eCommerce, Marketing
Impact vs Influence: Finding the Best Influencer for Your Brand
Today, to be successful in any industry, you’ve either heard of brand awareness or been impacted by an influencer marketing strategy. An estimated 85% of organizations say they have guidelines for their company’s public image, including how its brand is represented.
Influencer marketing is often associated with the rise of social media and its impact on people’s buying habits. It can also influence how they live. Not only that, it impacts major life decisions.
While influencing has been around since marketing began, social media has changed the game. It has made it possible for people to become “influencers” with complete control over their audience.
The word “influencer” has skyrocketed in recent years. Being an influencer these days has become an aspiration for many people. It has also disrupted the traditional marketing industry.
Let’s explore impact vs influence and how to find the best person for your brand.
Impact vs Influence: What’s the Difference?
When it comes to impact vs. influence, it’s all about maximum engagement. Two examples come to mind. One is the Kardashian effect, and the other is major political elections.
The Kardashian-Jenner family set the stage for how marketing is used to raise brand awareness and influence your audience. The family has turned their collective brands into multi-billion dollar businesses.
They’ve created television shows, fashion lines, beauty products, and more. Most important, they are the face of everything they’ve done.
Political Influence
The impact of having an influencer marketing strategy hasn’t been missed in our recent political elections. Politicians now seek the best influencers to reach their target audiences.
It’s no mistake that Hip Hop has been used to influence young voters in urban areas. Today, hardly anyone is surprised when a top presidential candidate has a rap artist performing at a rally.
These optics have become the norm to reach maximum engagement.
Choosing the Best Influencer For Your Brand
Two main things influence an influencer’s success. One is their reach, and the other is their niche.
Brands often use these two factors to find the perfect influencer for their campaign needs. Reach is an influencer’s total number of followers and engagement. It includes both direct followers and engagement through social media exploration and discovery.
Niche is all about targeting influencers in their specific demographic. It helps brands reach a broad audience that trusts the influencer. Niche can also be used for specific subject-matter strategies.
Brand awareness is easily hit or miss when it comes to influencers. In the world of social media, a brand can lose billions of dollars if its target audience does not relate to the influencer they chose.
Define the Goals of Your Marketing Campaign
First, describe your goals in detail at this stage and develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor your progress.
KPIs are the key, measurable ways to measure progress toward a goal. They help you focus on your strategy and give you an analytical foundation for making decisions. They also help you stay focused on what’s important.
When managing brand awareness KPIs, it’s important to measure the response of the targeted audience. It’s best to use leading indicators to measure progress, which is used to create future marketing campaigns.
For example, choosing the best influencer for a campaign can set the standard for future campaigns.
Choosing the Best Influencer
Choosing the best influencer for your brand is crucial. There are many types of influencers, so you need to define your brand reputation. Are you conservative or willing to explore boundaries?
Figure out what kind of niche the influencer is into. Next, determine if they have a true following. It’s no secret that people can buy followers on social media.
Get to know your target audience and choose influencers who match their age, gender, location, or buying habits. Just because someone has a million followers doesn’t mean they will be interested in your product or service.
What is the Engagement Rate?
To determine the engagement rate, try choosing different types of influencers. Next, select several of their branded posts to analyze for engagement and responses.
You want to get the total number of likes and comments. On sites like Facebook, capture the number of each emotional response to the post.
Then you want to divide these numbers by the influencer’s total number of followers on the platform. Multiply the result by 100 to get your average engagement rate.
Do this for multiple posts to get a good average.
Don’t Undermine Your Values for Popularity
If your brand is about family values, you don’t want to work with influencers who promote living without boundaries. Instead, choose the types of influencers that will become your partners and support your brand in more ways than one.
Good collaborations happen when you’re both genuine and open about working together. The only way to get a good return on investment is to align with their audience through authenticity. Most brands use conversions or sales to measure the success of a marketing campaign.
A successful influencer marketing strategy must have a measurable return to have value. The impact of the influencer has to be measurable in terms of money spent. Measurable items can include the following:
- Increase in sales
- Increase in responsive followers
- Increase in votes
- Increase in viewership
- Increase in physical attendance
- Increase in content engagement
Set measurable markers. If your stats are not increasing, you’ve chosen an influencer who isn’t resonating with your audience.
The Brand Influencer is One Marketing Tool
It’s important to remember that the brand influencer is one of many tools when you’re trying to reach maximum engagement. Have a clear designation between impact vs influence.
Add social proof to your influencer marketing campaign, including a strong call to action. When a campaign is live, add a lead magnet to your website to get more leads than just visitors.
Most important! Ensure your influencer aligns with your brand’s values before choosing them.
Are you looking for ways to enhance your digital marketing strategy? We can help! Book a call today to get started!
