Influencer Marketing

What is Influencer Marketing?

·         Influencer marketing, also called influence marketing, is a type of online marketing focused on working with individuals who have a certain influence in a particular sector.

·          The influence means they have the power to influence and persuade their followers.

·         This way, an influencer is able to sway the audience and affect their buying habits.

·         The influence is built slowly over a course of time and it represents a cumulative effort of an individual to establish a name and an authority for themselves in a particular sector.

·         Even though it is a long-term effort, creating influence opens up so many opportunities to influencers, especially in terms of business opportunities and chances to work with renowned brands from the industry they work in.

The characteristics of the influencers include:

• Being an expert in the industry.

• Knowing the market and current trends.

• Having the group of followers and supporters.

• Earning their trust.

• Knowing the group well and being able to address them directly.

Now, you may have a question in mind that how can we start influencing people through influencer marketing.

 Stay tuned for the further blog and get your question answered.  

How to start with influencer marketing?

·         As seen, influencer marketing provides a lot of benefits, which is why you should explore ways you can promote your business through this kind of online marketing strategy.

·          Since this is a planned campaign, there is a set of steps you should follow to help you when starting out with influencer marketing.

Identify the influencers

·         You will first need to identify the influencers you want to work with.

·         To make sure you pick only those worthy of working with, and to make sure your campaign really is effective, choose the influencers whose target group matches yours.

·          Since your business will be promoted to this audience, you need to focus on the specific target group who could actually become interested in your business.

·         Another aspect you should have in mind when choosing the influencers, you want to work with, is whether your business is global or local.

·         Considering this aspect will also help narrow down the list of potential influencers because this also has a direct influence on the campaign performance.

·         The best way to start looking for the influencers is to use the search engines. You can type the keywords you are interested in and check the search engine results to see which ones match your query.

·          Sometimes adding a word “influencers” into the search term can help you find ready-made lists of influencers in that particular industry.

·         Social media is another great place for searching for influencers because every influencer uses at least one social media platform to interact regularly with his or her target group.

·         Besides this manual searching method, there are tools that help you identify and rank influencers based on different criteria, such as the number of followers, blog authority, etc.

Rank the influencers

·         The reason why you should rank the influencers is the fact that you will probably identify a couple of influencers in the sector of your interest.

·          Sometimes you might want to work with one or several influencers at the same time.

·         However, all the influencers you identify might not make the cut, and you will actually end up working with selected few or even one.

·          To make sure you select the right influencers; the best idea is to rank them.

There are two ways to do this process.

·         If you are using a tool to find influencers, sometimes you will have an option to sort and compare influencers.

·          This will basically give you a list of already ranked influencers.

·          The other way to select those you want to work with is to create your own custom ranking system.

·         Start by creating a table and then fill in the names of the influencers you have identified.

Then try to fill in some of the following data about each influencer:

• Number of social followers (separately for each network)

• Number of subscribers

• Average monthly blog visits

• Have they worked with your competitors?

• Reach of similar collaborations organized in the past (social media shares,

comments, blog visits, etc.)

Of course, it is not always possible to get all the data from this list, but it is recommended that you find out as much as possible about the influencer you are interested in working with, as well as about the previous campaigns the influencer has participated in.

This all helps you evaluate:

• The influence that particular influencer has

• The planned outcome you could expect from such a campaign

• How likely this collaboration is to happen

Determine the goal of the campaign

·         Once you know who you are working with, it is time to think about the campaign and how you are going to organize everything.

·         For starters, take the time to think about the goals.

·         The campaign goals help you evaluate the success of the campaign, which is why they are the valuable metric to have in any strategy.

·         Goals also help you shape the path and the approach you are going to take with the campaign, allowing you to choose actions and tactics that will help with achieving these goals.

Alternatively, you can think about the goals before even choosing the influencers if you believe that goals could actually help you with choosing the perfect influencer to work with.

Content! Content! Content!

Think About Content

·         This is the point where you focus on the content you want to create in collaboration with the influencer.

·         Firstly, there is a possibility to have your own content where you will use influencer marketing campaign to promote it.

·          In this case, the influencer is not involved in content creation, but instead, it is simply the one who recommends it.

·         On the other hand, you can have the influencer working alone on the content that is going to be designed in a way that it promotes your business, along with the products or services you offer.

·         Some influencers find this approach more appealing because they have the creative freedom to design the content in a way that matches their style.

·          In the end, the content creation can be a true collaboration, where you as a business will participate in content creation alongside with the influencer.

The type of content you are going to choose is determined by:

• Your business goals

• The influencer’s idea

• The target group expectations

Get in Touch with the Influencer

Up until this point, it has all been about preparation and your plans how you want this collaboration to be conducted.

Obviously, a great part will depend on the person you are working with, which you will learn once you get in touch with the influencer.

The process is quite simple. You prepare the offer and you get in touch in order to pitch that offer. The best way to do it through an email which ideally should:

Be personalized

·         This approach is proven to be the most effective with email campaigns so there is no reason to avoid it when contacting the influencers.

·         To get the recipient interested in the matter, use a custom and engaging subject line.

·         Also, make sure you address the influencer by his or her name.

·         The personalized approach shows that you have done the research and that you are familiar with the person you are going to potentially work with.

Explain the offer

·         The second part of the email includes the offer for collaboration. This is where you explain all the details about your plans and ideas.

·          Make sure your offer is interesting and properly explained so that you get the influencer interested.

·          Have in mind that yours is not the only offer the influencer will have, so your offer needs to stand out.

Highlight the benefits

·         To go a step further, highlight the reason why the influencer should work with you.

·         Focusing on the benefits of such collaboration will encourage the influencer to consider your offer.

Provide contact details

·         Finally, you want to get a response from the influencer, as well as feedback about the offer you proposed.

·         This means you should provide a method for an influencer to contact you, and preferably, you should provide a couple of methods, such as a phone number, an email address, social media profiles, etc.

Major benefits of influencer marketing

This strategy has been popularized greatly in the recent years, and it is a trend you will need to look out for, but to understand how your business can actually benefit from working with influencers, here are some of the main benefits of influencer marketing.

Expanding reach

·         When you decide to work with influencers, the most obvious benefit is the possibility to reach their audience.

·          This kind of campaign is oriented at the audience that does not necessarily have connections or knows about your business at all.

·          In this case, you have the opportunity to expand your reach, which usually results in expanding the number of leads, customers, website visitors, etc.

Targeted campaign

·         Choosing to work with the influencer is a process that involves going through several criteria, but one of the most important ones is choosing the influencers based on their target group.

·         When you choose an influencer whose target group could really be interested in your business, you get to organize a highly-targeted campaign, and such campaign is most likely to get good results.

Boosting sales

·         Since influencers have the ability to affect their audience and their buying habit, it is only natural to expect to boost sales through such actions.

·          To make sure you are able to track these sales and actually account them to influencer marketing, make sure you use track-able links for the products mentioned by the influencer.

Increasing the influence

·         Unlike sales, which are usually easier to track, gaining influence is a benefit you will find more difficult to measure.

·          However, this benefit is obviously a result of such a campaign, because a recommendation from an influencer will have a positive effect on your business and on the reputation you have among the online users.

·          In this sense, working with influencers actually, helps you build your own influence and authority online through this recommendation.

·         Influencer marketing is not an absolutely necessary part of online marketing, but a strategy that could be quite effective for some type of businesses.

·          It is important to recognize the opportunities it can provide for your company and whether it is something you should focus on.

·         Rather than being an ongoing strategy, influencer marketing is actually a strategy you should use occasionally when you notice a possibility to promote your business through such form of online marketing.

·         In the end, all that matters is your business, and if you believe that working with influencers could help you take your business to the next level, this is a strategy you want to further explore and determine how to organize it to get the most out of it.

Digital Marketing Module - Search Engine Marketing

Welcome Back!

Today we get cognizance of a paid digital marketing module ‘Search Engine Marketing’.

Let’s start with the question as follows:

What is Search Engine Marketing?

In today’s market having a website has become one of the most important ways to successfully present your business and to reach customers who are most likely to use the internet to find information about a certain product and services.

·         When users look up a word or phrase using the search engines, they get a displayed list of search results and perform the steps that are mentioned below:

o    Firstly, they go through this list and try to find the result they need, the result that is actually related to the word or phrase that has been used in the search query.

o    Now, based on the researches, more than half of users will only scan through the first couple of results, and they are most likely to click on the first one.

o    This is the reason why being positioned at the top of the search result page is an important goal if you want to reach the users online.

Isn’t it? I hope you all agree with me, do the same process while searching on the internet.

The discipline that explores different strategies in order to help you get better positioning in the search engines and promote your business online, is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Let’s Dig Inside SEM

·         Search engine marketing is defined as a series of actions that are aimed at increasing the visibility of a website in the search engines through both paid and unpaid processes.

·         The main goal of these processes is to increase the visibility of a website and gain traffic, in order to increase sales and conversions.

·         It requires a comprehensive strategy which will include the goals, as well as planned actions that should be conducted for the purpose of achieving those goals.

·         The actions in the process of realization of the strategy will differ, depending on the type of search marketing that is used.

·         The goal of this Blog is to explain the importance of search engine marketing, as well as the main strategies and tools that will help with ranking higher in the search engines.

The SEM Terminology

Now, let’s go through the abbreviations or the terms that are used in digital marketing. It will be helpful for us to understand further smoothly the working of SEM.

·         SEM – Search engine marketing represents a part of the internet marketing which uses search engines result pages to promote a website, using both organic and paid reach.

·         SEO – Search engine optimization is a process of improving the visibility of a website in the search engine result pages through organic reach.

PPC – Pay per click is the part of paid reach in the search engine marketing where you need to pay each time someone clicks on your ad.

·         CPC – Cost per click is the amount of money you pay for one click on your ad, which is specified in the advertising campaign settings.  

·         CPM – Cost per mile represents cost per thousand impressions. It is one of the advertising payment plans, where you pay the price per thousands views.  

·         Search query or keyword query is the word or phrase that the users type into the search engines in order to find more information about that specific topic.  

·         SERP – Search engine result page is the list of results displayed by the search engines as the response to the search query.

·         ROI – Return on investment is a ratio used to help calculate profitability. ROI compares investment and results in order to determine benefits from the marketing campaign.

·         Conversion usually means converting a website visitor to customer, but websites may use metrics other than sale as conversion, such as sign up for a newsletter, visiting a certain page, etc.

·         Landing page also called lead capture page, is a page which appears after the user has clicked on the link displayed in the search engine result page, regardless of that being organic listing or a paid ad.

Search Engine Optimization VS. Pay Per Click

·         There are two types of search engine marketing:

o   SEO (Search engine optimization)

o   PPC (Pay per click)  

·         Both represent two different approaches which both have the same goal; how to increase the position, i.e. the visibility of a website in the search engines.

·          The main difference between SEO and PPC is the type of reach you want to achieve.

Now, we will discuss the benefits of both the types of Search Engine Marketing, first comes SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

·         Search engine optimization increases so-called organic reach and displays them on SERP’s that will be accessed by the user.

·         It is a technique to increase the number of the users will find your website "naturally", through the search engine.

·         The main goal with search engine optimization is to use a set of strategies and tools, while following the best practices and recommendations, in the purpose of improving the position of the website in relation to specific keywords or keyword phrases.

·         It is essential for these keywords to be related to your business, so the selection of keywords is one of the first tasks in the process of search engine optimization.

·         In such cases, your goal is to increase the position of your website in the search results, which is based on the keywords you suppose the users would search for.

·         Search engine optimization is a comprehensive process that requires a lot of work which will pay off in the increased visibility of your website in the search engine result pages.

·          This process is also considered to be long-term since the benefits of the website optimization are long-lasting as opposed to paid reach.

White Hat vs. Black Hat

·         When it comes to SEO, it is important to differentiate between the so-called white hat and the black hat SEO.

·         Let us discuss white hat SEO :

White Hat SEO

·         It uses the best practices and recommendations for conducting an optimization of a website.

·         It includes actions recommended by the search engines as things out of which your website can benefit, and that is why you should apply those practices.

·         Webmaster guidelines represent the best practices that help search engines to find, index and rank a website.

·         The guidelines are comprised of three major sets of guidelines, which include:

o   Design and content guidelines

o   Technical guidelines

o   Quality guidelines

Black Hat SEO

·         It includes the practices that are designed for the purpose of misguiding and manipulating search engines’ algorithms, in order to increase positioning.

·          It also uses the practices that are not recommended by the search engines, which is why they could have a negative effect on your website, and they may even result in penalization by the search engines.

·         Penalty represents a negative impact on a website’s ranking. Search engines strive to provide quality users experience and they try to find spam through algorithm updates and manual actions.

·         Penalty can result in the drop of rankings, a decrease in traffic, conversions, etc. Sometimes, the website might not even be displayed on the search result page.

Some of the reasons for penalties include:

·         Not following search engine guidelines

·         Hacked website

·         Spammy structured markup

·         Hidden text

·         Keyword stuffing

·         Cloaking

·         Unnatural links to or from your website.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

·         It uses paid reach to help you reach online customers and paid search marketing is most often referred to as PPC (pay per click), it actually includes other types of paid marketing, such as CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

·         Paid search engine marketing requires paying for ads that will be displayed in the search engines. In this case, there is no need to look for the ways to improve the position of your website organically, but instead, all you have to do is to set up a campaign through an advertising program.

·         This way, your website will be displayed as the paid result every time a user searches for a certain keyword that is related to the keywords you have provided when creating a campaign.

Changes on the Internet

·         You should have in mind that the situation on the internet changes constantly.

·         There are numerous websites being created every day, and people are starting to use search engine marketing to compete on the internet.

·         At the same time, there are those who give up or turn to different projects instead.

·         This is why it is essential to monitor the situation on the internet, to monitor your competitors and to stay up to date with recommendations and best practices that can help you increase the visibility of your website.

·         Regardless of the type of search engine marketing you decide to use, you need to monitor your work and the performance of your efforts in order to evaluate the efficiency of SEM.

·         With paid search engine marketing you will be able to monitor the performance of the campaign through the advertising program used to create the campaign, while with SEO you will need to use external tools for monitoring the performance of the website and organic reach.

·         No matter how the situation develops in the future and regardless of how search engine algorithms change, the fact remains that websites will be competing with one another for the top position in the search engine result pages.

·         The tools and the best practices might be changing, as they have been over the years, but search engine marketing remains a part of marketing, a part of the activity that will certainly help you promote your business.

This is all about the blog; hope you have learned and increased your cognizance about digital marketing.

Please Like, share and comment inside the comment box regarding your experience for the blog.

Comment us about which digital marketing topic you want us to make a blog on.

Need digital marketing services for your business? Contact us at ‘Digital Rajat – A Digital Marketing Agency’ which covers all your requirements for the business inside the digital world.