Just about everyone in marketing knows that traditional advertising is almost completely antiquated in our content driven society. In order to build the ethos of your brand, you have to move past billboards and television commercials. If you’re looking to gain the trust of your customers, you may be considering aligning with thought leaders, micro-influencers, or content creators that will support your company. If so, your head is in the right place, because you know that without an authentic social media presence, your products are viewed as just another way for your company to make a buck.
1. Deeper Insight Into Your Target Customers
By aligning with micro-influencers, you’ll gain useful insights into your target customer. Through analysis of follower engagement with your content creator’s posts, your company will develop a better picture of what consumers like to see, who they trust, and on what day and time they’re most engaged. A micro-influencer can also utilize these insights to make the most out of their posts by delivering what their audience wants. Followers look forward to this content, which means they’re in it for the long haul. If a business is striving to build long-term trust, aligning with an influencer may turn out to be the most successful element of your entire marketing campaign.
2. Customers Trust Influencers Whether They’re Compensated or Not
Followers enjoy a micro-influencer’s content because it’s valuable, relatable, entertaining, and because they trust the person’s opinions. Good content creators [hyperlink to 7 signs of a good micro-influencer] only endorse products they love. This is because if they were representing subpar products, they’d lose their following as people would test these recommendations and think to themselves, what a faker and sellout!
3. Micro-Influencers Humanize Your Brand
Have you ever heard someone say, “They’ve got a face you can trust?” Potential buyers believe other people, not the brand. By utilizing the face, voice, knowledge, and/or skill of your content creator, you, in effect, humanize your company and increase credibility in every area of your business.
4. Your Mission Is In the Content
While an influencer creates the content, it’s important to ensure that you (or your marketing team) have connected your brand with a social media marketer that coordinates contextually as well as at scale. When there is proper alignment, your company’s values, mission, and philosophy shines through. The reason for this is that your influencers most likely share the same sentiments as your brand, which is why they chose to represent your products in the first place. Eventually, a micro-influencer’s voice will become almost synonymous with your brand and vice versa. Audiences—and ultimately your customers—find comfort in this familiar tone. Never try to change your micro-influencers voice for a campaign; it’s bad for both parties. Their following will know instantly if their favorite blogger suddenly begins using strange punctuation or dumbs down his or her vocabulary. If they stop reading because of it, you lose the engagement of that market and the influencers lose a portion of their following.
5. People Inherently Love to Learn & Discover
On average, there are 40,000 google searches every second, which translates into 3.5 billion searches per day. There are nearly 4 billion tweets a week. In December of 2016 it was reported that Instagram reached 600 million active users a month. People long to learn, discover the latest and greatest trends, or simply to be entertained. Audiences trust content that’s educational, entertaining, and informative. People are also more apt to trust influencers who their friends and family already follow. When a network of social media users begin to discuss what they’ve seen online, offline, a community of knowledge and commonality is created.
6. Out with Obnoxious Ads
The influencer marketer attitude is about helping people, not selling people. Content creators should aim to demonstrate how a product helps as opposed to inventing a false need. Most likely, whatever you’re selling isn’t a necessity, so don’t sell it as one. Moreover, you can forgo disruptive ads and popups that most people are blocking with Adblock anyway. Buyers are far more savvy and sophisticated than they once were, and with this increased shrewdness has come a suspicion of anything advertorial…unless it’s from someone they trust. The audiences of successful micro-influencers are followers who trust and enjoy their content.
For the Brands
The marketing landscape is ever-changing, but that’s a good thing. Now more than ever, potential customers are easier to target, and you’ll be more apt to hold their attention when they’re actually enjoying the content your micro-influencer is creating. When done correctly, influencer marketing can help build long term trust with both customers and clients, which will ultimately lead to increased conversion rates.
ApexDrop has helped thousands of authentic micro-influencers connect with quality brands through contextual product gifting (also known as trade collaborations). Imagine having an affordable and easy way to get your products featured by hundreds of influencers immediately on Instagram, but without all the extra work. ApexDrop offers an unparalleled service in campaign management from start to finish and can assure that their clients receive quality posts and authenticity. For more information, schedule a call with an ApexDrop Influencer Specialist today www.apexdrop.com/contact
