Your social media campaigns have been ongoing for some time now. Impressions are looking healthy. There are some clicks into your landing page but bounce rate is at an all-time high. And users are simply not engaging with your website. You rack your brains, trying to figure out what went so wrong that people are not a least bit interested in what you have to offer. The good news is, there’s nothing wrong with your brand or product. In fact, every product brings value as long as it meets the right buyer. But, what if I told you that your audiences are not seeing your ads? And would it be exciting to share that influencer marketing may be what your business needs?
With reference to an infographic published by GlobalWebIndex, 47% of internet users are using ad-blockers to limit the number of ads they see. The top three motivations for ad-blocking are the high frequency of ads, irrelevant and intrusive ads.
Your campaign can never reach audiences who are actively filtering out paid advertisements. The solution to your woes may lie in influencer marketing. With the right strategy, you may find influencer marketing to be a highly efficient way to reach the right audience.
Infiltrate Social Circles via Influencer Marketing
Sales are done best when conducted in a physical setting. Physical interaction enables salespersons to have more control of the situation and to respond accordingly. This is why salespersons are always trying to arrange meet-ups with clients.
However, in the digital world where ad displays function as virtual salespersons, things get complicated. Without the ability to analyse audience behaviour and sentiment, closing deals online can be difficult. In fact, audiences are using tools to reject and filter advertisements online.
With audiences actively filtering out brand communications, influencer marketing can bridge the gap between brands and audiences. As the gatekeepers of their network, brands can gain access to communicate with their target audience through influencers. Furthermore, these communication can be done with little resistance. This enables brands to actually have a shot at communicating their brand message without being filtered.
In addition to being a gatekeeper of information, influencers are also hailed as the opinion leaders of their network. Remember the sassy neighbour from your childhood that your parents listen to? Influencers play that exact role. But they do so in the digital world where audiences choose to listen in on their opinions. When these opinion leaders buy into your brand, they share their opinions with their network. This becomes a form of validation for your brand through an authentic manner.
Suggested Strategy:
It is important to maintain pleasant working relations with your influencers because they form part of your target audience too. Instead of buying off influencers to do fake positive reviews, devise a communication plan that helps them understand the uniqueness of your brand or product. This is a no-brainer, but always encourage influencers to give objective reviews.
A detailed and well-thought communication plan with objectivity helps ensure authenticity and credibility for your brand. Provide influencers with a direction on how the brand message should be presented, but avoid being overly strict with the creatives and content. Ultimately, it is important that the influencers stick with the tonality and style that their audiences have subscribed to.
Find the Right Audience, with Lesser Money Spent
Delivering ads to the “right” audience may be one of the toughest tasks for marketers. Unlike building personas in marketing 101, determining a target audience in practice requires extensive research and trial and errors.
A wide selection may lead to a loss of marketing objectives. On the other hand, an overly narrow selection may result in insufficient outreach. There is no foolproof way to determine the profile and characteristics of the target audience until there is substantial amount of data for analysis. Finding the right audience is often the result of data crunching.
Engaging social influencers may shorten the process of finding the right audience as they have access to a ready pool of audience who are willing to engage. Instead of having to run multiple campaigns to determine the audience, influencers can provide an outline of the types of audiences they are already engaging with. In most cases, some may also share the types of content audience are most likely to be interested in.
These information benefits your marketing strategy three ways. Better brand positioning, craft more meaningful brand messages and optimise your target audience.
Suggested Strategy:
Shortlist 3 to 5 influencers whose profiles align with your business. Speak with them to understand their content strategy. It is important to have strategies that are complementary in order to achieve objectives. Find out more about their audience and the content that they respond to. This helps you craft appropriate brand messages and decide if their audience are most suitable for your business objectives.
If possible, consider collaborating with at least two influencers so that you can do A/B testing. Once you have information of the most suitable audience for your business, continue optimising thereon. Depending on the influencers you finally collaborate with, fees may vary.
More often than not, businesses invest huge amounts of capital in brand marketing without considering engagement and conversion rates. It should be noted that having high impressions without conversion is hardly a successful campaign.
No doubt, engaging influencers may not necessarily translate into immediate sales. However, they can be considered as affordable means to etch your brand message into the subconscious minds of your target audience.
