How to Optimise Influencer Marketing for engagement and organic leads

How to Optimise Influencer Marketing for engagement and organic leads

In the age of Covid-19, digital marketers are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to the rise of social media influencers, many businesses in digital marketing are still staying relevant to their target consumers. Social media influencer marketing has become the most crucial aspect of digital marketing. This blog post will demonstrate how you can capitalize on Influencer marketing effectively to drive more website traffic, engagement, and ultimately enhancing SEO rankings.

Influencer Marketing is the fastest growing channel - graph

Why influencer marketing?

The number of eCommerce is expected to increase by 14% and to 20 million users by the end of 2023 in Australia. Especially in the last four years, Influencer marketing has seen explosive growth, increasing by almost 1500%.

Since the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak; Influencers have been consolidating their job as an authentic and trusted form of endorsement to their followers. We see many brands leveraging their digital marketing presence by diversifying their content through Influencer marketing. More and more digital marketers are working with social media influencers to bring new and exciting value as well as engaging with their target audience online.

x-lene
@X-Lene

Key crucial benefits of Influencer marketing

Increase in engagement levels

Effective influencer marketing can drive engagement and traffic to the website and landing page of your business. 80% of Influencers are reporting higher engagement rate from their audience since COVID-19.

Organic leads

The cooperation between the following base of the influencers you choose with an effective digital marketing campaign can be turned into leads and conversions for your brand.

SEO strategy

Utilize SEO strategy to effectively raise engagement levels, traffic and website visits.

Target niche audiences

When shopping online, people value unpolished and more authentic content. Many influencers often build their network-based around trust and authenticity with their follower base. Especially during lockdowns, influencers have been offering lots of inspiration and entertainment to their followers which enable brands to engage with prospective customers on an emotional level.

Types of Influencers

Types of influencers
Types of Influencers

Follower loyalty is more valuable than high follower counts.

The rising power of micro & nano influencers

Moving towards more transparent marketing, more than 80% of millennials are no longer trusting the traditional forms of advertisements. The current generation of millennials and Gen z are looking for “innovation, creativity, personalisation, brand purpose and transparency”. Therefore, you must adapt to these rapidly changing consumer demands in your influencer marketing by embracing transparency.

Influencer marketing is not just limited to working with the Kardashian and Jenner sisters. To raise engagement and build organic leads around your brand, your brands could benefit a lot from collaborating with micro and nano influencers with relatively a smaller following base.

Rather than stretching out your marketing budget and hurting your pockets; micro-influencers with high engagement rate and credibility amongst their audience than mega influencers.

Influencers with a relatively small following base often specialize in a niche audience which they can cater to a highly specific target audience. Micro-influencers can give your digital business a compelling competitive advantage and acquire engagement as well as loyalty that mega influencers cannot duplicate. By tapping into the under-saturated market of micro and nano influencers; you can ultimately spend less but yield a higher return on investment.

How to select the best influencer

Digital marketers are often faced with multiple challenges when finding the most appropriate Influencer to work with. The right choice of the influencer is key to elevate the level of engagement and drive organic leads. Here are some critical factors you must consider before selecting the influencer you choose to work with.

1. Engagement Rate

It is extremely important to work with an influencer with an organic follower base that has a high engagement rate and reaches.

Tip: try to free Influencer analytics like PIKAMU, BUZZSUMO to find out their engagement ratio and select the one with higher engagement.

2. Expertise

The influencer must be capable of eliciting measurable engagement within the intended target audience and their follower base. They should be regarded as trustworthy and credible sources providing a reason for consumers to believe the ‘marketing message’ they are promoting on their platform. Influencers should be able to deliver your brand’s marketing message and tell a story to fully resonate with their followers in a unique and memorable way.

3. Notoriety

You want to work with an influencer that is well-liked, popular and matches well with the overall personality of your brand. They should be greatly sensitive to the rapidly changing consumer behavior and quickly adapt to his/her follower’s needs.

4. Diversity

Working with multiple influencers for your marketing campaign can provide diversified content and enable your brand to resonate with a wide range of audience.

5. Values

The image of your intended influencer should be aligned with your brand’s core values and marketing objectives

Content Optimization & SEO techniques for increasing ENGAGEMENT & LEADS

Guidelines for Influencer Marketing Campaign

Affiliate links

Enable influencers to transparently put Affiliate Tracking links in their bio, profile and stories when promoting your brand. This will readily re-direct online consumers to your landing page and company website. Keep track of this ROI by checking the number of likes, shares, comments and new visits after the launch of the influencer campaign.

Hashtags

Utilizing highly searched hashtags can drive organic reach and impressions for the content you are promoting. Primary and secondary keywords should be thoroughly used in posts, bio and stories.

Tip: Use Campaign Specific Hashtags to further penetrate the engagement levels.

Captions

Ask the influencers to communicate to the audience using highly appealing and captivating words that carry emotion in the caption.

Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM)

Influencers can also play the role of a brand communicator and have great knowledge of generating e-WOM. Numerous Surveys have stated that e-WOM is the most trusted online content in social media marketing.

User-Generated Content

Popular influencers can encourage their loyal followers to post

User-Generated Contents such as UGC Hashtag contest or encourage them to write a review on behalf of your business. Successful UGC can often increase organic leads and traffic to your landing page. This is because consumers often want to hear other voices and 74% of customers make their purchase decisions by referrals. UGC can allow businesses to build social proof and a trustable voice. This will elicit true engagement and form more brand evangelists.

Re-posting the Influencer’s Content

You should share or cross-post your influencer’s content on your social media platform, websites and landing pages.

Long term Partnership with Influencers

Consistency is key -> rather than just one-off promotion with the influencer; a long-term partnership is more profitable and can bring better results in the long run.

Top 2 Most effective Influencer Marketing Pricing Models

  • Cost Per Click (CPC): when the influencer is paid every time a customer visits the brand’s website or landing page from the content they post.
  • Cost Per Engagement (CPE): when the influencer is incentivised based on the number of engagements their contents draw, such as likes, shares or re-posts.

Evaluate the Success of your Influencer Marketing

  • Analyse metrics: KPI, ROI, Instagram Analytics
  • Make sure to measure the outcome of the influencer campaign by using the following:
  • Engagement: number of comments/likes/shares/reposts/new visits
  • Lead generation: email, blog subscriptions, the total number of downloads
Stella Kim
Stella Kim

Stella is in her final year studying media and communications at the University of Melbourne. She aspires to work in digital marketing, public relations and journalism after graduating. Her other interests lie in film-making, photography and music.

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