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What Are the Three Main Goals of Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing
Having the right goals in place is important to make your influencer marketing efforts a success. However, you may be wondering what the main goals of influencer marketing are or how to implement them into your strategy successfully.
This article will cover what you need to know about how influencer marketing works, the types of influencers, and the main goals of influencer campaigns.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves brands partnering with content creators to promote their products or services. Promoting through influencers allows brands to target audiences in their niche and advertise in a more natural way, since influencers can implement creativity and authenticity into promotional posts.
Does Influencer Marketing Work?
Social media influencer marketing does work, and the statistics back it up. Some influencer marketing statistics that show its effectiveness are:
- Influencer marketing has an average return on investment (ROI) of $5.78 for every $1 spent. This is a good return, and it can be even higher (up to $18 for every $1 spent) when brands implement the right influencer marketing strategy for their needs.
- Influencer marketing’s ROI is much higher than other digital marketing strategies like pay-per-click marketing or banner ads, which tend to have a lower ROI of around $2 for every $1 spent.
- 61% of consumers say they trust influencer recommendations, while only 38% trust branded social media content. This shows that having influencers represent your brand can be more authentic and effective than doing it yourself.
- Research has also shown that 49% of consumers say they depend on influencer recommendations. That number will likely continue increasing, since younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z tend to be influenced more by influencer ads.
As you can see, influencer marketing works and will likely continue to be an increasingly effective marketing strategy.
Why Influencer Marketing Works
Unlike traditional advertisements, influencers can act as a third party to promote brands. Since influencers aren’t part of the brand themselves, it gives promotions more of a natural and authentic feel that consumers can trust.
Consumers who use social media also feel a deeper connection with influencers than they typically do with brands. Influencers are closer to normal everyday people who have similar goals, interests, and values as those who follow them.
When an influencer makes a recommendation, consumers are more likely to take action, since they feel a connection with their content and trust their opinion.
What Are the Different Types of Influencers?
Influencers can be broken down into four different categories based on follower count. The four types of influencers are:
- Nano influencers (1,000-10,000 followers)
- Micro influencers (10,000-100,000 followers)
- Macro influencers (100,000-1,000,000 followers)
- Mega influencers (1,000,000+ followers)
Oftentimes, the cost to have an influencer promote your brand will depend largely on their follower count. This means that while macro and mega influencers can get more reach per post, they tend to charge more for promotional content. On the other hand, nano and micro influencers are more affordable.
While each type of influencer can be effective for marketing, many brands are beginning to recognize the importance and effectiveness of promoting through micro and nano influencers.
Influencers with lower follower counts can be more cost-effective while also having highly engaged audiences, since they can interact with audience members easily through comments, messages, and answering questions.
Relationships micro and nano influencers build with audience members can make viewers more likely to take action when influencers recommend a brand.
How to Develop Influencer Marketing Goals?
The first step for setting up an effective influencer marketing strategy is defining the goals you want to achieve through influencer promotions. The right goals will help you pick the right social media platform, target advertisements effectively, and choose the best influencers for collaborations.
One of the best strategies to set influencer marketing goals is creating SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Covering these bases will help you create appropriate goals for your influencer campaign.
Social Media SMART Goals Example
Seeing an example of using SMART goals will help you implement them correctly into your social media influencer campaign.
Let’s say a company selling vitamins and supplements for athletes wants to increase sales using influencer marketing. A SMART goal for this would be: “Partner with influencers in the fitness or athletics niche to increase sales revenue by 20% in the next month.”
This SMART goal works because it is:
- Specific in how long the promotion will last and the increase in sales revenue they would like to achieve.
- Measurable since the primary goal of sales revenue can easily be tracked, along with results from influencer posts.
- Attainable since an increase in sales revenue of 20% could be achieved within a month with the right marketing efforts.
- Relevant because each detail of the goal benefits the company and brings them closer to the desired results.
- Time-bound by defining the exact time the promotion will last to achieve this result.
As you can see, setting a SMART goal will lead your entire influencer marketing strategy in the right direction.
What Are the Three Main Goals of Influencer Marketing?
Now that you understand how to create effective goals, you may be wondering what the main goals of influencer marketing are. There are typically three main goals that companies may want to achieve through influencer marketing, which are:
- Increased sales or conversions: Many companies will use influencer strategies to increase sales or other conversions like app installs, free trial sign-ups, or signing up for a consultation. As long as promoted posts are targeted toward increasing conversions, this can be highly successful.
- Build brand awareness or image: Promoting through influencers allows companies to increase brand awareness to targeted audiences who will be interested in their products or services. Choosing the right influencers for promotions can help strengthen a brand’s image and get your message to the right people.
- Increase brand or social media engagement: Influencer promotions can also increase consumer engagement with brands through follows, likes, comments, and shares on social media and other types of engagement like website visits or email list sign-ups.
Any of these three goals can be achieved through influencer marketing with the right strategy in place.
How Lionize Can Help with Your Influencer Marketing Needs
If you would like help getting started with influencer marketing, Lionize can help you create a winning influencer marketing strategy. Lionize is an influencer marketing platform that helps you:
- Find the right influencers.
- Create an influencer marketing strategy that is best for your needs.
- Automate parts of the influencer management process.
- Track data from promoted posts.
All of this is done on a streamlined platform that makes the entire process easy, even if you don’t know much about influencer marketing.
Book a Discovery Call to learn more about how Lionize can help you.
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