How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Your Brand’s Success

/in , , /by

Starting a business is one challenge, and building it into a success story is another. Several startups fail due to factors ranging from poor planning and ineffective marketing strategies to economic downturns and operational inefficiencies. As far as marketing is concerned, there are several lessons to learn from some of the most successful companies.

In the below information, we’ll discuss influencer marketing and how influencer collaboration with the right influencers can be a beneficial for your brand success. You’ll also learn how to maximize influencer collaborations and make this marketing strategy work for your brand.

What is Influencer Marketing, and Why Does it Matter?

 

As the name suggests, influencer marketing is a technique where you partner up with a popular figure or celebrity to help promote your products or services. Influencers can be individuals or a group of people with a huge following, especially on popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

Whether your business is a startup or an established entity, influencer marketing can help drive brand awareness, increasing traffic and conversions. It’s worth noting that every business is unique, and how effective influencer marketing will be for your business depends on factors such as:

  • Nature of the business: Beauty, lifestyle, and fashion businesses have a natural fit with influencers, while those in the B2B sector may find this marketing technique challenging.
  • Online presence: A robust online presence, characterized by a well-designed website and active social media profiles, will attract the best influencers and may translate to better conversions.
  • Target demographics: The influencer’s ready audience should be your preferred target market. Otherwise, a mismatch will see your marketing campaign struggle.
  • Choice of influencer: Consider the influencer’s values, reputation, and audience engagement before striking a partnership deal. More on this later.

Besides having an engaged and loyal following willing to buy your products or services, influencers put a personality and face to your brand, making it more reputable and trustworthy. The right influencers will also push your product or services to a broader audience, thanks to the varied platforms they’ll use to promote your brand.

How Can You Leverage Influencer Collaborations to Drive Brand Success?

Most influencers have great ideas on how they can partner with you to market your brand. Even so, you may specify how you want them to promote your products or services. And while there’s no wrong or right way to promote your brand, some influencer marketing techniques are more effective than others. Here are a few ways to leverage influencer marketing for maximum impact:

Try Podcast Endorsements

According to PEW research, 49% of adults in the United States have listened to a podcast in the past 12 months. Therefore, it makes economic sense to partner with podcast hosts to promote your brand among their loyal following. To make this strategy work best, you want to sponsor specific episodes of several podcasts your target audience is already subscribed to.

Use Influencer Content as Paid Ads

Standard ads on social media platforms rarely convert since everyone sees them as a nuisance. However, this won’t be the case if you partner with an influencer and let them create a social ad with their face or voice on it.

Use Brand Ambassadors 

Over the years, businesses have used brand ambassador programs to build trust and win customers. With this technique, companies tap into loyal customers who already use their products or services and partner with them to recommend their brand to their following or audience. This program works well when the loyal customer you want to pick has a huge following that can convert easily.

Try Contests and Giveaways 

With this technique, you’ll provide your influencers with a product or service they can reward or give to their followers. You can modify this technique to have the influencer’s followers like your brand’s page or post. The giveaways may come in the form of contests or challenges meant to boost social media engagement, brand following, and awareness.

Gift Influencers and Obtain Honest Reviews 

Another way to leverage influencer marketing is to gift an influencer your product or provide them with your services for free and let them give their followers an honest review of what they think about your product/service. If the influencer thinks your product/service is excellent, they’ll recommend it to their followers. Otherwise, they won’t.

How to Identify the Right Influencers for Your Brand Target Audience?

Before comfortably trusting an influencer to promote your brand, you must follow due process throughout the sourcing and selection stages. The right influencer for your brand is someone you can trust and who believes in your business. Here are a few things to look out for when choosing an influencer to partner up with:

  • Relevant audience. Not all influencers have an audience that resonates with your business or target demographic. Do your research to ensure you partner with someone who will directly add value to your business.
  • Brand Values. The right influencer will have values that resonate with your brand and target audience. You can check the influencer on social media platforms to learn more about their values and belief systems.
  • Communication and professionalism. One of the pillars of the 4Cs marketing model is effective communication. Customers always want to know how buying your product will benefit them, meaning the influencer should do a great job selling your brand. Similarly, you want to work with a professional influencer who has strong communication skills.
  • Content Quality. As much as the influencer is authentic, trustworthy, and meets the brand alignment metrics, you also want to ensure the content they produce meets your expected quality standards.

Bottom Line

Whether turning your employees into influencers or picking celebrity figures to partner with, influencer marketing is generally a true and tested technique. The goal is to choose a trustworthy person with a reasonable social following committed to walking the marketing journey with you, one step at a time. Use the tips above to guide you throughout the influencer marketing campaign, and where necessary, seek professional help for brand strategy services from a reputable marketing strategy agency.

The Strategic Difference Between Branding and Marketing and How They Work Together

/in /by

People often use branding and marketing interchangeably, but the two are distinctly different. Knowing how they differ is crucial to executing specific campaigns with branding or marketing goals.

Neil Patel says that “where marketing ends, branding begins.” The implication is that branding and marketing are crucial to your business’ success. So, don’t emphasize one at the expense of the other. This guide explores how they are distinct and how to leverage both to gain a competitive edge.

What is Branding?

Branding entails shaping your business identity. It gives your business character and provides a complete narrative of what you offer your customers, why you do it, and where it leads. It also entails defining your target audience, how you communicate to them, and the meaning it adds to their experience with your business.

While you can visually represent your brand through visual elements like your color palette, logo, and fonts, your brand is generally the overall experience you deliver to your customers. Think of it this way:

  • Coca-Cola is more than just soda
  • Starbucks is more than just coffee
  • Nike is more than just sportswear
  • Apple is more than just computers

These brands deliver experiences in addition to the products you buy. The brands know the experience their customers want to have when they consider a purchase. So, they continually invest in brand marketing to cultivate their brands.

How to Determine Your Business Brand?

The practice of shaping your brand identity requires that you clearly define the following:

  • Your business’s core values and principles: What matters most to your company? What are you committed to, such as saving the world with eco-friendly strategies or equality for all customers?
  • Your mission statement: Apart from making money, what else do you want to accomplish with your business?
  • Customer experience: What feelings do you want to inspire in your customers when they interact with your business?
  • Your unique selling proposition: How can you deliver something different from your competitors?
  • Your brand personality: What language do you use with your customers? Is the tone fun, intelligent, creative, or casual?
  • How do you highlight the right ideas: What comes to mind when customers hear your business name, and what do they associate it with?

Your brand tells your customers what they can expect from your business. It gives them a glimpse into what to expect when interacting with your services and products. With a clearly defined brand, you gain more clarity and direction for your marketing activities.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is a mix of activities and tactics you undertake to promote your brand, products, or services. The actions communicate your company’s benefits and what it offers, different from your competitors. The primary goal of the activities is to generate interest and influence the audience to buy from you instead of the competition.

The greater focus of marketing is sales rather than branding. The activities have a shorter timeframe, also known as marketing campaigns. Marketing strategies have a call to action to buy or take a step towards a purchase.

Examples of marketing activities include the following:

  • Search engine optimization
  • Social advertising
  • Content promotion
  • Promotional emails
  • Pay-per-click advertising
  • Print campaigns and direct mail

The Difference Between Branding and Marketing Strategy

Your brand is your business culture, the message you send to your audience about your business. It also entails the rules that govern your business. On the other hand, marketing is a set of processes and tools to promote your brand. It uses social media, SEO, mobile, traditional marketing, and local search marketing tools. If branding is the author, marketing is the publisher.

Your business needs a brand to differentiate itself from the competition. However, even the strongest brand can only succeed by constantly marketing itself, demonstrating its unique selling proposition to its target audience.

Other highlights of the differences between marketing vs branding strategies are:

  • Branding comes before marketing
  • Marketing boosts sales, while branding enhances customer loyalty
  • Marketing is the bait that attracts your audience’s attention, while branding is the glue that keeps it intact
  • Marketing strategies are dynamic and keep changing, but your branding is there to stay
  • Branding impacts your business internally and externally, but marketing is more of an external factor

How Branding and Marketing Strategy Work Together?

In recent years, there has been an emphasis on the importance of customer experience in branding. It shifts the focus from design elements associated with the brand, such as the company logo, color palette, or messaging.

Once your target audience sees your logo, they may be intrigued or feel a connection to your brand. However, you must do more to generate interest in the customer for them to purchase. That’s where marketing comes in.

While marketing and branding are two distinct components of your business, they rely on each other. Depending on how you apply them together, they can contribute to the success of your business.

Your brand marketing strategies will benefit from having a solid brand at the beginning. The marketing efforts can focus on highlighting what makes your brand unique. As people become familiar with your brand and what it stands for, they can identify with your brand marketing message. A good branding strategy sets up your marketing campaign for success.

Blending Your Branding and Marketing Strategies

Both branding and marketing strategies need your attention to help your business succeed. Creating a solid brand early in business life is beneficial in creating clear and consistent brand characteristics. Then, it becomes less stressful to develop brand marketing strategies to take the business to the next level.

Both branding vs marketing strategies are more than one-off events and require ongoing effort. A professional brand strategy agency can work with you to fine-tune your strategies. Steven & Tate is a branding and marketing company that can help you blend your branding and marketing for overall business success. Talk to our experts to learn more.