No matter what type or size business you are operating, there are two buzzwords which keep coming up time and again when devising a product marketing strategy. Those words would be “influencer” and “social.” Since it seems like the entire world has gone social, why not take advantage of social media marketing? In fact, let’s take that one step further!
If you’re going to go social, why not seek out social influencers who can make the biggest impact on the largest audience with the least amount of effort? That’s the key to social influencer marketing, but why is it so important and how does that benefit you in any way? Those are very good questions!
You can take celebrities out of the equation
Oddly, many people feel that the most effective social influencers are those celebs that we follow religiously. Actually, statistics indicate otherwise. In a survey conducted by Collective Bias in early 2018, a whopping 14,000 people responded, which gave a new perspective on social influencers. Take a moment to let that number sink in. Very few surveys quoted ever list that many respondents, so the results here are extremely telling of the population at large. What the survey found was that celebrities are not quite the influencers they were previously thought to be. In fact, they are 10 times less likely to influence buying decisions than non-celebrity social media endorsements. This information is huge when it comes to developing a product marketing strategy.
The impact of social media in marketing
In many ways, social media is “word of mouth” advertising in the digital age. A brand or a product can go viral literally overnight, reaching tens of millions of people around the globe. It only takes one local area influencer to reach an audience willing to ‘share’ a post and before you know it, that brand or product is a household word. For this reason, it pays to follow trends in social media for business. Also, those trends just might show you that the social sites you would expect to have the biggest impact may not have the power of promotion you thought they’d have. For example, Twitter is one of the social channels least likely to have market influence but as expected, Facebook and YouTube are huge. If you want to benefit from social influencer marketing, you might want to sink the bulk of your effort into those two social sites.
The easiest way to reach the largest audience
It is no secret that most people in today’s society spend more time online than in any other pursuit except, perhaps, work or school. Even then, it’s questionable. It’s rare to see anyone without their smartphone no matter what they are doing or where they are going. What are they doing on those mobile devices? You’ve got it! They are posting away on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, or watching viral vids. When it comes to such things as startup branding, there really is no better way to get your name out there than on social media, and the best way to accomplish that is to gain the attention of social media influencers.
How to locate social influencers
There are actually several very effective tools that enable you to seek out social media influencers, many of which are cross-platform apps which can be accessed on mobile phones and/or computers. For a list of the most popular social media research tools, check out sites like Social Media Today. This site has a list of apps which give you a wide variety of search parameters. You can search by popular content, popular influencers, and even by product lines. If you want to capture the attention of popular social media influencers, you need to find them first! These tools are invaluable for finding the right influencers for your purposes.
A focus on customer experience
So what, after all, does a social media influencer accomplish? Why are they so effective in promoting products or brands? Actually, it all boils down to customer experience and that is what they have to offer. They share what they experienced when dealing with a brand or working with a product and that’s how they influence the market. When it comes to brand marketing, there is nothing as effective as a brand ambassador and typically this comes in the form of a social media influencer. The key is to attract the attention of recognised social media influencers whether they are bloggers, journalists or professionals in their field. Their knowledge and experience of a market are well-respected and that’s exactly what you need if you want to gain recognition quickly and effectively. Today’s consumer is looking for that extra element of trust and that, in a nutshell, is why you need social influencer marketing.