How would you compare Influencer Marketing vs. Digital Advertising?
Although digital advertising can be effective at improving business, influencer marketing gives versatility and life to a product. Digital advertising can sometimes be viewed as artificial (I.e. staged photoshoots, carefully planned out content); however, with influencer marketing, brands give influencers the freedom to represent the brand how they think is best and can connect with their audience efficiently. Influencer marketing allows many different people, with different ways of thinking, to represent a product. This, in turn, means the product has many different ways of being advertised. Additionally, it is part of an influencer’s job is to create a bond and trust with their audience. When an influencer does this correctly, and their audience trusts them, they also will trust the products they promote. So, instead of a business trying to market and sell directly to the customer, they can use an already trusted influencer to promote the said product and increase sales immensely.
Which social platforms do you think will be most popular in the next five years for influencer marketers?
Instagram/linkedin/TikTok
How do you currently find relevant and high-quality influencers for your marketing campaigns?
Web search
How should brands use Instagram influencers to grow their business? What is your personal experience with Instagram influencing?
I believe that, especially for business owners, outsourcing some of your marketing to an influencer can improve business immensely. This is because 1. The influencer will do all of the photography, editing, and posting, which saves so much time on your end. 2. An audience of an influencer already trusts them and the products they promote. So, when an influencer posts about a product, the audience already trusts that product and is more likely to buy it. 3. Influencers can put a creative spin on your product that you might have never thought of.
I have been an influencer and have hired influencers for my business. I can say with full confidence that, when given the freedom to, a good influencer will shine light onto a product in ways that you never thought was possible. They come up with creative ways to use, photograph, or edit the product and the results of increased sales are incredible.
For e-commerce businesses, what are trending social tools and strategies to get traction via Instagram? Are you currently using any tool yourself?
Reels! Reels are short videos that you can upload to Instagram that appear in their very own timeline (very similar to Tiktok). They have the same approach as Tiktok – a reel can go “viral” with little to no paid advertising. Knowing how to produce engaging and creative reels is essential to running a good e-commerce business on Instagram.
What advice would you give to a new business that wants to gain and grow its paid sponsorships?
I would say to learn from what has already been done – the tried and true – but also, do not be afraid to try something new and be different. I think in today’s world, we see a lot of the same products in different forms. So, my advice would be to use tools that we know work at improving business along with testing new ways of marketing, designing, and approaching your business.
How do you think Influencer Marketing will grow among small businesses in the near future?
Micro-influencers are now becoming a heavily relied-on resource for small businesses. When a business does not have the current funds to pay a widely known influencer, they can pay or supply free products to “micro-influencers” which are people who have a small-to-medium-sized following and they will post about the product and business on different social platforms. I think this is especially important with TikTok because, as I said before, a video can go viral, even if the creator has very few followers. A micro-influencer has the potential to create a viral video of your product on TikTok and increase awareness and sales for your business.
How do you currently collaborate with and pay Instagram influencers? Name any tools and strategies that you use.
Honestly, I stalk their profiles. From Instagram, to Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I’ll search for anything that might tell me they would be a good fit for my brand. I focus on the overall “vibe” of their social platforms to see if they would fit my brand and then look at their engagement/follower count to determine what price I am willing to pay for them to promote my product. Obviously, the higher the following/engagement, the more I am willing to pay. I have used Influencer platforms in the past, but I have found that some of the best and most trustworthy influencers are the ones that I have stumbled across while scrolling through social media.
