21 October 2019
Instagram And Influence Marketing – Key Questions For Your Business
If you’re part of the YouTube generation, then you’ve no doubt heard the term ‘influencer’ being bandied around. Certainly any decent social media company in the UK or America will be… YouTube is indeed a hotbed for the marketing process known as ‘influence marketing’. However, YouTube is not the only place you can pull it off successfully. This week, the best digital agency in Bury will tell you how to do that, using 5 ‘W’s’ and 4 ‘M’s’ that will guide you through the complete influence marketing process.
Influence Marketing – The Initial Stages
A successful influence marketing campaign begins much like it did in our Facebook and Instagram marketing campaign walkthroughs. You need to identify who your target audience is, and the what, where and when of the things you intend to post. The advice from Bury’s top social media company would be to focus on Instagram marketing, at least at first. Instagram works really well for influence marketing due to the sheer variety of what you can post.
Applying the other three ‘W’s’…
We’ve just addressed the where… The who, what, and why will depend on your company, the image you want, and your end goals. Just like the best digital agency in Bury will tell you, there are no cookie-cutter solutions to this… So, the only support we have for you there is to define these end goals and your key metrics FIRST. Again – you should know who your audience will be, what style and content you’ll use, and of course why you’re posting in the first place BEFORE you start writing. This way, you can design content around achieving the results and goals you want.
The when of Instagram and influence marketing though… That’s largely down to your audience’s habits, and therefore more difficult to pin down. However, there are a number of tools out there that can help you. If you choose to outsource any of this Instagram marketing work to a social media company you should make sure that they are well familiar with Instagram Insights and can use your Instagram Insights tool to engage your audience, which will let you (or them) develop a clear view of when your audience is online, and what content or styles they like the most. The pairing of Instagram Insights and Desktopify is what we – the best digital agency in Bury – would recommend as a bare minimum for any successful Instagram marketing campaign, whether it involves influence marketing or not.
Applying ‘The 4 M’s’ of Influence Marketing:
Just like there are five ‘W’s of marketing, there are four ‘M’s specific to influence marketing. These are: Make, Manage, Monitor and Measure.
Make refers to ‘making an influencer’. This means firstly recognising what stage a potential customer is at in their journey. Once you know where they stand, you reach out to them via someone who can swing them in favour of making a purchase. In more mainstream influence marketing these are the people you see on TV endorsing products. Online – in Instagram marketing for example – this could be a ‘bot’ or social media account set up by a social media company to appeal to specific people. And as the number one digital agency in Bury can tell you, it’s a strategy that works.
Manage refers to defining the personality of your Influence marketing persona, and their behaviour online. What they say, like and repost will make them more or less influential to certain groups of people. As a result, it does need to be managed carefully.
Monitoring follows on from this – and in the influence marketing and social media marketing world means following the actions of your potential customer. You need to know who they are talking to, and what they’re talking about. This allows you (or your social media company) to gently guide them in the direction of the right influencer that will convince them to make the purchase. Got a customer for whom price is a big issue? Let them here from someone designed to emphasise your product’s value for money. Is a customer worried that your product doesn’t do everything they need it to? The top digital agency in Bury could set up an influence marketing bot designed to emphasise the features and versatility of your product, and have it engage with them.
A matter of perspective…
Measure, quite simply is the act of looking at analytics, and seeing what is working and what isn’t. Again though, as any good social media company will tell you – in influence marketing, there are a number of types of success. For instance, some messages may garner a lot of engagement, but not a lot of sales. Is that success? Did a campaign work if your influencers were not well received by the audience, yet you still made sales? It depends how you look at these results, and what you wanted from the campaign.
Sadly, the best digital agency in Bury can’t help you come to those conclusions we’re afraid… However, we can help you with all aspects of Facebook or Instagram marketing setup, digital marketing, social media content writing, web or app development and more! Give us a call on 0161 761 1800, or visit us at our office on Broad Street in Bury to find out more!
