Influencer marketing is one of the biggest catchwords of the decade in digital marketing, it can work for all types of business, but it has the biggest potential to grow sales and brand awareness in the retail industry.
In this blog, I am going to explain why some retailers use influencer’s and what these ‘insta-famous’ users can do for your retail business.
There are various types of social influencers, this is how to find the right one to help with your business:
- Micro-Influencers: The clues in the name, influencers with smaller audiences, usually under 150k follower on all the social media platforms. Obviously, they are cheaper to hire, and they also generally have a very specific target audience. This is beneficial as you can hire a micro-influencer that has the same target audience as your business. Generally speaking not many retailers only use one micro-influencer, a lot of retailers hire multiple influencers at one time to gain more exposure.
- Medium-sized influencers: These are user’s that have around 150k – 1 million social media followers, due to these users providing more exposure they are more expensive and harder to find. However, you will reach a larger audience which makes this option viable to retailers who are looking to start a new marketing campaign.
- Macro-Influencers (Celebrities included): These influencers are the most successful and most expensive but, this is because they have a huge audience, normally over the 1 million follower mark. Some of these influencers are social media celebrities within their own right this section also includes legitimate celebrities that are known worldwide.
Remember that follower numbers aren’t the best way to choose an influencer, the main point that successful retailers look at is how influential they actually are. The key is that some people’s audience are willing to purchase products that they see the influencer using, this is because they trust them and want to be like him/her. One problem with this, is that it is a struggle to determine how influential someone actually is.
A recent report by Forbes suggest’s that influencer marketing can be a great method of marketing for your business. However, it has it’s flaws. The prevalence of social media bots and fake followers has sowed a lot of mistrust into consumers and brands. Any reach, impression or engagement reported by influencers leveraging fake accounts are rendered fraudulent and pointless.
With the marketing industry being on track to spend up to $10 billion dollars on influencers in 2020, you must be careful when choosing the correct influencer for your business.
How can you find out how influential someone is?
Conduct some research by viewing their content. Normally these influencers have a range of content that they push out to their audience:
- Social media accounts
- Vlogs
- Website’s
- Blogs
This will allow for you to see how they influence their audience. See how they interact with their followers and how many people engage with their content. Numbers don’t mean everything in the social media influencer game. This will give you some idea about what they can do for your brand.
M&S Paid Partnership
An example of a brilliant influencer marketing campaign would be Marks and Spencer’s collaboration with Holly Willoughby (Popular TV presenter). Holly has over 4 million followers. M&S have set up a paid partnership collaboration with Holly to promote their new clothing ranges. She posts a picture in these clothes, tags M&S and writes a small caption about the clothes she is wearing. This pushes the M&S clothing range out in front of millions of potential customers in an instant. Remember that the caption must feature the #ad to make sure that users know she is in a paid agreement with M&S. This is to make sure that consumers are not mislead.
(Via Instagram – @hollywilloughby)
The power of social and celebrity influencers is clear to see, they provide retailers with a platform to work with. Promoting your products in front of your target audience through an influencer is a no-brainer. Make sure to take time and devise a clear strategy to follow when setting up your marketing campaigns. Seek the advice of a search marketing agency if influencer marketing is something you would like to explore for your brand but are unsure of how to get it off the ground.