Influencer Marketing: How online influencer marketing works?

Influencer Marketing is a digital marketing method in which brands cooperate with social media influencers to promote products and services, increase sales, reach the people in the target audience, and expand the target audience. This can also be termed as “online influencer marketing” or “Social media influencer marketing”. You can hire any influencer directly or the best way can be through an influencer marketing agency or say social influencer marketing agency. Let’s get into the details.

Influencer Marketing Strategy, which is highly preferred by e-commerce companies, is quite different from traditional advertising. The main purpose here is for influencers to promote their content and products in a natural way.

Historical Development of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a new digital marketing method that has emerged with the widespread use of social media platforms. In the first years of the use of the Internet, people who recommended information to other users on blogs and forum sites and gave information about the products were actually the first influencers. But with the use of YouTube in 2005, individuals also delivered their videos to different wide masses.

The proliferation of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter has transformed Influencers in a different way. People who have a large audience on social media platforms have now started to inform their audiences about brands, products, and services. For these people to cooperate and financial management processes, Influencer Marketing Agencies have emerged.

In addition to people with a very large following. Micro and macro influencers who do promotion and marketing work for smaller people have started to gain importance.

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Why is Influencer Marketing Important?

Influencer Marketing Strategy is very important for businesses that want to reach a wide audience, create brand awareness, and increase their sales.

• Thanks to Influencer marketing, brands can reach large masses.
• In addition, his followers trust Influencers very much.
• Since Influencers serve a niche, it is possible for businesses to work with Influencers in their own sectors.
• In particular, influencers alleviate the workload of brands in the content production process.
• The visibility of brands on social media platforms is increasing.
• Every work done with this marketing strategy allows you to reach measurable data.

Brands that want to get efficiency from the Influencer marketing strategy should make the Influencer selection to be worked on in a good way and determine their marketing strategies well. If you want to get more efficiency from influencers, you can pay attention to them.

What are the Types of Influencers?

Influencers are divided into categories according to certain factors and number of followers. Nano, macro, micro, and mega influencers are the most well-known influencer types. Though, there are five different types of influencers to choose from.

• Mega-influencers with more than a million followers (think celebrities)
• Macro-influencers with 500K to 1 million followers
• Mid-tier influencers with 50K to 500K followers
• Micro-influencers with 10K to 50K followers
• Nano-influencers with 1K to 10K followers

People who have expertise in a certain subject can also be evaluated in the influencer category. Or people who have a child can also be seen as Influencers because they can affect mothers and fathers. In addition to these, bloggers and content producers can also work as Influencers.

The Relationship Between Social Media Platforms and Influencer Marketing

With the use of social media platforms, the importance of influencer marketing has started to increase. In the first process, interaction studies on different platforms were carried to social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube over time.

Thanks to the social media platforms, that emerged with the development of Web 2.0 technology, where users can interact with each other, influencers. They have started to grow and reached large masses. Brands, on the other hand, have increased their reputation and started to make more sales while reaching more people by cooperating with people who have a wide audience on these platforms.

How to Create an Effective Online Influencer Marketing Strategy?

Every brand that wants to get a good conversion from influencer marketing needs to create an effective strategy and it is important to pay attention to certain things when creating this strategy.

• First of all, the most important thing that brands need to determine the target they want to achieve from Influencer marketing. Increasing sales, launching products, creating brand awareness, and expanding your target audience are some goals you can work on.
• Second, you need to define your target audience. You can consider factors such as the characteristics, habits, and interests of your target audience and thus work with the right influencers who have your target audience in their hands.
• After determining your goals and target audience, research the influencers that are most suitable for your brand and contact these influencers.
• Determine your content strategy and take care to stay in touch to produce content that is in line with your brand’s corporate stance.
• After you start your content marketing efforts, regularly analyze your performance and pay attention to how many conversions you get from related collaborations.

If you can’t decide who the influencers to work with are, these processes can contact the agencies that serve the influencers and thus you can get professional support to work with the influencers who best suit your brand’s goals.

Consider These Points When Choosing a Social Media Influencer

Although each brand decides on the influencers. They will work by considering their own goals in the selection of Influencers, there are also different points to be considered in Influencer Selection. These:

• Audience Compliance
• Content Quality and Consistency
• Engagement Rates
• Number of Followers
• References
• Long-Term Study Opportunity
• Budget

If the points to be considered in the selection of Influencers are not taken into consideration, the efficiency that brands will receive from marketing studies may decrease.

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Work with Influencers Suitable for Your Target Audience

If you are going to make an Influencer choice to develop your Influencer marketing strategy, you can consider working with the influencers suitable for your target audience at the beginning of the first issues you need to give importance.

In this process, when communicating with influencers, you can learn whether they have an audience similar to the target audience you want to reach, and you can ask for an analysis of their audience.

Content Quality and Consistency

Content quality and consistency are also important in Influencer marketing strategy. Since the first goal of influencer marketing is to do natural marketing, you need to take care to reach niche influencers who serve in the sectors where your brand is located. At this point, you can review their content and observe if they are consistent before you get in touch.

Care About Engagement Rates

When choosing the people, you will work within your influencer marketing strategy, you also need to consider interaction rates. The fact that an influencer’s interaction rates are high is a factor that you can show that you trust them as your followers, so you can consider the number of likes, comments, shares, and records during the selection phase.

Follower Count and Profile

Give importance to another important issue of the number of followers while choosing the right influencer for your brand. Generally, brands that will prefer Influencer marketing in marketing studies often think that they will get more efficiency from mega influencers, but in some sectors, mega influencers can have much effect. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the number of followers and profile well.

• Does the influencer have a niche audience?
• Despite being a macro or micro-influencer, do their followers actively interact?
• What are the follower and engagement rates?
• Is there a bot tracker?

You can look for answers to questions such as and make your assessment more accurate.

Browse References

Generally, people who work as influencers for brands also have previous studies in their profiles. In fact, this can guide you when choosing the influencer, you will work with. When deciding on the influencer you will work with, you can take a look at which brands you have collaborated with before and care about what kind of content helps brands. However, you can also make your decision by evaluating how much the influencer works with the brands.

Consider Your Budget

Each brand works within a certain budget while doing influencer marketing work. In the selection of Influencers, budget is also among the issues that should be given importance. Generally, mega and macro influencers need to allocate more budget to work inward, while for micro and nano influencers you can keep your budget less.

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What are the Success Metrics of Influencer Marketing Campaigns?

Measuring success in every digital marketing campaign plays a big role in brands developing their next strategies. In order to make this measurement, you need to follow certain metrics. You should track these metrics specifically for both your site and your social media accounts.

• Has there been an increase in followers during the agreement period on the social media platforms you have studied?
• Has your brand’s engagement rate increased?
• Has there been an increase in watch and listening times?
• Has there been an increase in traffic on the pages of the products and services that your brand promotes?
• What differences have occurred in your site’s traffic from social platforms?
• Have conversion rates diverged?
• What kind of changes have occurred in your brand’s brand searches?
• How many people have been shared by the influencer and to what extent have the interaction rates increased?
• Have you received any discrepancies in the feedback from your customers?
• Did Influencers’ shares increase your sales?

By looking for answers to your questions, you can examine what kind of efficiency you get from Influencer marketing and thus develop your strategy for your different studies.