Carol’s recent post on the Bank of America Small Business Community, “Influencer Marketing Best Practices for Small Businesses,” shares strategies and tactics you can use to grow your business.
Influencer marketing is clearly a top trend, and here’s what you need to consider if you want to do it and get results. Carol begins:
Businesses of all sizes are quickly finding that influencer marketing is an effective way to reach customers. By sponsoring content creators that have their own audiences, marketers can leverage user-generated content, expertise and trust combined with built-in social distribution to meet a variety of marketing goals. When implemented properly, influencer marketing can drive brand awareness, audience development, sales growth and more.
Despite its efficacy, how to run an influencer marketing campaign is still unclear for many small (and large!) businesses. Below are six best practices to generate a strong return on investment from your influencer marketing activities.
1. Choose the Right Platform for Your Goals.
All platforms are not created equal and not all are relevant to your audience. “The first step in any influencer marketing campaign is finding the most appropriate platform. One platform does not fit all, as each has different characteristics, formats, engagement mechanisms and features. Depending on your specific goals, some platforms may be better than others” said Mike Prasad, the CEO of Tinysponsor, an inventory-based sponsorship marketplace that helps companies purchase the right sponsorships for their marketing goals (disclosure, I am also an investor in the platform).
For example, Prasad notes that “a permanent and visually engaging Instagram post will outperform on awareness and narrative goals, while an Instagram Story with a 24-hour lifespan will typically outperform on click-through and sales conversions with its swipe-up links and immediate call-to-action features. A blog sponsorship is fantastic for SEO and content creation, plus it can be effectively repurposed as ‘testimonial’-type creatives. You need to start with your goals.”
2. Know What Metrics Matter and Why.
After choosing a platform, you need to be measuring success. Operating on vanity measurements will not drive ROI. “Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook offer granular demographic insights, while others such as Instagram and Snapchat are more limited in their data offerings,” Prasad said. “Knowing what to measure is critical for driving bottom-line results.
You can read the rest of the post here.
