Today in our Blog series we will be talking about “Influencer Marketing Tips for 2020”. These “Top 10 Influencer Marketing Tips for 2020” are relevant for Small Business owners who want to leverage this trend of “Influencer Marketing” with low budgets but targeted results.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing is catching up with Small & Medium Business owners given the budgets & local reach for their brands or products.

Influencers are members of a specific social media platform like FB or Insta & who generally operate in a specific Niche or Niche + Location.

Example: Mom bloggers who only operate in the space of Mommy & Kids, Review bloggers who might review specific niche like clothes or food etc.

Since most Influencers are Niche based & or Location based small business owners can use them to promote their products or brands to their audience.

Social Media platforms have evolved making it impossible for Small Business owners to organically grow as the Organic reach is now around only 3%. That means if you have 1000 followers on your social media your post is now reaching only 30 people & you never really know who those 30 people are. If Reach is restricted so is Engagement & thus ultimately Sales or Awareness that is the reason it has become imperative to use inorganic methods like “Influencer Marketing” to increase brand reach
.

Top 10 Influencer Marketing Tips 2020:

1. Goal:

Small Business owners have low budgets & low scale so it is very important for them to have a specific goal before taking up any initiatives more so if it is a marketing initiative.

Your goal can be: 1. Brand Awareness, 2. Increase Brand Recall, 3. Sales or pure 4. PR to adopt Influencer Marketing

2. Research your Niche:

Once the goal is set a small business owner should then go ahead to research their niche. You need to know which influencer is apt for your audience who dwells in your niche.

Influencer Marketing is only as effective as the Influencer who is promoting your brand so make sure the Influencer you are trying to hire works well with your niche.

Example: Try to stay away from too brash an Influencer as being a small business owner you do need a strong brand identity but you don’t want to brush people on the wrong side

3. Shortlist 1 Influencer:

In the above step you would have made a list of Influencers who work in your niche. Now comes the important task of researching about your Influencer.

1. What are his/her old posts about?
2. What is their philosophy?
3. Does their life philosophy go well with your brand philosophy?
4. How huge is their reach?
5. How are their Engagement ratios?
6. Do their audience & your ideal customer persona overlap?

Engagement ratios are important as it will determine the success or failure of your influencer campaign.

Let us say you picked an Influencer because they have 10K followers but whenever they post something for their fans they only get 10 likes then their engagement ratios are calculated by:

10/10,000 = 0.1%

Most small business owners do not calculate engagement ratios they just look at the number of followers of the Influencer & hire them to talk about their brand & then wonder why their campaign was not successful

4. Take an Audience Survey:

The best way to determine what works or which Influencer to engage with for your campaign is to ask your page audience regarding what topic they want to know more about or which persona on the internet would they like to talk to.

As a small business owner make this interesting by incorporating some service or product that you sell. For example if you are a Digital Agency like us then ask your audience which social media influencer they want to spend an hour with & then use this to ask the Influencer to share snippets of their day with your audience.

If you are a clothes designer use the same strategy to engage with a Influencer where in he/she shows different ways your clothes can be styled.

5. Creative Hat on:

As a small business owner you may not be able to hire a creative agency to help you with your social media endeavors so use your own creative juices to make your campaign interesting.

Don’t go with the traditional Influencer Marketing strategies of allowing the Influencer to come up with an idea or you suggesting an idea for only product promotion, research how you can showcase your product differently.

Use platforms like Pinterest for new creative ideas.

Brainstorm with your team, don’t be afraid to be a little crazy!

6. Micro Influencers:

Micro Influencers are local Influencers who might not have huge followers but who are very location centric or are very sub-niche specific.

For Example, Scarves can be a sub-niche in Designer Clothes niche. So a micro influencer may be a stylist or a fashionista who has followers who only follow her to get a quick idea regarding how to wear a scarf.

Don’t think this will be too small an audience like I mentioned in point#3 it is important to have engaged audience rather than a broad one which never engages.

Such small audiences are more loyal & have higher conversion rates than others.

7. Be clear regarding your campaign objective with your Influencer:

Going back to my point#1 having a clear goal is important to ensure success of your campaign. So be clear regarding your goal with the Influencer that you will be hiring to promote your campaigns.

Don’t hesitate to communicate multiple times clearly with the Influencer so they understand what needs to be talked about to their audience.

8. Plan with your Influencer:

As Entrepreneurs we love to control our brand identity & communication. We are in love with our brand so any representation is supposed to be monitored.

Though it is a good practise sometimes we become too protective thus not allowing anybody else into our inner circle.

Influencer Marketing is not just a campaign its a relationship that you are building regarding your brand with an outsider so let the Influencer in.

Talk to him/her & make them understand why you have opted them & exactly what needs to be communicated.

Plan with them as they know their audience better so they can help with planning the campaign better.

9. Start Small:

If it is your first influencer campaign its better to start with a small budget & a micro influencer.

You may not know what works & what does not until you run a few trials so don’t hesitate to work with barters where in rather than paying the Influencer with money you can pay them with your product or service.

Don’t be afraid to try out different formats. You can mix & match different ones to get the most out of your campaign.

Example: Use Influencer Campaign + Insta ads on the campaign so you get maximum reach

10. Monitor the Campaign:

Marketing works best when monitored.

This is the mantra for any campaign that you will be running for your business. Monitor & continuously tweak to maximise the output.

If you feel your campaign is working well then push it more with new idea, new budgets & new influencers. If it is not working as per expectation pause it & try out with new ideas but to get insights into what is working you need to “MONITOR”.

Hope you learnt some important tips from our blog today.

You can read  more about : “Challenges in Entrepreneurship” or “Effective Marketing for Startups”

Leave us a comment on how you planned your “Influencer Marketing” campaign & the results you got.

For Digital Marketing strategy you can reach out to us at sirisha@brandingbypixels.com