You must have heard about the Guest posting. Guest posting, in SEO and marketing terms, is an effective way to get your dearly written content on a reputed website, and then route some of those traffic to your own website.
Influence marketing is somewhat a more advanced evolution of guest posting, where you don't write content for other websites. Instead, you ask those popular websites to promote your brand in their work on their website. Of course, there is a lot you need to do to do that.
Well, that's a viewpoint from the content marketing angle. However, Influence marketing is not just about content but a lot more, depending on the kind of influencer you are approaching too. The influencers have multiple ways to connect with their followers and those mediums can be leveraged to drive traffic.
How? They have the ability to drive traffic to your website, by recommending it among their followers. This article will explain how you can utilize influencer marketing to earn new website traffics that can be converted into final customers easily.
But, before that
Who Exactly is an Influencer?
An influencer could be anyone who has a stronghold on their followers. People who follow them trust what comes from the influencer's side. So if an influencer recommends a brand to his/her followers, the brand becomes a trusted name among that population of followers.
l A popular blogging site could be an influencer
l A Popular face in your niche could be an influencer
l A popular celebrity could be an influencer
l A popular YouTube channel could be an influencer, and
l Even your Facebook friend whose advice you can trust is an influencer
Anyone, whom you can trust with the information they give to solve an issue is definitely an influencer for you.
The Influencers have a Strong Hold
When 70% percent of teenage YouTube subscribers trust their followed influencers over traditional celebrities, you can imagine the kind of hold influencers have on their audience.
A similar stat is also there for social media references. 71% of consumers are more likely to create a purchase based on a social media orientation.
Now take a look at a stat that says "Businesses generate $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing”.
Impressed? You should be. Perhaps, you may be now thinking about how would you find an influencer for your business. I can help.
How to Approach an Influencer?
Through influencer marketing, you ought to make the influencer's audience your target population. So the first thing you should see in an influencer is what kind of audience and followers do they have. Do they coincide with the kind of audience suitable for your business niche?
For example, If the influencer’s follower base is mainly the women population, but your business sells only men's products; should you consider approaching such an influencer?
There are two reasons to say "Yes, You should approach":
l The women might be interested in buying a product for their male acquaintances or counterpart.
l The aim is to get website traffic, no matter if it's women or men.
Sounds good, but I have developed some thoughts that stop me from approaching this influencer:
l I am not sure how a women-centric influencer would be interested in promoting men-centric products.
l The ultimate aim of website traffic is to generate sales from them. However, I am not sure even if these women come to my site, how many of them would be actually converted.
l They might be interested in buying for their male counterparts, but I am not sure that an interested population would be enough to give sufficient returns on the investments I would make on the influencer.
Finding an influencer is the toughest task in influence marketing. You may come across several creators by just Googling or crawling social media. However, when you finally pick an influencer, not just any creator or influencer will do. You must ensure that it’s relevant to your brand and the kind of products you offer if you want effective marketing with a long-term influence on the audience.
-Relationship
Build a relationship with popular creators by sharing their work in your circle. Ask questions from them to show you are interested in their work. You have to earn an influencer, not hire. So, build a shared relationship, where you have something of value for the influencer. In this way, your brand, products, and content might get featured in their work if they find it valuable.
-Honest
Approach only those influencers who have a clean record of being honest with their audience; influencers promoting products and services in lieu of money are not the perfect choice for you or anyone. There are chances, such creators would lose their hold in the long run if their audience finds the truth.
-Honest Ones are Tough
It’s tough to persuade an honest influencer. However, it’s easy when your products are relevant to what they do, and you don’t force or pay them to say only good about it. Build a relationship before approaching your marketing idea. Show them how good is your brand and products, and they can recommend them to their audience to solve their problems.
-Persuade; do not Sell
Show them your product has value. Persuade the influencer like you would persuade any potential customer. If your product or service solves a problem, actively mention it. Let them know the benefits of using it, and how it’s better than other similar products and services from your competitors.
-Not Limited to Celebrities Anymore
Over the past few years, influence marketing has developed an additional branch that is quite different from what we have been seeing a few years past. The niche for finding influencers is no more limited to celebrities only. Today a non-celebrity infleuncer gives better returns as compared to celebrities. You should read “How Anyone Can Make Money on YouTube - Even with Zero Subscribers?” to know how YouTube is being used to influence marketing with non-celebrity figures.
-Have Patience
Building the roots of influence marketing is not an overnight achievement. It’s a process that takes months to build a relationship, prepare a plan, coordinate with the influencer, and then execute the campaign. To be exact, don’t expect success before 3-4 months if you want the companionship of a true influencer.
-Affiliate Marketing
Providing an incentive to your customers is the best marketing approach, however, providing an incentive to the influencer produces a boosted ROI when it comes to earning website traffic. By using affiliate marketing collaborations you can arrange a mutually beneficial “Give-and-Take” relationship with the influencers. When you make a sale through the link shared by the influencer, he/she receives a commission for the compensation of the great leader.
Different Ways Traffic is Routed to Your Website
Now if you have an influencer on your side, the website traffic will route towards you in different ways depending on the modus operandi of the influencer. In addition to mentioning your brand in their work, this is how they can share your website links to get you traffic:
1. A blogger can add your site’s links to his/her content.
2. A social media influencer can add a link to your site in his/her post.
3. A YouTube channel can add your links in the video description.
4. An influencer can share your links in the blog comments he/she makes.
5. An influencer can add your links to Quora's comments.
6. An influencer can mention your brand in their videos, meet-ups, and events, etc.
Final Words...
There are 101 ways an influencer can route their followers to visit your site. If everything went well, you will have massive website traffic in a very short time. Now it depends on your website, offers, UX, checkout, and a lot more to persuade those visitors to become a customer.
So, leverage this valuable resource to its fullest and earn some qualified leads and traffic. Never, make it a paid relationship, incentives are a better alternative to directly paying. It's more like sponsoring the influencer's work rather than paying them to speak well about you. By sponsoring you do not mean to force the influencer to talk good about you. If you have something good in your brand, they will get noticed by themselves and the influencer will have no issues talking about it and promoting it.
So, leverage this valuable resource to its fullest and earn some qualified leads and traffic. Never, make it a paid relationship, incentives are a better alternative to directly paying. It's more like sponsoring the influencer's work rather than paying them to speak well about you. By sponsoring you do not mean to force the influencer to talk good about you. If you have something good in your brand, they will get noticed by themselves and the influencer will have no issues talking about it and promoting it.
Ethan Roy is a technical content writer by Profession. With years of experience on various eCommerce platforms (Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Shopify), he has a lot to share with the readers. Currently working as Technical Content Writer at Velsof.
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