Invest or Not to Invest: Answering Influencer Marketing FAQs

Written by Sharoon Emmanuel

Influencer marketing carries a lot of value when it comes to increasing awareness and engaging purchases of a brand or service. Since most people have reservations regarding using this amazing form of marketing, we have compiled a list of the most Frequently Asked Questions to help you get started with influencer marketing.

Related:- PR & Influencer Marketing Services in Dubai

FAQ Contents

  • Who is an influencer?
  • What are micro-influencers?
  • What is influencer marketing?
  • How to get started with influencer marketing?
  • How to find the right influencers?
  • What makes an influencer “good”?
  • How to connect to influencers?
  • How to work with influencers?
  • How to track the performance of influencer marketing?
  • How much does influencer marketing costs? 

Related: - Online PR services & influencer marketing agency in Dubai

Influencer Marketing

1. Who is an Influencer?

An influencer is someone who can drive the actions of their fans or social media followers through various forms of engaging content. Influencers operate in their specific niches namely humor, travel, technology and food etc.

2. What are Micro-Influencers?

Micro-influencers are the ones that have a smaller audience and followers as compared to giants. While they do not have the reach similar to bigger names, they are still quite valuable in terms of promotion of products and services.

3. What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that allows businesses to achieve their goals by letting well-known personalities or channels of communication talk about their product or service. It is similar to celebrity endorsements, except an influencer doesn’t have to be as famous as a Hollywood star.

Influencers require an engaged audience who takes them and their opinions seriously. So, whenever an influencer talks about a product or offering, people will genuinely be interested in it.

Influencer marketing has reached heights after the boom of social media. Owing to the social nature of these platforms, people incline towards one another to form communities around common interests.

Example: -

A seafood restaurant in Dubai hires a food blogger or vlogger to give them a shout-out on all of their branded channels, helping them reach more audience, awareness and possibly more customers. 

4. How to Get Started with Influencer Marketing?

If you’ve figured out that the audience present on a specific influencer’s page or website might be of benefit to you, the very first step is to set out clear and identifiable goals for your project. If you’re not sure of where to start, you can always consult an influencer marketing agency to get you set up with the right influencer at the right price and with a proper exit strategy.

It isn’t always the right approach to reach an influencer and start throwing money to talk about your products. One must first decide the scope of the project, the communication strategy, success metrics, target audience, objective to be met (sales or awareness), marketing strategy, and platform utilization etc.

Considering all the above-mentioned points and getting things aligned will help you achieve viable results.

Readers may also like: - 7 Game-Changing Digital Marketing Strategies for Restaurant Businesses in Dubai

5. How to Find the Right Influencers?

Here are some of the most common ways to search for influencers that work best for your business: -

  • Consult a top PR services agency
  • Search on social media platforms
  • Search on Google
  • Make use of influencer marketing tools such as Buzzsumo
  • Ask people
  • Attend events to determine the popularity of topics and people
  • Keep an eye on trending content

6. What Makes an Influencer “Good”?

One of the trickiest things in getting influencer marketing services is determining whether the influencer you just reached actually has real followers or they are all fake. Referring to a fake celeb can cause you a lot of damage, both in terms of poor marketing results and monetary loss.

In order to achieve optimum results, one must first carry out an audit of the influencer you are planning to work with. You need to be stringent in your evaluation of an influencer, a big following doesn’t always translate into actual engagement.

If you aren’t sure how that is done, you can always refer to a trusted PR management & influencer marketing service provider to do all the heavy lifting for you.

Though, if you do want to be sure yourself, the following points will help you grab a better picture of your influencer.

  • Analyze engagement on social media
  • Use Brandwatch Audiences to asses and rank influencers instantly
  • Ask previous clients
  • Use MOZ to see the strength of their website

7. How to Reach Out to Influencers?

One should approach an influencer similarly as any other business interaction. Generally, influencers have managers or agents to take care of sales concerns and inquiries, so checking out pricing won’t be much of an issue. Though, if you’re not sure of the potential influencers that can bring value to your business, you can connect of an influencer marketing company such as ours.

8. How to Work with Influencers?

Working with influencers isn’t an easy job. You have to finalize the concept, look at available production time slots and at times even modify business goals as per their current web series.  Also, maintaining a strong relationship with influencers is important. If they’re promoting your product, the last thing you ought to do is annoy them.

When working with influencers, one has to consider a clear plan, objectives, costs, delivery time, publishing time, communication, brand guidelines, performance and a hundred other things.

One should get all conditions documented to ensure compliance to agreeable terms as you don’t want to be squabbling with an influencer halfway through a campaign.

9. How to Track Performance of Influencer Marketing?

Most established influencers will provide their clients with a complete track of metrics, performance and activities but that doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t be tracking things themselves.

So, in order to never be fooled, you should look into any of the analytics tools being utilized for your business. By looking into the performance of influencer campaigns yourself, you’ll be able to analyze reach, performance and traffic data at one centralized place.

Also, you can track performance manually by looking at social media posts and their engagement. Another way to check out results is by using links with UTM tracking.

10. How Much Does Influencer Marketing Costs?

The pricing plans for influencer marketing vary wildly depending on the specific channels, influencers and other external factors such as special production, actors and spending budget etc.

By determining the aims and objectives of your influencer marketing campaign, you track results, calculate ROI and allocate budget.

 

 



Originally Published February 27, 2019 02:00 AM, Updated May 26, 2019.



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