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In digital marketing today, it is very common to attract potential customers engage and influence them through social networks such as Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, and Twitter. Influencer Marketing is one of the most popular and practical methods in digital marketing.

Business owners and brands try to make their products and services known to the public through popular and influential people (celebrities, athletes, winners, etc.). This article will provide a comprehensive definition of influencer marketing and the benefits and methods of using it properly.

What is the definition of influencer marketing?

As we said, Influencer Marketing is the process of introducing specific products and brands by influential and influential people. In this way, the owners of that business are not in direct contact with people, and in fact, they influence influential people through the promotion of their services and products.

Of course, this method is more effective than traditional methods such as word-of-mouth marketing because, in influencer marketing, the credibility and popularity of an influential person or the influencer cause the public to follow them to your company or brand.

You ask the influencer to produce content for your products, and in return, you provide services such as money or free use of your products. Influencers need to show that they are satisfied with the choice of products and services of your brand. In other words, define and defend your company to persuade other people to buy and use your products, and you, as business and brand owners, must compensate them by paying money or commission.

Advocate marketing also requires a company’s loyal customers to share their experience using the services or products purchased from your company with others, usually by commenting on the site participating in discussion forums and social networks do it. The only difference between this method and influencer marketing is that loyal customers do not receive money from you for doing so. Word-of-mouth marketing and advocacy-based marketing are subfields of influencer marketing.

Who is the influencer and what Features of a Good Influencer

An important topic in influencer marketing is getting to know and choosing the right one or more influencers. Choosing an influencer familiar with your brand’s products and services (to start an advertising campaign) is very helpful. Of course, this is not easily possible, and before that, you should be familiar with many concepts and know the various dimensions.

Influencers are generally divided into three categories, the choice of which depends on the size of the budget, the type of brand, and the types of products of your organization. In the following, we will introduce each of them:

Celebs

Celebrities are a brand in their own right, a brand that has stood the test of time and gained the full trust of the people. They can be actors, members of the mass media, singers, popular athletes, and winners, each with over one million followers or views per Instagram post. The ad of the famous Hollywood actor Paul Newman for Coca-Cola was the starting point of advertising through celebrities.

Working with these people for influencer marketing will make many people know and trust your brand, but it is very difficult to reach them, and many obstacles will stand in your way. Working with celebrities will cost a lot. For example, you will be paid almost one hundred thousand dollars for each ad outside of Iran. Naturally, in Iran, depending on the number of followers and the popularity of that person, each ad will cost you several hundred million. Drink water!

Macro Influencers

Major influencers have become famous in their field of work, for example, journalists, writers, bloggers, and experts in science and technology, with at least 500,000 followers in this category. Partnering with them is not easy because any propaganda activity overshadows their credibility.

Micro-influencers

These people have the lowest number of followers (500 to 10 thousand people) compared to the previous two groups. For this reason, influencer marketing does not charge astronomical sums for your brand. However, the small number of followers does not diminish their value because these types of influencers also greatly impact the audience’s trust in a particular product or brand.

For example, Instagram winners (comedians and people who produce comedy and entertaining content) are among the people who have gained a lot of popularity on this social network. You can also encourage your regular customers to advertise your business to small influencers.

Of course, to choose a suitable influencer, other factors must be considered, for example, the channels and social media (Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or Telegram) in which they are engaged, or the age, gender, and geographical area of ​​their audience. Well analyzed.

Different dimensions of influencers

Number of contacts (Reach)

Imagine introducing your products on a busy street with a speaker. Many people indeed hear your voice, but it has a very low impact. If you talk to each of them face to face, they will be more effective than your ads.

Engagement

Audience engagement means how much influencers interact with their audience. It can be that this is more important than the number of followers and audiences in choosing influencers. Audience engagement is divided into two categories:

1. Passive Engagement is the least the audience can do. Such as liking or retweeting, in which case the audience does not seem to be fully absorbed in your products and brand.
2. Active Engagement Occurs when the audience takes the time to read or view the influencer’s content and participate in discussions about it.

Audience Type

Who are an influencer’s followers, what are their interests, and in what fields do they work? These are the questions you should ask yourself before choosing an influencer because sometimes your brand and product customers need to have certain characteristics. For example, if your business is in women’s cosmetics, use a male influencer to influence product marketing. You’re not right, so try to find common ground between your audience and the influencers you want.

Influencer reputation

The influencer you consider is one of the most important factors for advertising with more efficiency. Especially if you work in specialized fields such as technology and technology, it is better to use experts and well-known people in the same field. For example, to introduce software products, instead of selecting active influencers in restaurant introduction, use a person who specializes in web design and applications.

Influencer creativity

There are generally two categories of influencers:

1. Creative people: They are highly creative and implement their ideas so that their followers like them for the same reason and have a more academic audience and followers.
2. Distributors:  They are content to share content and their audience.

Influencer honesty

Some influencers express their opinions without compliments and complete honesty, and they are proud of this feature. So you have to consider whether the influencer would like to point out the downsides of your products. Would you rather talk only about the good features and advantages?

How to pay the influencers

Influencers do not allow you to reach their audience in any way, so it is best to weigh your budget carefully and then set an amount for the influencer. There are different tariffs among influencers, some of which we will introduce below:

• Fee for Engagement: This fee is paid for the Engagement that the influencer has provided to you by providing the content. For example, this fee will be reduced or increased for each like, comment, share, etc.
• Fee per click: The influencer receives a fee for the number of clicks on your link or pages.
• Cost per post: A specific fee per post and the duration of its placement on the influencer’s social media pages.
• Free access to products: The influencer can use your products for free for a certain time.
• Cost per conversion rate: In this model, you calculate and pay the cost based on the conversion rate (for example, the number of people who have purchased the product or filled out a form).

Payment tariffs based on Engagement and clicks among the mentioned methods are the most common.

Ways to identify influencers

Read personal blogs: First, do a general search on the topic, then add the phrase .blog to the end of the keyword to find the blogs of reputable and popular people in that field.

Search hashtags: Search for hashtags related to your business on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter to reach the people who have posted the most topics about it.

The rivalry of competitors’ business: The purpose of this is not to copy and imitate them. You can track their business contacts, which in turn will lead you to the blogs and influencers you want.

Using LinkedIn: Just as you search for a keyword on Google, you can also access the profile of people active in that field by typing a keyword or phrase into it.

Common Mistakes in Influencer Marketing

Honesty

Although most people in this field are regular and honest, some try to defraud businesses by creating traffic and fake clicks. So you can use software such as Click Fraud Detection to find out the accuracy of this issue.

Credits

Not all influencers are professional in their work, but they are not as credible and stable as you. So do not look at them through the eyes of an employee or specialist. An influencer can easily meet your expectations by constantly monitoring and receiving the necessary training.

Negative effects

Just as influencer satisfaction during influencer marketing helps strengthen your branding. Dissatisfaction and negative feedback about your products can also cause huge problems for your brand. Your social media controller should always monitor such incidents and inform your marketing management team in the event of negative content and comments about your products so that you can make appropriate decisions in the shortest possible time. Of course, do not worry, because this has happened to large companies like Pepsi. It has solved it by controlling and providing appropriate solutions.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing for different businesses can bring many new customers. Finally, you should check and see how much money you have to start such a campaign. Then, according to what is said in this article, find the right influencer for your field of work. After negotiating with him, start your cooperation.

You should keep in mind that influencer marketing campaigns should be well-researched. If a campaign is useful or unhelpful, you can quickly identify it and decide about working with that person again. Get the basis of statistics and documentation.