How to Use Influencer Marketing For Your Business

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Are you interested in using influencer marketing for your business? Influencer marketing is an excellent way to enhance your brand awareness for your company and leverage a new way to increase your sales. This is especially important if you have an online business and are interested in creating an affiliate marketing program. Whether you are searching for bloggers, micro-influencers on Instagram, or macro-influencers on YouTube, it's a great way to assist you in building connections, relationships, and an online presence for your brand. Keep on reading to learn more about the difference between macro and micro-influencers, the best platforms to connect with potential influencers for your brand, and how to connect with influencers to grow your company online. 

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When you become an influencer (or someone who has influence), you often become a micro-influencer. A micro-influencer is someone who gains a smaller following, traditionally under 10,000 followers. Having a following of this capacity is the starting point to have an impact and influence over others on social media. Those who become micro-influencers usually begin collaborating with other companies, offering unpaid collaborations. 

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On the opposing side, macro-influencers usually have over 10,000 followers and have a lot of credibility. They usually have a higher engagement rate than a micro-influencer would, an stable online community, and are well known for a specific topic. For example, there are food bloggers out there that focus on Keto or Paleo and anyone who might be on a specialized diet like that could become a follower and a part of their community. On the brand and collaborations side, macro-influencers usually have rate sheets and a set standard procedure on how they collaborate and work with other brands. 

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Instagram is a very popular place to connect with micro and macro-influencers and collaborations are extremely common there! On Instagram, you can find some great influencers that focus on food and beverage, health and wellness, fashion, and outdoor and adventure. Many brands have great success in working with influencers on Instagram by sending them a product and having them create a branded post, featuring their product and any necessary information. These can be both unpaid and paid depending on the influencer. Instagram content typically performs on a short-term basis, which is good to know if you are looking to track conversion and engagement rates. 

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Another very popular influencer-centric platform is YouTube. When you are collaborating with someone on YouTube, you will find many influencers who like to do how-to or demonstration videos. Some industries and topics that are very popular include food, beauty, cosmetics, and fashion. Collaborations on YouTube are similar to Instagram, yet the creative direction tends to be different. Influencers on YouTube can provide detailed analytics on each video including watch time and engagement. As a brand, you can provide those you are collaborating with appropriate links (including any affiliate links or discount codes), which can help you increase your brand awareness and sales conversion rate, depending on the intention of the campaign. YouTube is also an SEO-based platform, so any collaborations you do will increase in visibility over time.

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TikTok is now one of the most popular influencer-based platforms and can be quite interesting for a brand to use video. Many influencers have grown quite a bit on TikTok in recent days, and you can receive great results if you plan on collaborating with them on TikTok. The audience you might find on TikTok will be different from Instagram and YouTube, so you should know who your audience is and where they spend their time. For TikTok, influencers do a lot of shorter videos, often ones that could go viral, featuring your products or brand. Through collaborating, you can be as creative as you want and develop something unique. The audiences and online communities you target can be extremely dedicated depending on who you approach and those influencers can also provide analytics to help you track your conversions. 

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Snapchat is also a great platform to use. It often attracts a younger audience and the videos you might find on there are different in that they last on a short-term basis, versus YouTube, which has a longer lifespan. However, it is a very popular platform to conduct influencer collaborations depending on who you approach. Different collaborations can include Snapchat takeovers, stories, and more, depending on the creative direction you want to go with for your company. 

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When you are doing your research to find influencers for your brand, identifying what you need the influencer to have will help you find what you are looking for. Many brands have preferences and specific standards for their influencers including their community, the number of followers, engagement rate, content requirements, and brand standards. Searching for influencers who are aligned with your brand and match those qualifications would be the first step to finding the right influencers. Once you find influencers that are aligned with your brand and fit the qualifications you are looking for, you will want to message them and send them a pitch explaining your potential collaboration. Most influencers do provide their email address on their accounts or some form of a link to their website to contact them. Otherwise, some social media platforms have direct messaging to content them.

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In your pitch, it is always good to approach the influencer in a way where you can explain your company and the potential collaborations you are seeking out with them. Often, brands can share any credible factors such as their background, why their products were created, any special need-to-knows, any PR placements, or anything else that might be relevant for the influencer to know. Negotiation is always a factor in influencer marketing, as many influencers will come back with ideas of their own and rate sheets. Micro-influencers often agree to do unpaid collaborations or will come back with a rate sheet often under $500 per post. Macro-influencers usually have rates that can go up to $5000 or even more depending on how large of a following they have. 

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All in all, influencer marketing is something that can be of great use to your company and it can help you in many ways to increase your brand awareness, your conversion rate, and develop some great brand connections! From YouTube to TikTok, there are so many great people out there with online communities who have great influence to help take your brand to the next level. 

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