What is an influencer?
With the rise of social media, digital influencers have risen as well: The Instagrammers, YouTubers and the voices on Twitter we follow daily. An influencer is someone that has an impact on their followers, who can sway their behavior and influence what they think and do. Ten years ago those influencers were the A-list celebrities that ruled Hollywood, but not anymore. These days, much more influence is in the hands of the “everyday” influencers around us. Fashion Instagrammers, comedian Viners, and Youtube gamers – these kinds of “influencers” can be some of the loudest voices around.
So what does this mean to you?
The rise of the digital influencer has paved the way for a very effective, new form of advertising: influencer marketing. These influencers can have an incredible sway over their committed, engaged audiences – so partnering with one of them can provide huge outreach and engagement for your product or campaign. Not only that, but it costs much less to partner with an influencer than with a traditional celebrity, allowing you to get more out of your time with a much smaller investment.
How to choose an influencer for your campaign?
Before choosing an influencer to work with, you must identify the audience that you want to target. For example, if you want to promote a beauty product there is no need to spend loads of money partnering with Emily Ratajkowski. Though she may be beautiful and use many of your products, her time is expensive – and she may not even be targeting the audience you want to reach. With a 71 percent male following, your beauty products will still be on the shelves even after your pockets are emptied. Instead, a better idea might be to find a popular beauty Instagrammer, using influencer marketing platform like HYPR. They may not have as many followers, but all of those followers will be more likely to track beauty trends, to study the influencer’s methods and to buy new products that they use. Partnering with this influencer can you give you much better results by tapping into the power of their audience. Your influencer campaign can be much more streamlined than a traditional sponsorship, able to reach directly to your target audience – and on a much lower budget too, giving you greater flexibility for future projects.
Where to from here?
If you’ve decided to start an influencer campaign, there are many resources that can help you learn more about how to conduct your search and best practices to use to make the most of your partnership. No matter what direction you take your campaign, though, the starting point must always be to find the right target audience.
