how to use influencer marketing for your small business — Whether you call them bloggers, influencers or content creators there is still value in working with key marketing partners in the social media space… so here is the low down on using influencer marketing as part of your marketing strategy.

Will Influencer Marketing work for my small business?

If you have identified an influencer whose audience aligns with yours then influencer marketing is a great way to get in front of your target market in an authentic way…. as long as you set the direction and understand your responsibilities as a brand.

Firstly, don’t be a dick to influencers & content creators

You should recognise that influencers have curated and nurtured their audience over time and that working with an influencer is not really any different to paying for an ad in a newspaper.

You are paying to reach their readership/following.

If you were as successful at curating your OWN audience you wouldn’t need influencer marketing right? So a bit of respect for the craft of growing an audience online goes a long way.

How do I know if an Influencer is any good?

You begin by requesting a media kit which should include testimonials and case studies from previous work. But a nice way to test the water is by providing the influencer with an affiliate code to provide to their followers… that way you can see how many sales they generate before moving forward with a full paid campaign.

You can also use tools like Social Blade to do a quick and dirty check that an influencer’s following seems legitimate and not purchased. Look for large gains and drops of follower numbers in a single day - and investigate engagement further if you think something seems amiss.

Isn’t Influencer marketing dead?

Good influencer marketing is still an effective way to grow your brand awareness but keep your expectations in check:

Only 3% of your potential market is ready to buy now - influencers aren’t going to change that with a single mention of your brand
You MUST have your value proposition & unique selling point developed prior to using influencer marketing - otherwise it’s just more social media noise
Market saturation or scatter gunning free product across the social media sphere is not a strategy - it’s how you piss off potential customers who wonder why they should pay for your goods if you give them away all the time

Remember that many medium sized brands through to large corporates enlist the help of PR agencies who all have the same influencers and content creators on their lists. The downfall here is that in niche markets or small geographic areas (such as New Zealand) there is a huge overlap in audiences amongst most influencers which results in social media users seeing the same repetitive content over and over during the course of a PR campaign. As a consumer, this is boring AF & is what I like to refer to as a PR circle jerk - ticking the box that the PR agency has done its job but with no tangible results for the brand.

Unfortunately for social media users PR agencies often use brand mentions as a KPI, essentially the more times the brand is mentioned, even in boring content like unboxing (where influencers open their PR mail each day), the better the perceived result. It’s a weird cool kids echo chamber that you don’t want your brand to be apart of.

So it’s no wonder that influencer marketing can be considering boring, repetitive and inauthentic to audiences who are definitely suffering from influencer fatigue. So be smart, have a clear set of expectations for any marketing partners you work with & don’t saturate the market…. common sense really!

What are my obligations when working with Influencers?

Ah so, a wee problem with Influencer-brand relationships is that many Influencers don’t know what their obligations are regarding disclosure or they willfully misunderstand the rules to suit their own agenda - many Influencers don’t want to admit to #ads or #sponsored posts because they don’t want to seem inauthentic… but you know what is actually inauthentic? Not being transparent about the fact you’re being paid.

At the end of the day, the BRAND is responsible for disclosure and they are the ones at risk if the Advertising Standards Authority receives a complaint about advertising that has not been adequately disclosed. As a brand you need to insist that Influencers use the correct hashtags or statements when working with you - and you need to be the authority on this, NOT the Influencer.

If you are paying for advertising you need to disclose that this is an #ad or that you are paying for this content by using #sponsored - I would err on the side of caution and insist on the #ad.

Don’t get murky and start allowing Influencers to use hashtags designed to be intentionally misleading like #collab #collboration - if the Influencer designed a product with you, sure that’s a collab. If they were sent some free goodies to trial and share with their audience… not a collab, just an ad.