HOMEBlogInfluencer Marketing: Make Your Brand Stand Out and Drive Targeted Web Traffic

Influencer Marketing: Make Your Brand Stand Out and Drive Targeted Web Traffic

5 MIN READ
Miami Influencer Marketing Agency

When evaluating new methods to market your business, a new term you are encountering during your research is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a powerful marketing tool to reach your target audience, and if you have not considered it, you could be missing valuable opportunities. Dreamweaver Brand Communications, a leading marketing agency serving Fort Lauderdale, Miami, New York and beyond shares important information to get you started with influencer marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is easy to understand. Working with your marketing agency, you find social or celebrity influencers who are popular with and influence your target audience. In turn, the influencer shares information about your services, products, or business for a fee through a variety of influencer marketing campaigns.

Typically, there is a social media or content marketing component integrated with influencer marketing depending on the type of influencer campaign. The most common channel for a celebrity or social influencer to market your business is through their social media accounts. If the influencer campaign is content marketing based, the influencer might create visual or written content to share their experience with your services or products, but more often your integrated content marketing agency creates the content for them to share.

Here is an example of how an influencer marketing campaign works over social media. A brand will turn to an influencer marketing agency to help find them a celebrity to endorse their products or services. Typically, the brand pays the social media influencer or celebrity influencer, who then posts on their social media channels and share images of the product and mentions it in the post. Due to Instagram’s visual nature, it is one of the most popular social media channels for influencer marketing.Roger Federer’ is one celebrity athlete who posts images of himself wearing Rolex watches and mentions the iconic brand in the caption of photos. Since Federer has a large fan base consisting of Rolex’s target market, this influencer partnership is beneficial to the brand worldwide. Influencers do not need to be an actual “celebrity” as many of them are only social media influencer or influential bloggers like mommy bloggers. Brands can choose anyone who has a large social media following and fits their target demographic.

Are Advocate Marketing and Influencer Marketing the Same Thing?

Advocate marketing and influencer marketing are not the same things. This is a common misconception. In actuality, the two types of marketing are quite different. Advocate marketing includes finding current customers to spread the word about your products and services. Infomercials are notorious for using customer testimonials and is one type of advocate marketing we are all familiar with. Advocates do not receive any form of payment for their testimony or time.

When using the influencer marketing model, your marketing agency searches for influencers who may or may not use your products or services. In this scenario, your agency is looking for an influencer with a sizable following and influence on your target demographic. Working with your influencer marketing agency, you then provide a financial incentive for the social or celebrity influencer to market and promote your business.

What are the Benefits of Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is effective because it is targeted to your brand’s ideal audience and it is a subtle form of marketing. Since the influencer is recommending your brand, the target audience does not feel like they are being sold. Influencer marketing is a blend between product placement and a testimonial.

With digital marketing on the rise and influencer marketing becoming more commonplace, traditional marketing methods are not as effective as they once were. It is vital that your brand explore and embrace new marketing strategies including an influencer marketing campaign. Consider the return on investment (ROI) you can get on an influencer marketing campaign as opposed to a Google AdWords campaign or any other form of paid advertising. It is no secret; consumers no longer pay attention to traditional or even digital ads anymore. Television advertising does not have the power it once had. First, television views have “cut the cord” and going to streaming services such as Netflix where there are not commercials. Second, if they are watching television, viewers now pull out their smartphones and check their favorite social media networks – those same social networks where your potential influencers are engaging their audience base. If your business is hooked on online advertising, revisit that strategy, with ad blockers more popular than ever, chances are your target audience will not even see your online ad.

Consumers do not want to feel like they are being sold. Consumers, especially millennials, value old fashion connections and influencer marketing is that link between old and new. Your brand could leverage the influencer’s connection to your target consumer to increase brand awareness, build a connection, and ultimately drive sales. 

The Time to Start Influencer Marketing for Your Business is Now

Brands are implementing influencer marketing campaigns at unprecedented rates but many CMOs, marketing managers, or brand managers, still do not understand the power of the social influencer. Right now, there are a plethora of influencers available at rock bottom rates.

Let’s revisit the origins of social media advertising at Facebook. At first, brands that purchased Facebook ads early on got amazing returns on their investments, because the ads were low priced and reached a large number of users. Inevitably, more and more brands began to realize this and subsequently, both the number of ads and price increased dramatically. In other words, brands were paying more for Facebook advertising, and Facebook users were seeing more advertisements making those ads less effective.

How to Get Started with Influencer Marketing?

  • Contact Dreamweaver Brand Communications, a leading full-service influencer marketing agency. 
  • Working with Dreamweaver, we help you define your target audience if you have not already. (For example, if you have a consumer packaged goods product, perhaps your target audience is health-conscious women and men of the ages between 18 and 40.)  
  • The next step is to locate where your target audience is most engaged on social media. Is it Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter? Dreamweaver Brand Communications uses advanced influencer marketing software, databases and personal connections to find you the perfect influencer.  
  • Working with your brand and with your target audience and market research at the core, we begin to find the right influencers for your brand. Most social and celebrity influencers have a large following, but the important part of an effective influencer is their engagement with their audience base. At Dreamweaver, we vet each influencer, ensure that their followers are not purchased and that their followers are engaged. Just because they are your favorite social media influencer or celebrity, does not mean they are the right fit for your brand. 
  • With your influencer(s) selected, we then begin the introduction of your brand and negotiation phase. We ask additional questions of the influencers, we ask for references, analytics from past campaigns, and much, much more. One of the most important questions Dreamweaver asks, is what kind of results we can expect? Clear communication is vital for a successful influencer marketing campaign third-party product review through public relations outreach. (a negative review can be devastating to a brand or business, so it is essential that your product be market ready for this type of PR outreach and potential review.

    Influencer marketing is one of the most effective methods to market your brand. Work with Dreamweaver Brand Communications, an integrated marketing, and public relations agency to find the perfect influencer for your brand and experience explosive growth and increased brand awareness through an affordable influencer marketing campaign. 

 Drive Target Web Traffic with Influencer Marketing Campaigns Today

 

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