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Can a Small Business Use Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing
With the rise of influencer marketing, some small business owners have been left wondering about the benefits of influencer marketing for small businesses.
Influencer marketing isn’t just useful for large enterprises — small businesses can absolutely use influencer marketing successfully. So, how can small businesses work with influencers? Let’s get into it.
How Can Influencer Marketing Help Grow a Small Business?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which businesses partner with social media users who have developed significant followings — also known as influencers. The brands pay the influencers to create content that promotes their products or services and post that content on their social media pages.
There’s no reason why small businesses can’t take advantage of the power of influencer marketing just like industry leaders do. Influencer marketing can be a highly effective marketing strategy, even if you don’t have a huge budget or an extensive in-house marketing team. So, how can influencers help small businesses?
Influencers help small businesses by exposing their audiences to the business’s products and services. As the brand partnering with these influencers, you get the opportunity to tap right into the audiences that influencers have cultivated. The social media users that follow influencers trust and value those influencers’ opinions. That means when an influencer posts something positive about your small business, their followers are much more likely to engage and respond to those posts than they would to a traditional ad.
Some of the benefits of social media influencer marketing for small businesses include:
- Increasing brand awareness.
- Building trust and credibility.
- Improving your search engine optimization (SEO).
- Reaching new target audiences.
- Growing your brand’s social media pages.
- Driving sales.
People sometimes ask, “When should influencer marketing be used?” The answer is anytime you want to take advantage of some of these benefits for your business.
Why Is Instagram a Good Social Media Platform for Influencer Marketing?
If you’re going to pursue influencer marketing as a marketing strategy for your small business, one of the first decisions you’ll have to make is about what social media platform you want to use. YouTube, TikTok, and even Facebook are all great options, but the most popular platform for influencer marketing is Instagram for good reason.
There are more than one billion active users on Instagram in 2022, and Instagram influencers can help your brand reach them. Engagement on Instagram is high, and many of the top-performing posts on the platform feature products. In other words, Instagram users are primed and receptive to promotional posts about your small business. You just have to develop an Instagram influencer marketing strategy and get started.
What Are Influencer Marketing Strategies?
Your influencer marketing strategy will guide your entire campaign and determine whether or not it is successful. This strategy is your game plan for achieving your marketing goals through influencer marketing.
To build your influencer marketing strategy, follow these steps:
- Set your goals.
Step one in developing a strong influencer marketing strategy is determining what goals you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign. Your goals could be promoting a new product launch, driving traffic to your website, or simply raising brand awareness. Whatever they may be, these goals will inform the rest of your strategy, so make sure to start by defining them clearly.
- Find your influencers.
An influencer marketing strategy is nothing without the right influencers. You can manually search for influencers in your industry using search engines and hashtags on social media platforms, or you can use an influencer marketing agency. Either way, make sure to choose the best influencers for small businesses. These might not be the influencers with the most followers, either. Micro influencers can be incredibly effective partners for small businesses.
- Choose your campaign type.
There are multiple types of influencer marketing, including giveaways, affiliate marketing, and sponsored posts. Depending on your goals for the campaign, one type may be better for your business than another. Decide what kind of campaign you want to run and talk to your influencers about the types of content they’re willing to provide.
These three steps will help you hit the ground running in developing a winning influencer marketing strategy. Influencer marketing statistics show how impactful this type of marketing can be, so don’t delay in developing your strategy.
How Lionize Can Help With Your Influencer Marketing Strategies
As a small business, devoting the time and effort required to get an influencer marketing campaign up and running can be intimidating. A better alternative is turning to an influencer marketing platform like Lionize.
Lionize helps big and small businesses alike easily execute successful influencer marketing campaigns. The platform handles everything for you, from recruiting and onboarding influencers to managing and reporting the results of the campaign.
See what influencer marketing can do for your small business by booking a Discovery Call with Lionize.
For Brands
We’ll help you find the perfect partners for your brand. Let our network of limitless Influencers build brand awareness and drive your digital traffic goals.
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For Agencies
Finally, a platform that removes the heavy lifting of Influencer campaign management. Free your time to focus on your client’s creative strategy.
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