In the era of social media, many startups are heading towards influencers to promote their products and services rather than celebrities. It is found that more than 80% of marketers find ROI from influencer marketing. Online influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing in which companies ask influencers to promote their brands through endorsements and product mentions. Influencer marketing is providing branding solutions to startups and new businesses to compete in the market, even with big brands. And this is the reason marketing experts suggest influencer marketing to be in the prime focus areas for any startup today. As a brand you can also partner with Quikplace, a professional Influencer Marketing services provider to jump start and start visualizing positive results in a very less time.
Before we get into different influencer marketing tips for startups let us understand how influencer marketing is different for startups and large companies.
How does influencer marketing differ for startups compared to large companies?
The major and obvious difference between influencer marketing for startups and large corps is how much budget they are open to. Branding campaigns do not eat up much of the budget of large companies. But startups and small businesses have to keep a watch on their budget and creatively think about how they can conduct their influencer marketing campaigns.
Benefits to small business from influencer marketing
If you want to promote your startup business influencer marketing campaigns can be a great way to improve your online marketing strategy. All you need to do first is make a solid influencer partnership, so you can target the right audience with the right influencer. Some people are misinformed that influencer marketing is just about getting more likes and views, but it’s about generating sales. Secondly, you need to run the right campaign and keep over social media metrics. By doing this you can see your ROI and also you can check how people are reacting towards your products, no matter the budget. Once you have run your first market campaign, the benefits are limitless. You can see changes such as –
- Increased traffic on your website
- More sales leads
- More subscribers in your email list
- Increased sales of your products based on influencers endorsements and mentions
- More clicks
Influencer’s marketing partnerships are effective because influencers are very dedicated in keeping their audience engaged, and building a strong relationship with them. So, when they talk about any new products or reviews, their audience listens to them. This is how the brands enjoy the benefit of engaged audiences. Let’s dive into some influencer marketing tips for startups.
Conduct Analytical Research
If you want to increase the sales of your product you must look out for the influencers whose audience overlaps with your brand. Analyze important things such as engagement rates, type of content people love the most, who they have worked with within the past, and authenticity of followers to target the audience of your niche. The ideal influencer will have high engagement rates and good experience history in marketing and mentioning products. As soon as your influencer research is done, you are all set to start working on your first campaign.
How to get started with influencer marketing for startups.
Know the power of Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing is not just limited to celebrities with a huge following. Even ordinary people specialized in their niches, with more audience engagement can also give a great impact. Micro-influencers can share knowledge and passion while sounding authentic. As an influencer marketing tip for startups, you should keep your prime focus on micro-influencers.
Offer influencers free products or services
Everybody likes getting presents, and influencers expect gifts and discounts from businesses that approach them for branding purposes. There are two options for you to do so-
- You can send them sample products or offer them a free trial of your services
- Send them your product as a gift after researching their social profile about what they like to eat and wear, explore their blogs, etc.
Both the ways are highly effective and can help you in making initial contact and later on building long-term relationships with them. Make sure that you are polite, and don’t pressurize them to promote your brand just because you send them a gift.
Give influencers free and valuable feedback
Valuable feedback increases your chance of getting noticed. If you want to establish a long-lasting relationship with the influencer provide them with meaningful & valuable feedback on their post. This activity will not eat up any budget of your company. Identify the failings and suggest the points of improvement honestly to get their attention. Comments like 100% agreed, nice post, excellent job, etc. these types of comments won’t work and will not create any impact.
Pro Tip – Explore their websites, find a typo in their content, a broken link on the website, check if their content data is outdated. Make sure that the tone of your email is friendly and not belittling because you are there to help them out and get their attention and not to annoy them.
Host interviews
People have become bored and are used too in seeing paid and sponsored content and tend to trust them less. They want to see something realistic, authentic, personal, and closer to their own stories. By hosting interviews your company’s marketing content will become personal, authentic and you can be in the eyes of the customer.
Startups can host Live interviews, Recorded video conversations, and written Q&A. By this activity the audience feels that they are part of an honest conversation where the influencer talks genuinely about their life stories.
Use performance-based payment
One of the best influencer marketing tips for startups is to set up a performance-based payment system. Under this method, an influencer is paid based on performance on their posts. So instead of paying them on a per post basis, their performance or number of people who clicked per post will define their final pay. Setting up this system has multiple benefits-
- The influencer will work harder to promote your brand in a way that benefits you.
- Having clear payment terms, it becomes easy to fairly work with the influencer.
- Influencers also feel that they are fairly paid for this work.
Mention for a Mention
Influencer marketing benefits companies and influencers both. In other words, bloggers and upcoming influencers also want support and online exposure. You can also try a mention for mention agreement, this means you mention the influencers over your social media posts, and they also do the same for you. This the easiest and simple way to gain more followers and raise brand awareness. The great part is that this influencer marketing tip for small businesses does not involve any cost to the companies.
Final words
Above mentioned Influencer marketing tips for startups can do wonders for your business and can draw the attention of large numbers of audiences. All you need to follow these tips and tricks thoroughly.
If you are a start-up, start working on your influencer marketing strategy, and get ready to visualize the increase in sales in no time.