businessDigital Media & PlatformsMarketingProcess Improvementsmall-businessIs Social Influencer Marketing Worth It for Small Business?

Is Social Influencer Marketing Worth It for Small Business?

If done properly, social influencer marketing efforts can be quite successful. When your brand collaborates with an influencer, you may quickly boost your visibility and conversion rates. For every dollar spent on media, productive influencer relationships can generate a ROI of $18. Additionally, the average cost of influencer marketing for businesses is $5.78 for every dollar spent on media.

According to statistics, 63% of consumers trust influencers more than companies. Corporate, branded marketing doesn’t resonate well with Millennials and Generation Z. Instead of listening to a company, they prefer to watch TikTok and YouTube, where they can trust the content posted by relatable individuals. Many companies’ automatic response is to pay influencers in exchange for a product mention. However, this FOMO response to influencer marketing leaves out more significant chances. This article can assist your brand in better comprehending social influencer marketing and how to maximize its benefits for your company.

What Do Your Customers Need?

In the end, the wants of your customers are quite basic. They desire a simpler life, and they are prepared to pay what they deem to be a fair price to achieve it. The objective is always the same whether you’re selling a gym membership, a new iPhone, or a project management tool. Your product should improve the quality of life for your customers at an affordable price.

However, there is an issue. People do not believe in brands. Prospects are more likely to believe a stranger who looks like them than a company trying to offer them something. Influencers are advantageous since they may dispel the early concerns of your prospects. And that makes it simpler for them to accept your offering of a good or service.

The short answer is that social influencer marketing works. But, should you run out right now and hire as many as you can to represent your business? Well, not so fast. You need to be careful. While social media influencers can be great for your business, they can also backfire if you’re not careful. And when that happens, it can do more harm than good.

When to Use Social Influencer Marketing

If the influencer and the product are properly aligned, social influencer marketing can be effective for both branded and direct response campaigns. For instance, independent of the influencer, you have a fantastic chance if you can physically market the product or display it (consider a pair of jeans, a smartphone, makeup, etc.). The audience must initially like and then trust the influencer in order for this to work.

The influencer needs to be loved after being trusted, but if the product is none of these or if it is intangible (such as financial services), then it is not necessary. Additionally, they must demonstrate that they have encountered the issue the product addresses. If you mix up or overlook these components, you run the risk of burning through your marketing budget with influencers without moving the needle.

Evaluating Influencers as a Direct Response Marketers

You understand the importance of direct response marketing as a business owner, and you also know how to assess your digital marketing efforts. You must use this tactic if you want your relationship with your influencer to be fruitful. Consider social media influencers as direct response marketers would, rather than seeing them as a resource to be outsourced.

The Key to Success with Social Influencer Marketing

What makes any advertising effort qualify as a direct response? It must motivate the target audience to take action. A direct response marketer must persuade the prospect to say “YES,” whether it is to join an email list or purchase a product. And for them to be successful, they need to: Sell the dream and direct almost all of your resources toward sales.

And that is what a powerful influencer will achieve for your brand. To be successful, products sold by your influencers should be:

• Relatively “simple” products that build or leverage a database of customers
• Continuity based – represent an ongoing revenue stream with good margins
• Something with year-round (non-seasonal) usage
• Something that inspires people to “pay for the magic”

You can evaluate an influencer the same way you would a direct response marketer on staff as long as your product or service satisfies these criteria and they are promoting your brand and generating revenue for you. This strategy makes the whole process more manageable for brands of any size and helps remove the guesswork from marketing with social media influencers.

How to Optimize Your Social Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns aren’t one-off endeavors. And even while that initially sounds obvious, most marketers fail to take that into account when working with influencers. In the end, there is no overlap between the influencers’ and marketers’ tasks because both parties are performing them. These initiatives thus frequently fail, leaving businesses with a negative impression.

Hybrid campaigns are currently the most successful direct response marketing strategies. Marketers use social media (and other brand-related channels) in these campaigns to increase awareness and engagement while using other channels to make an offer and seal a transaction.

Why Most Influencer Campaigns Fail

It’s simple to become sidetracked by an influencer’s fan base or level of engagement, yet these factors have little bearing on financial success. It’s the same as promoting your product to the incorrect audience if you choose the wrong influencer. Your engagement will be minimal at best. In the worst situation, people become irritated, and your brand’s reputation suffers.

The second reason influencer marketing fail is that companies do not understand what they are: relationships. You’re not employing a worker to complete a couple of your marketing “To-Dos.” To increase the reach of your brand, you are collaborating with an authority. But the ideals of your brand must align with that specialist. In any other case, it can backfire and harm your brand.

Ensure that you take care of that relationship and consider both its achievements and shortcomings. Blaming influencers for the failure of your campaign is no more effective than blaming your IT department. To get the most of your campaign, you must be ready to modify and enhance the efforts of your chosen influencer.

Influencers are said to “do their own thing,” according to some. The truth is that you lose influence if you treat your influencer campaign like a one-time thing. Instead, promote long-term agreements and ongoing collaborations that guarantee all parties will take the required steps to assure the campaign’s success. These kinds of alliances are frequently more successful and durable.

Should Your Business Pursue Social Influencer Marketing?

I can attest to the importance of brand as a direct-response marketer. Social media may be a great tool for raising awareness and encouraging engagement. But at the end of the day, as a marketer, I want to be able to directly link every dollar spent and every resource used to a return on investment. Any direct marketer must be able to demonstrate that their marketing investment generates a profit.

It’s good to explore if you can identify influencers within your marketing budget who will boost and increase your brand awareness. However, it’s not always simple. However, it’s worthwhile to take the time to determine whether there are influencers out there who would be a good fit for your business. And cooperate with them in a mutually beneficial partnership that benefits everyone.

Contact MCDA CCG, Inc today with any questions about Social Influencer Marketing!