Influencers can be a strategic partner that will help boost your pet brand’s exposure and grow your audience. The right influencer collaboration will help keep your brand at the front of your customers’ minds when making buying decisions.
An influencer can play a pivotal role in highlighting your company’s philanthropic efforts. Influencers can bring a level of trust to your brand. 41% of consumers believe a brand’s “trustworthiness” is their most important attribute.
What is “Influencer Marketing”?
Influencer marketing is an accelerated version of word-of-mouth marketing. A persuasive entity (usually a person, but there are some important pets out there!) encourages awareness and consideration of a brand, seeking to promote increased sales.
Word of mouth marketing has been around forever; the difference with influencer marketing is the ability to scale those personal recommendations to reach a significant potential audience.
Ease and scale are why influencer marketing has exploded, with 49% of consumers saying they depend on influencer recommendations for their buying decisions.
Choose the Right Influencer
Ensure that anyone representing your brand is both philosophically and ideologically aligned with your company. You will be growing your following by reaching their audience. To benefit your sales, this needs to be your target audience, too.
Customers trust the influencers they follow. When people decide where to spend their money, they will seek “social proof,” including seeing what brands the people they trust are promoting. 99% of influencers assert that they will only work with brands that share their values.
One of the key benefits of working with an influencer is the depth of audience you can reach. Influencer audiences tend to be well-defined and focused around the entity’s area of expertise, so these audiences are behaviour-based, not demographic-based.
Your Audience is on Social Media
In an over-crowded digital marketplace, an influencer can help position your brand in front of the right potential customers as they scroll through their feeds. For brands who are still building their digital presence, an influencer can help accelerate the growth of their audience and following.
Influencers can add authenticity to a brand. Where companies are seen as a nebulous entity, influencers are “real” people. Use your influencer’s feedback to craft your campaigns and hone your message. They know what resonates with their audience.
Social media allows you to meet your target audience in a variety of different locations with different touchpoints. Your brand needs to build value across all platforms to engage your audience. An influencer collaboration can add value to your digital presence.
Building the Collaboration
Some influencers, particularly those who have more moderate followings, will work for product. As their presence grows, most influencers will be looking for a monetary engagement; 61% prefer monetary compensation over any other type of arrangement.
The good news is that this investment can pay off. Influencer campaigns earn nearly $6.50 for every $1.00 spent. One review showed that ad creative from influencers promoted on a brand’s profiles had a 75% higher conversion rate and 50% higher return on ad spend.
Although you can work with influencers wherever your brand has a presence, Instagram is the strongest platform for collaborations, with more than 75% of influencers ranking it as their favourite platform.
Using all your Resources
Beyond relying on your influencer to grow your audience, tap into their expertise and insight. Involve them in content creation. No one knows their audience better than they do, and this is the audience you are trying to tap into. Seek their feedback on your content, create collaboratively, and review the response together. Your influencer is like any other member of your team, and they should be actively engaged in reaching your brand’s goals.
When it Doesn’t Work
An influencer campaign can go off the rails in a heartbeat when your influencer strays from your philosophy and approach. 40% of consumers say they have left a brand over an association with irresponsible behaviour.
The team at StreetDog can help you identify opportunities for influencer marketing and collaboration and help guide you to the right partners. Talk to us today about how to accelerate your brand and your digital presence.
