What is influencer marketing for website traffic? Contrary to popular belief, influencer marketing has been around for several years now. It’s just now becoming more talked about and available to the masses. When it first started only big brands and celebrities were using it, but now with the number of influencers in so many different niches anyone can jump in and start using influencer marketing.
In short, influencer marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on using key individuals – called influencers – to drive a desired action or reaction from a much larger audience. In practice, this could involve working with bloggers, social media stars, or other key voices within your industry to promote your brand, product, or service. Done well, influencer marketing can be an incredibly effective way to increase website traffic and grow your business.
Influencer Marketing Definition
So, let’s first talk about what influencer marketing is. An influencer is a person who is on a social network with a following who sees them as an expert in their niche. You can pay these influencers for endorsements and mentions of your business/products/services. This type of marketing works so well because the influencers have a following that knows them and listens to them. They have done the work to build trust with their followers through the content they post on their social media channel.
Now, it’s worth noting that an influencer doesn’t have to have a huge following to be valuable to you. Even small followings can get you the results that you need.
Now that you know what influencer marketing is, let’s switch gears and start talking about how you can start using it in your business.
Step 1: Research Examples Of Influencer Marketing
This is a critical step. I highly recommend you head over to Google and search for “influencer marketing examples” and go through the results. See how others are using influencer marketing and get ideas of how you can use influencer marketing. Maybe you find examples that are totally unrelated to your business, but you could use the same tactics.
Step 2: Define What Your Goals Are
After you’ve done some research and have some ideas for how you want to use influencer marketing define the goals you want to accomplish by using influencer marketing. Are you just wanting to create awareness for your brand? Are you wanting to directly promote your products or services? Are you wanting to generate leads? Are you wanting to build your following? Decide on one goal you can start using influencer marketing to accomplish. As you learn to use it and you see results you can always run more campaigns for other goals.
Step 3: Find Influencers To Work With
Now there are a few ways to find influencers. You can hop on the social networks that they’re on which are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube (probably others but these are where you’ll find the most influencers and probably one that fits your niche) and start following them to get a feel for the content they publish and how/if you could work with them. Simply search for keywords that are related to your niche.
If you’re going to use this route, I highly recommend you create a system to keep up with each of them. You’ll want to spend a few weeks following them before reaching out. Plus, you also want to make sure that they have a following that actually interacts with them. If they don’t have a following that interacts with them, it might be a good idea to not work with them because you won’t get results if they aren’t either. This is also an indicator of “false followers” which is sometimes an issue with influencers, so make sure you’re working with legit influencers.
Alternatively, there are also influencer marketplaces that you can utilize where the marketplace brings influencers and advertisers together. Do a search on your favorite search engine and you’ll see many different ones that you could potentially find an influencer in.
Step 4: Start, But Start Small
Influencers are categorized in different “levels” which are:
Nano Influencers – Have 1,000 – 5,000 followers.
Micro Influencers – Have 5,000 – 50,000 followers.
Mid-tier Influencers – Have 50,000 – 500,000 followers.
Mega Influencers – Have more than 500,000 followers.
I recommend that you start by finding nano influencers to work with first. They are going to be less expensive and probably easier to work with on many levels. Check the profile of the influencer you would like to work with and see if they have any links or information about working with them. If they have a website, you can also visit it and see if there is any information about working with them. Contacting them via email works better than sending them a direct message on social media because an influencer generally gets a lot of direct messages on their social media accounts. If you can’t find any information then you can reach out to them directly, tell them your goals and ask them how you can work with them.
Once you’ve done a few campaigns with a few different influencers check to see what results you got. You can track results by using tracking links, hashtags, etc. If you got little or no results check to see how they promoted you. Then check to make sure that things on your end are right. Influencer marketing is not a hands off strategy. You must keep on top of things like scheduling, postings, and results.
Step 5: Scale Your Influencer Marketing Efforts
When you get some experience under your belt, and you’ve had good results reaching your goals then you can start using bigger influencers and spending more money thus getting more and more results for your business!
As your business grows, you may find that your influencer marketing campaign needs to scale up in order to keep up. What does that mean, and how do you do it?
One way to scale up an influencer marketing campaign is by increasing the number of influencers you work with. This can help you reach more people and create more buzz. You can also try expanding the range of content you produce, or working with different types of influencers.
Another way to scale up an influencer marketing campaign is by using new platforms and channels. For example, if you’ve been focusing on social media, you may want to start using podcasts or video content. You can also try targeting new demographics or industries.
Whatever method you choose, make sure that you track your results carefully.
Influencer Marketing Campaign
When planning an influencer marketing campaign, keep the following in mind:
1. Choose your influencers carefully. Make sure they have a large, engaged following and are aligned with your brand values.
2. Plan your campaign well in advance. Give your influencers plenty of time to create quality content.
3. Provide clear instructions to your influencers. Let them know what you’d like them to promote and when you’d like it promoted.
4. Monitor the campaign closely. Keep track of how much website traffic is being generated and how many leads are being generated as a result of the campaign.
5. Thank your influencers for their help once the campaign is over. Show them some love on social media and let them know how much you appreciate their support.
How to Use Influencer Marketing
Now this guide should help you with getting started with influencer marketing. It’s a different strategy and can be a lot more fun and profitable than other strategies. We all need more fun in our marketing, right? However, the fundamentals are still the same as other marketing tactics. You’ve still got to do your research, determine what your goals are, carry out the actual advertising, and then review your results and see how you can make changes to make it better.
Influencer marketing is here to stay, and it’s only going to grow more in the coming years. Just about any business can use it for all kinds of different business goals. All the way from growing your following and building brand awareness to making sales and generating leads. All of this is reason enough to at least start your research and see how you can use influencer marketing to grow your business.
You can do this as part of your research, but to give you an idea, here is a list of Neal Schaffer’s Top Instagram Influencers.
Perhaps you would like to read our article How to Buy Targeted Traffic for an overview to the world of paying for traffic.
In conclusion, you can’t get anything working unless you give it a try, so take these actionable tips and have at it!
