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Influencer Marketing and Brands
Influencer Marketing
Collaborating with influencers provides a unique way to promote products that will help your brand stand out from the competition. This article will cover how brands work with influencers, some social media influencer marketing examples, and details about how top social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram can be used for influencer marketing.
How Do Brands Work with Social Media Influencers?
Brands work with social media influencers by connecting and collaborating on promotional content that an influencer will post for their audience to see. Social media influencers promoting brands helps get the brand name out to new audiences who may have never heard of the company or its products before.
When done right, influencer marketing will be a win-win for everyone involved. Influencer promotions are a great way for social media influencers to monetize their content while helping brands expand their reach and increase sales. Influencer promotions also benefit consumers by giving them a detailed look at products or services that could benefit their lives.
Which Brands Use Social Media Influencers?
Many top brands use influencer marketing as part of their marketing strategy because of its effectiveness. Major brands that use social media influencers include Nike, Pepsi, and Dunkin’ Donuts. Each of these brands has seen success with influencer marketing campaigns and have made it a valuable aspect of their marketing efforts.
However, influencer marketing isn’t just for big corporations. Companies in any industry and of any size can benefit from utilizing influencer marketing to promote their products or services. Many small businesses have seen success promoting through nano or micro influencers who are more cost-effective for influencer promotions while still reaching targeted audiences.
How Do I Reach Out To An Influencer?
Many brand marketers new to the social media marketing game wonder “how do I get influencers to promote my brand?” It’s not impossible, or even that hard, but there are many considerations and a few best practices to keep in mind.
Here are a few of the popular methods for reaching out to an influencer to form a collaboration:
- Direct Messages. A popular way of reaching out to influencers is to do so directly on the platforms where they create content through a direct message (DM). While these can be effective, some influencers do not prefer to be DM’d, because it is the same way many of their followers reach out to them, making it hard for a branded message to stand out.
- Emails. People can talk all they want about the rise of social media and SMS marketing, but email is still the primary channel for conducting business transactions, which a branded partnership definitely qualifies as. Lots of influencers place their email (or their social media manager’s email) in the bios of their accounts, so that brands can easily reach out to them to collaborate.
- Influencer Marketing Agencies. Many of the more sophisticated and highly-followed influencers, such as macro-influencers, have social media representation. This means that they work with an agency to protect and promote them, acting as the middleman for their brand partnerships. To reach out to these influencers, you’ll need to contact their social manager, not them.
What Is The Best Way To Approach An Influencer For A Collaboration?
As previously stated, there are a few ways that you can reach out to a content creator to form a collaboration. Most marketers and influencers agree, however, that the best platform for influencer outreach is email.
It may be counterintuitive at first since emails are an off-channel messaging option from the social media platforms that influencers are using to build their personal brands. But, actually, that is the point. Influencers are bogged down with responding to DMs on most of their accounts and don’t have time to respond to every single follower. Emails are a separate messaging tool for a reason and are still perceived as the go-to professional medium.
Influencer Marketing Examples
This section will provide examples of how influencers and brands can collaborate for product or service promotions in 2022. Seeing examples will help you understand how to successfully implement influencer marketing campaigns.
YouTube Influencer Marketing Examples in 2024
YouTube is a popular platform for influencer marketing, since video content can provide a detailed image and overview of how a product or service would fit into someone’s life. The following examples will outline how YouTube influencer ads could be implemented and why each example would make for a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Example #1 – Healthy Meal Subscription Service
This example focuses on a meal subscription service that delivers healthy meals that people can easily prepare. This company wants to promote to audiences on YouTube. Since this meal service is focused on providing healthy meals, they decide to target audiences in the fitness niche.
The meal subscription service then finds YouTube fitness influencers to collaborate with for this promotion. They provide guidelines to the creators that they want them to integrate preparing, eating, and reviewing meals from the service as part of their videos. Content creators are also given a discount code they can give to their audience to encourage them to try the service themselves.
This would be a successful way for the brand to promote its service, since it would show a detailed overview of what the brand offers and how it will benefit the needs of targeted audiences. Using the video aspects of YouTube would help audiences see how the meal preparation process works and how it would benefit their lives.
Example #2 – New Professional Video Camera Launch
Another example of how YouTube influencer marketing could be used is a company launching a new professional video camera. Since YouTube is a video platform, the company believes it would be a great idea to have content creators showcase the quality and effectiveness of their products.
The company decides to partner with YouTube content creators who make educational content about filmmaking. The content creators are told to film some cinematic content to show how the picture quality and features of the camera benefit filmmaking. Content creators can then explain the features and benefits to their audience while providing information about the product launch date and where people can go to buy the camera themselves.
This type of promotion is a great way to educate a relevant audience interested in filmmaking about the usefulness of this new video camera. Using influencer ads before the product launch would also help generate interest and excitement around the product before it came out.
Influencer Marketing on Instagram
Along with YouTube, Instagram is another popular social media platform for influencer marketing. In fact, Instagram is the most used social media platform for influencer marketing. Many businesses find Instagram to be a great option for influencer campaigns because it allows for various types of content, including photos, videos, reels, and stories.
The variety of posting options helps brands and influencers find creative ways to implement branded promotions into the influencer’s regular content. This provides unique ways to engage an audience while promoting sales at the same time.
Instagram Influencer Marketing Tips
Some tips you can follow to get the most out of Instagram influencer marketing are:
- Keep things simple: Instagram is a fast-paced social media platform. Influencer promotions should be quick and easy to understand to maintain consumer attention on the platform.
- Find ways to stand out: Looking at your competition or other types of posts can help you find ways to stand out among the crowd. Differentiating your influencer ads will help get consumer attention as they scroll through their Instagram feed.
- Allow creativity: Instagram content creators know what content their audience responds to best. Allowing influencers creative freedom will help make your ads more successful.
- Track performance: Before starting an Instagram influencer campaign, you should set goals for metrics you want to hit and track your performance along the way. This will help you take the necessary steps to optimize your campaign.
These tips will benefit your collaborations with Instagram influencers and help you achieve the results you want from Instagram promotions.
Lionize Makes Working with Social Media Influencers Simple
Lionize AI is an influencer marketing platform that simplifies collaborations between brands and influencers. Our artificial intelligence software provides detailed brand and influencer matches to ensure that who you work with will be the right fit. Lionize also helps manage influencer marketing through automation, providing actionable insights, and tracking important data. Contact us today to learn more about how Lionize can help your company benefit from influencer marketing.
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