How to Maximize Instagram Influencer Marketing
Instagram influencer marketing offers you a light-hearted way to build brand awareness and gain more trust in this competitive digital era.
Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels
Instagram influencer marketing is now taking center stage. Today, more than 500,000 influencers are active on the platform (and still counting!) and look for opportunities to work with brands.
The reason why this type of marketing is so popular these days is that influencers have such a solid fan base as they share many aspects of their lives with them. So, when they recommend your brand, many people will listen as they would if they were a friend.
That being said, working with an influencer needs some strategies, too – just like any other marketing type. Therefore, in this post, I’ll break down some points to help you maximize your Instagram influencer marketing so that you can reap all the benefits you deserve. I will also share some extra Instagram marketing tips you can use.
Instagram Influencer Marketing: The Best Practices
Without well-thought strategies, Instagram influencer marketing will only be a waste of money, time, and energy. It also can harm your business budget and even your online reputation. That is why you need to plan carefully and use the tips found here.
#1. Choose the Right Influencers
Let’s start with the very basics, shall we? In order to get the maximum results of your Instagram influencer marketing, you need to start by choosing the right influencers.
There are four types of influencers:
- Nano-influencers. This type of influencer has less than 10,000 followers and simply resembles everyday people (like your family and friends).
- Micro-influencers. These influencers usually have 10,000 – 100,000 followers.
- Macro-influencers. Influencers with more popularity and have pretty much a bigger name on the platform. Those influencers have at least 100,000 – 1 million followers.
- Mega-influencers. Simply well-known celebrities with more than a million followers.
So, which one is the best for your brand? Many people believe that recommendations from smaller influencers (like nano or micro-influencers) are more genuine and natural. Meanwhile, a celebrity endorsement or high-paying advertisements can feel like a pure marketing tactic and often hard-selling.
That being said, make sure you spend enough time researching and get to know those influencers you want to work with. Pay attention to their engagement rate. A million followers mean nothing if they have low engagement rates.
#2. Work With Influencers With the Same Niche
You need to work with influencers with the same niche as your brand. For instance, if you want to promote vitamins or supplements, make sure you reach out to influencers who post mostly about health and fitness on their Instagram feeds.
When you work with an influencer with the same audience as yours, you make your Instagram influencer marketing so smooth, and the audience can easily believe it since you promote relevant products that they’re interested in. And that’s how you boost your brand’s presence and increase your conversion rate.
#3. Provide Value to the Audiences
Nobody ever wants to be sold to, including through Instagram influencer marketing. That is why you need to provide value in the first place. It’s always better to communicate with the influencers you are working with to show the benefits of your products.
Once the audience knows how your products can solve their problems with an explainer video or make their life easier, they will be more tempted in trying it themselves. This boosts customer loyalty and also helps you get more customers.
#4. Don’t Rely Only On a Single Influencer
To see visible results of your Instagram influencer marketing in a short period of time, you need to work with more than one influencer. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you only rely on one influencer on the platform, and they happen to fail, you never get the results you want.
So, the more influencers you work with, the better. And again, don’t look for influencers with the biggest following. Instead, focus on working with influencers who have an impact on the audience and target customers you want, too.
#5. Allow Influencers to Get Creative
Instagram influencer marketing is not the same as Adsense Ads. It’s not about just telling them what to say and how they should say it. You need to remember that influencers are people too – just like us.
Make sure you provide them with a space to get creative about how to promote your product. They should know what to say to their followers and how to convince them to try out your product, whether it is through product reviews, explainer videos, or a simple testimonial.
By letting them unleash their creativity, you will be able to get more honest or genuine advertising and a more meaningful relationship with the influencers.
Instagram Influencer Marketing Tools You Need to Know
Thanks to the internet, now you can run Instagram influencer marketing with no hassle using tons of online tools out there.
Here are some essential tools that make your influencer marketing less complicated and less stressful:
- Shoutcart
- AspireIQ
- Upfluence
- Neoreach
- Julius
With all those tools above, you can easily find the right influencers along with their profile analytics so you can get solid insights into their engagement rate, followers demographics, and more.
Final Thoughts
Promoting your brand is becoming more difficult with each passing day. But, Instagram is one of the best-performing social media that can help you stand out from the crowd through influencer marketing. This type of marketing is soaring and effective because consumers respond more positively and proactively to peer-to-peer recommendations these days.
Now that Instagram keeps growing in popularity, influencer marketing is still rising and not going away anytime soon. One thing you need to remember, though, is that you should not rely too heavily on Instagram influencer marketing. You might also need to pay attention to build a solid Instagram profile, encourage more engagement within your own profile, build a followers base – so that when an audience visits your profile from an influencer recommendation, they should have no problem trusting you.
Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro