstrate the authority of your site and the longevity a brand’s message can have from partnering with you.
For some good examples of how to create case studies, check out this post from Independent Fashion Bloggers and this article from KissMetrics.
Influencers, you can reap the benefit of this heightened interest in influencer marketing by making sure that you are the right person for a partnership. Keep your content authentic and your spreadsheets handy!
Image from Pexels