Why Embrace Influencer Marketing?
By Raul Han
Influencer marketing helps you connect with influential bloggers who will work with you to promote your brand. Instead of focusing on reaching a mass audience, all you need to focus on is a select group of individuals to connect with and help reach people you will no longer have to go find yourself. Also, these influencers help your SEO by providing backlinks to your website. The relationship is a win-win for both parties involved because it continues building a relationship between the influencers and their followers, and it builds a new customer base for the brand you have the influencer promoting.
Influencer Marketing Doesn’t Happen Overnight
However, one must be prepared to invest the time and rapport building it takes to create a lasting partnership with an influencer. For starters, marketers must be mindful that influencers know their impact on an industry, and some of them charge a hefty fee per blog to promote your brand. Do your research to make sure the audience the influencer has is a potential target population that would embrace your brand. It makes no sense to have a high-profile influencer who has followers that are not interested in your niche. For example, a vegan blogger with powerful influence would have little or no benefit to a company that sells premium cuts of beef and pork. But, a steakhouse that has signature vegan salads could benefit from a vegan blogger with powerful influence and a reach to an audience the steakhouse would not reach on its own.
Here are some questions you will need to consider when implementing influencer marketing:
- How many bloggers will I need to partner with to meet my marketing goals?
- How many referrals would I like to generate based on these efforts?
- How much time can I devote to building a relationship with each blogger?
- How much of my budget can I devote to building a relationship with each blogger based on the available funds and the amount of time I have set aside for this?
Thus, for influencer marketing to work for you, you must do your research and carefully plan out your marketing strategy. Bloggers are not going to blindly accept your brand without having an effective call to action for using your brand. So, a big part of landing the influencer will rely on your ability to show why the influencer should test your product and why your product can enhance what they are already doing. Also, make you have given the blogger a specific goal to accomplish. Do you want the blogger to do a product review, an interview with one of his/her followers, a vlog about your product or a demonstration of using your product? The more specific you are about your goals for the blogger, the greater are the chances for success.
The Challenge of Luxury Product Marketing
Unlike mass product marketing, one must take a different approach to luxury product marketing because the goal is not promoting the brand as an efficient product. The goal is to promote the brand as an embodiment of a customer’s beliefs and principles. Expanding one’s consumer reach is no longer the goal when it comes to luxury product marketing because the targeted audience is a select audience that embraces certain beliefs about the product being marketed. The objective is to create the notion of exclusivity when consumers embrace your brand—even if they currently can’t afford the brand.
There’s a legend—a story or myth—behind the brand when it comes to luxury product marketing. The myth helps to embody the ideals and aspirations people believe in when it comes to exclusivity. Therefore, the main goal of luxury product marketing is to keep the story alive and maintain the notion of exclusivity when consumers embrace your
Paul Gian is an excellent example of an influencer who helps brands with luxury product marketing. His blog is filled with his experiences and expertise in selecting the right diamonds, and his followers consider his blog to be a valuable site for those looking to buy high-quality diamonds. His blog on the recommended brands for buying engagement rings in 2018 helps to share the myths that make these brands listed in the blog worth considering when buying an elegant engagement ring. Consumers are left feeling like they have had access to information about brands that speak luxury, sophistication and good taste. Also, Gian’s rapport with his followers shines through in the attention he pays to each reader’s questions, which makes him an ideal influencer if you are marketing a brand that would appeal to his audience.
Influencer marketing is a necessity for growing your consumer reach tremendously because it provides access to populations you don’t normally reach with your own social media channels and websites.
Raul Han has over 7 years of experience as an Internet Professional enabled me to learn the ropes that surround an Internet market. I am a consumer goods entrepreneur with a lot of hands-on experience in business start-ups, customer service, and marketing. I am equally a freelance writer and public speaker. My work can be found in cool places like The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur etc.
Influencer stock photo by DisobeyArt/Shutterstock
