What Is Influencer Marketing and How To Make Best Profit From It?

Influencer marketing has very quickly found its place among the best practices helping companies to gain visibility and notoriety. In Marketing, influencers are considered as a world of stars where the massive audience plays a decisive role, to obtain a quick spread for its campaigns. But how influencer marketing does works, what are its advantages, and how brands use it etc.?

By definition Influencer Marketing, is the set of techniques that tend to use the power of influencers recommendations. It is the ability to create ambassadors for your brand. It can be considered as the evolution of PR.

In its early days, influencer marketing targeted mainly the most active members of communities and forums.

Nowadays, and with the rise of a whole cohort of thematic influencers, (well-known as bloggers youtubeurs, and social networking users), influential marketing has become a crucial maneuver for communication strategies. It is not only addressed to specific and isolated areas, but for many sectors of activity where influencer marketing helps for the search for visibility.

Here are some techniques used, by influencer marketing agencies.

The Buzz kit: the company promotes its new product by sending it to an influencer who will then test it and share his opinion with his community.

Content sponsorship: this technique involves sponsoring a blog post or a social media publication in order to reach as many people as possible to gain visibility.

Product placement: mainly used on YouTube, this technique uses the services of a youtube specialist in a theme related to the brand. He will then subtly (or not) place the product in question in one of his videos.

Blog travel: to gain popularity, some tour operators use this type of influencers to promote their products. They usually offer an all-inclusive stay with sometimes a camera, in exchange for several photos taken daily, and sharing via a blog and / or on social networks like Instagram.

The takeover: this technique involves giving control of a business account or brand to an influencer. It may be planned for a certain period of time so that the influencer catches the attention of the community for a product, service, event or site. It all depends on the purpose of the campaign.

Other techniques can be used, namely: web series, invitations to an event, free trials, Giveaways (gifts)...

Moreover, Influencer marketing can be managed by the company or entrusted to a specialized agency. Indeed, these agencies have a deep knowledge of the web environment and social networks, they know how to work with bloggers and influencers; it is then necessary to know how to use the right pedals to align with the objectives of the advertiser and to adapt the marketing strategy to the specificities of the product or the brand.

Here are some concrete results to influencer marketing:

1) It’s trackable: There’s plenty of data to determine whether you’re targeting the right influencer and whether or not they bring a strong ROI.

2) It’s natural: Content created by influencers are non-interruptive. They sit within the context of the platform they create on.

3) Consumers are sick of ads: Banner blindness is a condition that grows with each new emerging marketing platform. Influencer marketing gets you over this problem.

4) It helps SEO: User generated content accounts for 25% of organic search for the world’s top 20 brands.

Conclusion

Word-of-mouth marketing has grown up; influencer marketing is a method that’s here to stay. But with this come certain challenges, the level of difficulty increases as marketers begin to use and abuse this approach.

The key then, is to identify the right kind of influencers and give them value up front. Find micro-influencers and work up the chain. Engage and add value to them up front before asking for anything. The key to winning long-term, of course, is to focus on long-term relationships. These will turn your influencers into powerful fans for many years to come.