[gallery_bank source_type=”gallery” id=”37″ layout_type=”slideshow_layout” alignment=”center” slideshow_width=”800″ auto_play=”yes” time_interval=”3″ order_images_by=”sort_asc” sort_images_by=”sort_order” slideshow_filmstrips=”hide” control_buttons=”hide” gallery_title=”hide” gallery_description=”hide” thumbnail_title=”hide” thumbnail_description=”hide” filters=”disable” lazy_load=”disable” search_box=”disable” order_by=”disable” animation_effects=”fadeIn” special_effects=”none”][/gallery_bank]
Last year Google reported that there were a whopping 61,000 searches for the term “influencer marketing” per month compared to just 3,900 in 2015! Although Influencer Marketing (I’ll call it IM from now on because it takes ages to type!) has been a growing thing since the late 1990s, this peak coincided with Instagram, the main platform for IM hitting 1 billion users. This year the term “influencer” was added to the Oxford Dictionary and IM as an industry has grown from $1.7billion in 2016 to a whopping $8billion this year.

So unless you’ve been living in a cupboard you’ve probably heard of the term and seen it in action, but may not been sure how to use it for your own small business. So I asked marketing expert extraordinaire Wendy Wyss of Wendy Wyss Marketing to come and talk to us about it last night at our Sevenoaks MIB Network monthly meet-up.

It was incredibly useful and I took a whopping 8 A4 pages of notes! Here’s a summary of her talk…

What is Influencer Marketing?

An influencer is anyone with authority in a certain niche – a person that people trust and value the opinion and knowledge of. It differs from celebrity endorsement where people may “worship” them but don’t necessarily trust their opinion!

Influencers typically have a following on social media, blogs, podcasts or youtube. It might not be a huge following (more about scale later), but it’s a following that trusts their opinion and engages with them.

The History of IM

• I’ve already touched on the last couple of years at the start of this blog, but IM dates all the way back to 1760 when Mr Wedgewood designed a teaset for the Queen. At the time the royal family was THE influencer of the time and resulted in a popularity for Wedgewood which lasts until this day.
• If you’re a woman you’ll probably remember the Jennifer Aniston “Rachel of Friends hair-cut” (I had it). Although she was technically a celebrity too, her “girl next door with gorgeous hair image” was used by L’oreal to market their Elvive range successfully.
• Roll forward to 2004 and the word Blog was the “word of the year”
• In 2010 Instagram was launched – this was to become the most significant factor in the world of IM
• By 2015 Influencer Agencies emerged to connect businesses and brands with influencers and became the go-to marketing tool of many large corporations.

You may also have seen scandals in the press about influencers buying fake followers to justify charging big bucks.

Why you should consider IM for your small businesses?

All those numbers and big corporates using IM can make it feel like it’s maybe not accessible for a small business, but there are different scales which do make it accessible (more later). Here’s why you should seriously consider it…

Advertising doesn’t work as well

Consumers are more savvy to advertising and largely don’t trust it any more so a different approach is needed. With the rise of website reviews, Trip Advisor etc, consumers trust the opinions of other consumers and are influenced by them. So working with the right influencer can give you the leverage that other marketing methods simply can’t do by allowing you to tap into their opinion as an “expert consumer”.

People rely on the opinions of peers and friends to make consumer choices

Think of a good influencer like a peer or friend of their audience, but with reach. An influencer will:

1. have the trust and credibility in a certain area
2. have access to your target audience to gain exposure and reach beyond your own network
3. have sales and communication skills
4. provide authentic content that is not salesy.

All this adds up to an attractive marketing tool in a digital age, particularly when it can be cost effective too.

1. How to approach an Influencer as a small business

Decide on your objective and how to measure it

decide on your objective for even going down this route. Do you want to increase your followers? Your brand awareness? Your social media engagement (likes/clicks/shares)? Your website traffic? Generate more leads and enquiries? Generate more conversions using promotion codes or affiliate links clicks?

And then make sure you have a method of measuring your chosen objective to see if it’s successful.

PRO TIP – make sure you have the capacity in terms of time / resources / stock / womanpower to cope if your campaign is successful!

Find the right influencer

There are 3 levels of influencer:

1. Micro – typically with 2-50k followers. These will usually be individuals and have the best level of engagement with their followers, are more likely to respond to comments and questions from them, will have a distinct follower demographic and have a lot more engagement than a celebrity
2. Power Middle – 50-250k followers. These will still be engaged, but probably less so with so many followers and will have a higher reach but probably more demographically diverse.
3. Insta/YouTube Celebrities – 250k+ followers. These have the best reach but a wider demographic so can be more of a scatter-gun approach for something specific. They also have a lower authority and trust.

As a small business you will almost certainly want to aim for the Micros and Power Middles of the world.

Within these 3 levels, there are different types (some of whom you’ll notice are businesses):

• Bloggers in a particular industry (for example, I’m a blogger for mums with businesses in Kent and Sussex)
• Cafes and restaurants
• Places of interest
• Gyms, sports centres, yoga studios etc
• Entrepreneurs
• Hotels and spas
• Networking groups
• Authority figures like industry experts, critics, council, teachers and professionals
• Media like websites, local mags and papers, writers and editors, radio stations, journalists and writers
• Celebrities IF they have authority in your particular niche

Pro tips for finding influencers among your own fans and customers

1. Look into who is following you and engaging with you on social media. Check them out. Who has a big following that is also engaged?
2. Your past customers
3. Who wrote you testimonials
4. Who do your competitors collaborate with
5. Ask your audience “Who do you think could help me spread the message?”

Check they’re genuine

The success of IM means that is has a dark side and the number of fake influencers have increased to tap into what can be a lucrative market. The number of followers an influencer has can dictate their fees, so make sure they’re a) genuine followers (as opposed to bought or robots) and b) actually engaging with genuine comments.

2. How to start a relationship with your chosen influencer

• share their posts, like them, comment on them, mention and tag them
• After some time, approach them directly via email or phone. If someone can introduce you, even better!
• In that phone call or email, show them you’ve done your research, what you like about them and their approach and their audience and why you want to work with them. Be specific about what you want them to deliver, your objective, what’s in it for them, what value you bring e.g. a blog/follower-base/discount for their audience. Tell them what sort of content you could provide.

3. How to pay an influencer

This very much depends on the level of influencer you’re aiming for in that scale I talked about above. Some influencers, particularly the larger ones, expect hard cash. And that amount will depend on what they’re doing for you and the number of followers they have. So they may well be out of bounds for the small business, but it entirely depends on what you’re offering and if it fits with their values, so is still worth giving it a shot!

However, micro-influencers may well work for free products and/or services (e.g a free meal in your cafe that they can review), exclusive discounts or prizes that they can offer their own audience, added value you can bring to the table, mutual collaborations or blog content that you can provide them to save them a job.

Ultimately it’s about growing a good relationship that works for both of you.

4. Items you should share with an influencer

It’s important that your influencer understands what you’re all about in order to represent you fairly. So be sure to give them information about your brand and values, the tone of voice you normally use in your marketing, your style guide, key talking points, any past posts or template examples, who they should contact, and what they can’t talk about or mention.

5. Contracts

For the sake of clarity and managing expectations, Wendy recommended that you should always have some form of contract with an influencer, even if it’s just a simple written agreement. This should cover the basics and length of what they’ll produce, any payment details, how it’s going to be made and when. A creative briefing session as it’s important to sit down together to build a relationship, the approval procedure if you want to take a look at what they’re going to put out before it goes live, deliverables (what, where and when), cancellation (just in case of illness or them not doing something they’re supposed to), content inclusion and use of e.g certain hashtags, web links, tags etc, copyright ownership and use of content by both of you after the event, exclusions and what must not be mentioned and a Non Disclosure Agreement (google search to find a standard NDA clause).

6. Plan your activities

Here’s where you need to work out exactly what you want that influencer to do. Ideas include:

• Sponsored content – they do a post, video and/or blog showcasing you and reviewing your product
• Guest blog – you write the blog for them to post and promote to their audience. Most people struggle for content ideas so this can help them too
• Group Interview / Expert Roundup – choose a few influencers and ask their opinion then you create the content that they can use. Specify that they also need to share it if you include them!
• Competition / giveaway for their followers
• Special offer / discount for their followers
• Product or event launch that they can get exclusive behind-the-scenes or advance access to
• Live videos with them to make interractive content e.g. Q&A sessions, how to, film them discovering or experiencing your product/service
• Stories takeover – they take over your insta stories for a day talking about you
• Testimonials for you
• Affiliate marketing – you provide an exclusive, trackable link to your website and give them a cut of resulting sales
• Make them a brand ambassador

7. Make sure you have time and resources for…

To make the most of an influencer campaign, it’s vitally important that you also dedicate time and resources to your end of things too e.g.

• Making good use of the content and distribute it yourself too
• Being there to promptly respond to all comments and tags on social media
• Checking your analytics and monitoring them against your objectives
• Feeding back to the influencer and asking them for feedback and a testimonial if appropriate
• Creating complementary content and distributing it on your own channels during the campaign
• Paid advertising
• Email marketing
• Organic shares
• Influencer compensation and rewards
• Can it be incorporated into any offline marketing?
• As mentioned before, can you cope with a successful campaign in terms of staffing, stock and operations?!

Summary

Phew, my fingers ache now from all that typing. Wendy also shared some fascinating case studies showing IM in action on different scales and for different types of businesses to bring the theory to life.

A huge thank you to Wendy for sharing your expertise with us – I hope you found this write-up useful. Please comment on this blog to let us know if you’ve used IM or are considering it, and how you’ve got on.

If you’d like any help or advice on influencer marketing or marketing in general, Wendy’s website is https://www.wendywyssmarketing.com/.

And finally…

If you’d like to receive invitations to our events and receive the occasional email with news and event tips, click here to sign up to hear from us.

By for now!

Claire Witz