It’s no secret that working with influencers can exponentially scale your marketing efforts at a lower cost and a higher speed than traditional marketing. But if you’re a small business looking to expand on social media, it’s possible you might not know where to start or how to scale.
As a small business, it’s difficult to reach a high number of people without spending a ton on advertising. That’s why influencer marketing presents a unique opportunity for small businesses to grow, especially in their own local markets.
Here are three ways small business owners can expand their influencer marketing efforts and increase ROI.
Hire Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are defined as creators with between 10K-50K followers. The reason it’s a good idea to partner with this tier of influencer comes down to a few factors; engagement rate, collaborative partnerships, a pre-evangelised audience, and click-thru capabilities.
First, micro-influencers tend to have the highest engagement rate of any tier of influencer. Even though other creators may have higher follower counts, micro-influencers’ audiences are more engaged with the content they’re being served. This means you’re getting higher quality leads than you would with an influencer who has a bigger audience.
Also, micro-influencers tend to be much more open to collaborating on additional content beyond a straightforward feed or story post. Consider asking these influencers to include a blast to their email list, a blog post, or even re-posting the same content on multiple platforms.
Micro-influencers tend to have highly-engaged, “evangelised” audiences who have a high level of trust for that influencer’s opinion. By partnering with these influencers, you’re essentially taking a shortcut to the trust of their audience members, an invaluable commodity when looking to generate new leads for your business. That’s part of the reason long-term partnerships have been working well for small businesses this year; because it builds on that existing consumer trust, helping viewers associate your business with their favourite trusted creators.
Finally, micro-influencers are an excellent investment because not only do they have the high engagement rate associated with a lower, more authentic follower count, but when they have above 10K followers the swipe-up feature is automatically activated by Instagram, making CTAs and click-thru campaigns easy for small business owners.
Target Local Audiences
When looking for which influencers to hire to promote your small business, search for creators with a large portion of their audiences in your local target markets.
#Shoplocal was one of the most popular trends on social media in 2020, and for good reason. Many consumers want to support their local economy, but no longer have the luxury of in-person discovery to find new small businesses to support. Your small business can take advantage of this trend by leveraging influencer partnerships in order to highlight your business as one to support in the local community. Read our blog on how Instagram’s new ‘Guides’ feature is helping influencers promote local businesses.
One of the fastest ways to amplify the efficacy of your influencer campaigns is to get incredibly specific about who you’re marketing to, not just who you’re hiring. Really hone in on your target demographic, then leverage technology to help you find influencers whose audiences reflect that population.
Invest in Technological Support
If you’re running manual influencer campaigns by combing through the “explore” tab, searching hashtags, and saving names to a spreadsheet, you’re losing a lot of time and resources that could be better spent on scaling your campaigns.
The fact is, you need a reliable way to filter through creators and quickly discern which influencers are going to be the best fit to promote your brand or business. Remember, it goes beyond the influencers themselves; it’s about finding influencers with the right audiences who are pre-disposed to have an affinity with your product or service.
Leverage “Small”
Psychologically, people want to buy from people, not from a faceless company. That’s another reason that hiring influencers is so effective; it quite literally puts a trustworthy, familiar face to your business’ name.
By intelligently allocating your marketing funds to influencers, you’re meeting your audience where it already is: on social media. You’re also paying it forward by supporting creators who are, in effect, their own small business.
If you’d like to know how Allegiant Media can help you quickly and easily discover and connect with the perfect influencers for your small business’ campaigns, get in touch and we’ll walk you through the process, step by step.
This article was originally featured on TaggerMedia.com on February 9, 2021.