As the rise of influencer marketing continues, more businesses are trying to include it in their marketing campaigns. According to a 2019 survey by The Influencer Marketing Hub, 63 percent of brands plan to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2020. In addition to its ability to tap into consumer trust quickly, the ROI of influencer marketing can be rewarding and cost-effective – only 25 percent of brands that invest in influencer marketing fail to generate any revenue. In fact, 88 percent of marketers agree that it can be equal or better paying than the other marketing channels. However, to maximize the benefits of including influencer marketing in your marketing campaign, it needs to be the right fit.
Set Your Influencer Marketing Budget, But Don’t Make It Your Entire Marketing Budget
While many businesses are amping up their spending on influencer marketing, it should only be one part of your marketing strategy. Past data by BI Intelligence has shown that the returns on influencer marketing can supersede the rewards of branded content by over 203 percent. However, businesses should also balance their budget allocation across the board to get the maximum rewards. This means keeping space in your budget for print marketing and other advertising channels like email marketing.
Estimates from Altimeterfound that approximately 25 percent of a business’s digital marketing should be allocated to influencer marketing. To find the perfect budget allocation, businesses should incorporate Customer Acquisition Costs and Customer Lifetime Value. You also need to be careful to continue the cost-effective advantages of using experts in your advertising to improve your visibility and reach. To make influencer marketing as cost-effective as possible, you can include the use of micro-influencers and user-generated content in your influencer marketing tactics.
Choose The Right Influencer With The Right Engagement Rate And Audience
The 3 Rs of influence marketing (relevance, reach and relationship) should be a fundamental base when including influencer marketing in your digital marketing campaign. Choosing the right influencer for your campaign is not just about choosing someone with the highest engagement rate, but also the most relevant audience for your product. This requires market research to identify the niches you should be targeting and the influencers that are speaking about your product, your competitors, and even trends associated with your product.
Identifying trending influencer hashtags can help with visibility and relevance. Also, when considering influencers for your brand, look beyond their followers, and instead consider smaller influencers like nano influencers, who not only have higher engagement rates, but portray realistic images. It has been seen repeatedly: customers want brands to get real – in their advertising, customer relations, and many other aspects of their operations.
Align Your Marketing Goals And Metrics With The Payoffs Of Including Influencers In Your Marketing Strategy
To successfully integrate influencer marketing into your marketing strategy, it also needs to work well with your established marketing goals. Therefore, if one of those goals includes increasing social media engagement of the brand or brand awareness in the younger demographics, then influencer marketing may be a great fit. Also, if you are looking to boost your website traffic, influencer marketing could be an important part of that. However, businesses must keep in mind that other business functions still have a crucial role to play in converting that traffic into increased sales and achieved goals. For instance, if your website design cannot handle increased traffic or your webpage speed is slow, website visitors are likely to leave without purchasing anything.
While influencer marketing continues to be a profitable marketing channel for businesses of any size, it should not stand alone. Making sure it supports your wider marketing goals is important if you want to truly enjoy the perks that come with this social media marketing trend.
