Jared Atchison — April 24, 2020 Social media marketing is, without a doubt, one of the best tools you can use to grow your small business. There are countless ways to engage with your audience and deliver your best content. Many marketers and business owners also use social media as a way to grow their email list, which is vital for exponentially increasing your sales.
Do you want to reach your audience using various social platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram? Today we are going to go over the benefits of adding influencers to your social media marketing campaign.
Influencers are influential people that determine the way consumers interact with brands. These people come in many varieties, including celebrity influencers, who have over 500,000 subscribers, all the way down to nano-influencers, who have less than 10,000 followers.
Essentially, social media influencers are paid to talk about, review, or promote a product or service. Each influencer has a unique style of content and features other content on their channel. Businesses usually connect with influencers that have a similar target audience, so they have a better chance of generating leads and increasing sales.
Let’s look at the top 3 reasons you should consider adding influencers to your small business growth strategy.
Generate High-Quality Leads
There are over 3 billion people on social media today. If you’re not using these platforms to generate more high-quality leads to your website, you’re missing out on a huge growth opportunity.
Influencers are great at connecting with many different audiences, depending on their core content. For example, if you want to market your new gardening supplies, you would want to find an influencer who covers their garden and topics in the same industry.
When you can forge a deal with an influencer, they will create a sponsored post that promotes your brand as a video, text post, or Instagram story. Their audience will see your brand and content in their feed, which can encourage them to go to your website.
Imagine soliciting your pet store on a channel that focuses on do-it-yourself projects. Do you think you would generate leads from that interaction? The truth is, you wouldn’t generate nearly as many leads as you would have if you’d invested in an influencer that runs a channel where they show off their pets.
You can generate plenty of new high-quality leads for your small business with influencer marketing. The key is to work with people that create content within your industry.
Build Social Proof
Social proof is a phenomenon where people are likely to make a buying decision based on the opinion of other people. A staggering 90 percent of marketers say social proof helps them build brand awareness.
Building relationships with influencers can help you build social proof for your business. If someone stumbled across one of your ads on social media, they might not give your brand a second look. However, if one of their favorite influencers is ranting about how they love your product, that could impact their decision.
As a result, more social proof means more customers will want to see what you’re offering on your website.
There are other ways of working with influencers can build social proof for your business. The most notable way is they will provide reviews for consumers to find down the road. If someone doesn’t immediately see the content, they may over time.
Studies show that 97 percent of consumers look at reviews before purchasing a product. In other words, if someone gets curious about your brand months after the review is posted, the post can still influence buying decisions and build social proof for your business.
Create Relevant Blog Content
Influencer marketing can also help you learn about your target audience. The more you know about the people who need your product or service, the better chance you have at creating excellent marketing material in the future.
You can use the information you learn from working with influencers and use the data to promote your blog, push new types of social media posts, and create new engagement channels.
Let’s say you run a pet store and make a deal with 5 influencers in the pet industry. After reviewing the analytics showing the traffic and sales from their posts, you realize that 80 percent of your customers are cat owners.
Now that you have this information, you can start creating more cat-themed posts and content for your followers. It’s vital that you don’t neglect other products and services you offer, but generally, you’ll want to create content that your primary audience will find relatable and exciting.
Conclusion
There are influencers across all industries and across all social media platforms. You’re going to have to spend some time researching your customer personas and various influencers before you decide on the people you want to promote and represent your brand.
Picking your first couple of influencers will prove challenging. As you learn how this unique section of marketing works, you’ll soon start to see the benefits of adding influencers to grow your small business.
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