September 5, 2016

How Do You Choose the Right Influencers for Your Brand?

By Figaro Digital

Perez Hilton has more than 14.5 million unique monthly visits to his celeb gossip site; Zoella has in excess of 11million subscribers on YouTube; and Kim Kardashian has 80.7million Instagram followers. So, it is unsurprising that choosing the correct celeb or influencer to endorse your brand can make a huge difference to the success or failure of your business.

Don’t believe us? Well, here are just a few stats to reinforce the point:

• Advertisers receive $9.60 in earned media value for every $1 spent on influencer marketing (source).
• 59% of marketers are planning on increasing their influencer marketing budgets this year (source).
• 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals (source)
• 60% of fashion brands already employ an influencer strategy (source)

But how do you choose the right influencer for your brand? Let’s discuss.

follow1. Analyse Their Social Following

If you’re looking at collaborating with a social influencer, size really matters. Depending on your specific goals, this could be limited to just one platform or be an overall figure across all social channels and blog page traffic.

The more followers that regularly engage with content the better, so when analysing the influencer’s following keep an eye out for key indicators such as likes, shares and retweets, as well as comments. The higher the volume of these, the further your brand’s message is likely to spread.

 

60 million 😱😱😱

A photo posted by King Kylie (@kyliejenner) on

 

2. Relevancy is Key

Getting millions of eye balls on your content is great, but if the type of influencer you work with is not related to your industry you could be heading towards astronomical bounce rate figures.

For example, you wouldn’t employ the services of a beauty influencer to promote your brand new fishing rod – it simply wouldn’t work. You could even narrow your parameters further, such as ensuring their overall messages match your brand ethos. For example, ensuring an all-natural organic product is being endorsed by a vegan chef influencer.

Consider your target persona and the influencer’s followers; do they match up?

3. Consider Your Budget and Be Realistic

consider your budget

It may seem obvious, but if you have no budget and don’t want to send free products out to be reviewed, you’re going to struggle to get very far with the big wigs of the blogging and social world. After all, how can they speak honestly about your product without seeing and testing it out for themselves in real life?

Generally, you can assume the more followers or site traffic an influencer gets, the bigger the cost will be. So, if you represent an SME, it may be more cost effective to speak to multiple up-and-coming stars than one of the nation’s favourites.

4. Don’t Forget Frequency

Have you ever come across a blog that ranks really well in the SERPs, but then noticed that it hasn’t published a post in at least a year or two? It’s easy to assume that the writer has given up blogging and over time is losing their once strong authority.

And you’d be right to think this. There is a correlation between how often a blog is updated and return traffic, as many visitors will only make a conversion once they have viewed multiple pages or made more than one visit to your site.
Consistently updated high-quality content is a great way of grabbing attention and maintaining interest. Influencers who post frequently will create more loyal followers that are more likely to convert.

Learn More About Influencer Marketing

For more information on why you should work with influencers and how to build a relationship, watch ‘Working with, and being an influencer…’ the Figaro Digital video presentation by Phil Mitchelson, Marketing Director, Bigballs Media and Copa90.

Read more:
Key Findings: Figaro Digital’s August Retail & Ecommerce Roundtable
Excelling at User Experience: Keeping Your Customer Happy
What Can the Great British Bake Off Teach Us About Marketing?

 

(main image: Zoella’s Facebook page)


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By Figaro Digital