Influencers are people who make a difference with their opinion on other people’s lives.

Marketing is selling a product to your target audience.

When you combine the two, influencer marketing is the process of using individuals who have a high follower rate on various social media handles to exhibit your brand’s product in the eyes of your relevant target audience.

Influencers are from different niches, the market they cater to are different which is why you are only accustomed to catering to such relevant influencers whose target audience matches the ones you are looking to assist.

Influencer marketing is the modern way of selling.

It is similar to referral marketing. In referral marketing you suggest a friend or close one to invest in a product but in influencer marketing, you are using one highly regarded individual to exhibit your product.

These influencers are grown high and believed by a huge audience because they are working towards solving an issue which the audience has. For instance, say that you are a beauty care blogger, your role here is to tell your audience about the different beauty products available, the types of skincare it can work on, how your audience can take care of their skin and more related questions.

Now if person A views your profile, they will be impressed at what they are seeing and will automatically follow you cause they are searching for skincare product tips. They will continue to buy the products you suggested because firstly they know that you won’t recommend just anything, secondly, they will have the trust in you which will make person A invest in the product you're suggesting.

This is how influencer marketing works and this is exactly why you need to start indulging and making use of it.

Let’s understand next, the type of influencers, you would be dealing with:

**1. Micro-influencers

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These are influencers who don’t have many followers but the follower count that they have is enough for them to really bond better with the audience they have. They focus more on sharing social media posts, engagement is high, and dealing with multiple responses is efficient.

Source: Hubspot

This is an example of a micro-influencer. The influencer is called sydneyloveleigh where the influencer exhibits content on health, fitness, and travel. She has 21.4k followers and works with Nuxactive, an athletic clothing brand whose brands she promotes. She adds codes for her audience to go on to purchase from the brand and shares Nuxactive’s links in places she can.

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2. Celebrity influencer

Celebrity influencer as you are aware are high profile names that have a massive following. These are celebrities that are loved and followed by millions across the globe and whatever product they use or suggest is bound to be bought by their target audience. They are a brilliant example of social proof which states their words are highly influential.

Source: Hubspot

The Kardashian sisters are the popular celebrities and one of them, which is Khloe Kardashian, is seen promoting amazon here. The starting of the content and everything in itself has stated that Khloe found her baby registry issues resolved with the help of Amazon. Now Amazon would have seen a high rise in their sales because even when you see this, it will compel you to go on Amazon and make that purchase.

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3. Blog influencer

Blog influencers are the ones who use the medium of blogs to engage and connect with their audience. Their blog will be the selling factor and every detail related to the product and other details will be listed out completely.

Source: Hubspot

This is Hannah, an influencer who has collaborated with FaceGym. She writes mostly on health, fitness, and beauty. In her blog, she speaks about her collaboration with FaceGym and uses images and vital information to help her audience visualize how the brand is and what it offers and how it can benefit the audience.

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4. Social media influencer

This is one of the most common forms of influencer marketing. In this technique, social media is being used to exhibit a brand or product. You can use multiple features which the platform provides to exhibit the product such as for instance on Instagram you can use social media posts, Instagram ads, stories to sell the product. Even the use of hashtags can help you sell better and extend the product outreach.

This is an example of social media marketing on Twitter. The influencer is Joy and she worked with La Croix where she had to sell their product, sparkling water. So since Joy is a nutrition expert, she conveyed to her audience how she would use the sparkling water in her consumption.

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5. Key Opinion Leader

These are influencers who are experts in a particular topic in a specialized field. Say that you're a brand that wants to sell vegan foods, you can connect with such influencers who are trusted experts in this field. Since they have better knowledge, they will sell your product better.

This influencer is Kandee and she speaks more about beauty products, makeup tutorials, and more. She knows her makeup well hence the amount of subscribers is evident in the image above.

She had shared a sponsored content post about the brand Boxy Charm, where on subscribing to this brand you will receive a box of makeup products. So Kandee would review it and speak about which amongst that is her best which will compel her subscribers to try the same.

Now let’s get in deeper to understand the value which influencer marketing can hold for your brand and why your investment in such a marketing platform is necessary.

**1. Build’s trust quickly

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When you are engaging with an influencer, you are engaging with such a person that has a trust equal to the number of followers they have. This means that even if tomorrow you share on your social media handle that this influencer has promoted your product, it increases the chances of your audience to trust in your band and invest in your solution.

As stated earlier, influencer marketing is dealing with individuals whose audience base has complete trust in the words or suggestions they convey and when a brand like yours indulges with them, the audience will not hinder their actions on trusting the product and getting started with it.

**2. Brand awareness gets better

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Yes, you do have ads and campaigns that can help you to exhibit your brand better, but when you add influencer marketing to the list, your brand awareness stands more further than its current awareness stage. Your influencers are constantly engaging on their page and with every exhibition of your product features and new launches, they're creating a recognition for your brand to be spread about among your multiple target audiences no matter where they are.

**3. Enhances your content strategies

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Content plays a huge role and it is important that you conduct multiple content activities to keep your audience engaged and enticed with every view. But at times you might not have created content that is well deserved to be on social media and that is fine because creating good content takes time.

This doesn’t mean that you need to halt your work, instead, you could focus on sharing the influencer content whom you partnered to and that can add better value to your content strategy. Your adding content to tap the attention of your prospects and with such content, you are opening the door to garner more.

**4. Covers your target audience on a wider scale

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The influencer that you will be engaging with is the audience that matches your brand’s audience. This means that you are basically engaging with more like-minded individuals who are the perfect fit for your brand’s audience. This states that say you have 100 target audiences at the moment whom you are catering to and with the influencer's target audience who might have more than 100 audiences your brand exposure is set to cover almost all of them.

Imagine what would be the impact of your brand's recognition?

**5. Showcases your product in a better light

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When an influencer exhibits a brand’s product, it is always seen in a good light. The reason being as stated earlier, influencers are the ones that showcase the right kind of product that matches them and will continue to match their audience as well. So when the influencer you’re engaging with tells the audience that this product is good, your product will be classified under that positive light.

**6. Let’s you partner with the best

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When it comes to influencer marketing we are aware that this process can help you benefit your business figures better. The reason being, you will partner with only the one who matches your requirements. The one who has a good number of followers has an active presence online and more. All of these factors will make a difference and in turn, let you partner with such an influencer who isn’t just the best in your market or industry but who will also give you the expected result from such a platform.

**7. Sells in a non-pushy way

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Influencer marketing doesn’t force the product on the audience. It is a way of recommending, suggesting, and giving an opinion to the audience who are hearing about the brand and this is exactly why this type of marketing is successful. There is no forcefulness to buy the product, and instead, it switches in a way where it makes the audience realize that this product can help them in such a manner and convince them like this to invest in the brand solution.

**8. Conversion rate increases quicker

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Now that you have an influencer whose trust is trusted by multiple individuals, do you think that there will be a delay in the investment of your product? There stands no chance of this delay because the trust is being created long back and the minute an influencer states that this product has helped them in their work or other activities, the audience will be compelled to try it out without any hesitation.

**9. Budget-friendly process

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Until and unless you partner with a celebrity influencer, the budget for investing in influencer marketing is affordable. You can choose the price for such an investment and match with the influencers whom you want to engage with. With influencer marketing, the results are always higher than the amount being invested in it.

**10. Suits any kind of business

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You could be a small business or a large business, this marketing platform will suit you because as stated in the previous point, it is affordable and from the list above, you can choose to invest in the type of influencers you want.

**11. Creates a curiosity

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The reason why influencer marketing is great for your business because it highlights your brand and its solution above everything else. It becomes the talk of the town the minute your influencer speaks about it. Think of it in this way, wouldn’t you have a curiosity when you hear about a new product, wouldn’t you go and explore and decide on investing in solutions provided by the brand? This is exactly what influencer marketing is all about.

All these benefits will give you the boost you need to get started with influencer marketing. But for any successful influencer marketing action to be conducted, a great strategy planning can help you get further.

**1. Identify your goal

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You need to first understand why you're conducting this action. Analyze what your goals should be like 100+ views a month or the number of clicks should be 20% more and all. The more specific you are with your goals, the clearer you will see the purpose of conducting such an action.

2. Identify the type of audience you want to reach out to

Not all the audience out there will be your ideal target audience. You need to next identify who are the audiences you are looking to target and match that same with the influencer you wish to work with.

3. Set a budget and choose the influencer you want

Set your budget according to your requirements and start to look out for the influencers in your niche. Understand the amount they are asking and see if anyone will fit well in the budget you have stated. For each type of influencer, the amount varies so decide well in this stage.

**4. Create the content rules and expectations from it

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Once you’ve decided on the influencer, it is now time to conduct the rules. There would be some content where you would like this influencer to showcase more and a few to avoid. Lay it out so that it becomes clear.

5. Work with your influencers

** **Once this is done, you need to work with your influencers and match their working style as well. Collaborating with your influencer in such a stage can also help you align and understand how this marketing platform works which will in turn help you to enhance your content actions better.

6. Reward your influencer

When you see the results and the way your brand is growing, don’t forget to appreciate or reward your influencer. It could be in the form of anything such as money or partnerships, or goodies, or discounts, and more.

7. Measure the results

Lastly, keep measuring the performance of your influencer marketing activities. Check for the number of clicks, views, reach, and more. This will help you understand how to conduct your next influencer marketing action better.

Okay, so now you have everything you need to get started with influencer marketing but it would be a bonus if we could guide you on the same so that it becomes easier for you.

**1. Dunkin Donuts

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Source: Influencer marketing hub

So Dunkin Donuts did a great job of exhibiting its presence on National Donut day. What they did was they aimed to create awareness of this special day by partnering with Collab, a digital talent network and entertainment studio so that they can create a national Snapchat campaign that would disclose the objective of the day.

Dunkin donuts had informed them about the offers and this is exactly what is going to be exhibited across all the Dunkin donuts stores. They engaged with eight popular influencers to give a small tease about this event. The influencers took over Snapchat and spread the word.

The result?

Dunkin Donuts got ten times more followers on their Snapchat channel, the reach of the campaigns was 3 million and the engagement count was 40,000.

2. M&M

Source: Candy Industry

M&M in 2016 had conducted the flavour taste where they asked their audience to vote for the best flavour amongst Honey Nut, Chilli Nut and Coffee Nut for their new peanut flavour. They partnered with Veep star, Tony Hale to be the campaign brand ambassador and also included nine social influencers to spread the word. They even had their own hashtag which was #M&Msflavourvote.

The flavour coffee nut won and the campaign received 269 million impressions, 216 influencer partner posts, 14.4 million social engagements, and 1 million votes.

The impact of influencer marketing on your business is well evident in the information you’ve seen above. It's here to stay for long and the next category will prove how.

**1. Growth of influencer marketing channel

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It’s not just Instagram or any other social media handle that will be the hub for influencer marketing. There will be growth for such similar platforms as the rise of influencer marketing is growing with time.

2. Customers will turn into mini influencers

When a customer starts to trust what an influencer is saying, they will invest in the product. When they are happy with the product, they too will act as influencers and spread the positive reviews. The more your customers do that, the better your product exposure is.

3. Good platform to sell

Influencer marketing is easy, affordable and with the right strategies being incorporated, it can be used as a great platform to conduct better marketing activities.

4. Investment in long term relationships

With influencer marketing, you can partner with influencers and build a longer bond with them, so that whenever you launch a new product you can ask them to exhibit it for you.