Category: Marketing

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Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

 

A successful and sustainable influencer marketing campaign requires a plan to maintain focus and direction and identifying your goals. This means before you make any content and before you determine your campaign type and find your influencers.

 

If you do these steps before identifying your goals and setting proper key performance metrics, you are less likely to see appropriate returns. This is because the content and influencer you pick more than likely won’t correlate. Thus, wasting your time and other valuable resources required to run a positively functioning campaign.

 

Each goal you set will require a different type of influencer, budget, and resource needs and for you to produce a set of relevant and unique content. You can’t just use any influencer and throw out poor content and think it will work. Over time this will cause more work, confusion, and eat up at your profits and other resources.

 

  • Brand Awareness and Reputation – Your customers need to notice you several times before they feel safe enough to spend money. The more touchpoints you create using your content, the more notice you will get. Running a social media influencer campaign can make all the difference for your business.

 

  • Increased Sales and Leads – Another goal you can have with your influencer campaign is to make more sales. One way to do that is to use the campaign to build your e-mail list. One tactic is to offer the influencer a freebie to give away that only requires their audience to sign up for a newsletter. This act alone will increase sales today and tomorrow.

 

  • Higher Engagement Rate – Another goal is to increase your engagement rate. When you have more engagement and communication that is two-way with your audience, they get to know you better, and you get to know them better. When this happens, they will be more likely to accept your offers because your offers will be more likely relevant to them.

 

  • More Followers or Traffic – If you want more followers, more leads, more anything, you need more traffic. One type of influencer campaign you can do is designed to bring traffic to your site so that they see what you have to offer. Another option is to get them to another social media account instead, but it’s typically best to push traffic to your website.

 

  • Product Launches and Promotions – Using influencers to promote your next product launch or your sale on your products is a no-brainer. Influencers love to help people announce a new product to their customers because it makes them seem like VIPs.

Analyzing Business Models to See What’s Best for You

Remember when you create your influencer marketing goals not to skimp on your goal-setting process. Instead, use the SMART goal-setting process to ensure that your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Then, you’ll never regret planning and implementing an influencer campaign that you’ve seriously planned out because you’re more likely to be successful and reach your objectives.

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Be Aware of and Follow FTC Guidelines

If you don’t know yet, you have to follow certain guidelines before working with and sharing influencer marketing posts or anything to do with internet marketing.

FTC what they do

The Federal Trade Commission Act is used to protect both the consumer and the business owners. Its main purpose is to protect the credibility of information being shared on the internet while maintaining transparency.

 

You can expect the following consequences for not following the FTC rules:

 

  • Cease and Desist Orders
  • Fines Up to $43,792 per violation
  • Injections by federal district courts
  • Refunds to consumers
  • Costs associated with damages

 

Here are a few main points to be aware of and practice to avoid any legal fees and responsibilities:

 

  • Don’t Share Deceptive or Fake Information – If you do not know for sure that the information you are sharing or promoting is 100 percent legitimate and true and not fake, do not share it. If you do it, it will make you look untrustworthy, cause many controversies, and maybe even cost you money.

 

  • Always Display a Disclaimer – Disclaimers are not meant to allow you to mislead or lie, but they can help protect you from problems. For example, if your product is a special neck pillow, you may want to add a disclaimer that this neck pillow, while it helps you personally with your neck pain, is not a medical device, and you’re not giving medical advice. But, again, talk to a lawyer to help you with your disclaimers.

 

  • Don’t Fake a Product Demonstration – If you’re going to demonstrate anything, never do it in a fake way. If the product doesn’t work as you state it works, then the buyer will find out. Just be real and ask that the influencers you work with are too.

 

Be sure to visit the Federal Trade Commission website to fully understand the guidelines as much as possible before you get started. Knowing and following the law is your civil duty, and you can’t use a lack of knowledge and understanding to protect yourself.

 

 

 

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Top Social Media Platforms for Influencer Marketing

When you start using influencer marketing, it’s important to understand that not all platforms will be viable for your needs. Only the platforms that have influencers who market to your audience will work for you. It will help you understand what the personality is and the audience is of each platform to make the right choices.

 

Instagram

 

This visual social media platform has grown so fast that hardly anyone hasn’t heard of it. Over a billion people use the platform at least monthly, and most of them are based outside of the USA, with 140 million residing in the USA. Even during the 2020 pandemic, Instagram grew by leaps and bounds. So if you have a visual product or know how to make your offers visual, this platform will work for you.

 

YouTube

 

It’s hard to imagine life without YouTube. It’s only been here since 2005, but it has changed the landscape of media. Anyone can truly get their “15 minutes of fame” by starting their own YouTube channel. YouTube is still growing its influence by expanding its member base by 14 percent in 2020, and it’s still growing. Today, there are almost 2 billion active users on YouTube. So there is no doubt that your audience is also on YouTube. Even if you don’t have a particularly visual niche, you can usually find what you need here.

 

TikTok

 

As a micro media visual platform, this social media network has taken off in a big way. Some of the explosion is due to “bad press,” which proves that there is no bad press if you’re ready to use it for your needs. This platform is in over 150 countries and is most loved by the younger generation.

 

Twitter

 

One of the most long-lived platforms on social media platforms has gone from a text-based solution to a multimedia solution used by millions every day. Many people use Twitter to get all their news and information. The audience on Twitter is mostly from the USA, and in fact, more than half of all citizens in the USA are using the platform regularly.

 

Blogs

 

You may not initially think of a blog as a social media platform, but it is because you can have plenty of engagement through the comment section of any blog. Influencers who have very popular blogs can help you get more views for your offer just as easily as a YouTube influencer can. If they have an engaged audience that needs your solutions, it will work for you.

 

Research each platform to see if you can find influencers who entertain or inform your ideal audience who wants and needs your offers. If so, you can surely work out a deal to get the word out that is beneficial for you both.

How do YouTubers Make Money?

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Start with the Right Influencer and Target Audience

For influencer marketing to work in your favor, your target audience and the influencer’s audience must match. Before you reach out to the influencer or even understand which type of influencer to work with, you need to identify your target audience, one of the first steps required to running any business and creating products and services that make a real difference within your industry. It’s simple, if you share products, services, or ideas to the wrong audience, you won’t see any conversions.

 

Your target audience consists of a specific group of people with particular characteristics found within your target market. Therefore, your market is a lot broader and not as narrowed down. For example, a target market would be women ages 18 to 26, while your target audience would narrow this down to women 18 to 26 who enjoy travel and fitness.

 

To find the right target audience, you must:

 

Outline the Demographics:

 

To start, you want to outline their demographics which includes:

 

  • Their age and gender
  • Place of work and yearly income
  • Relationship status
  • Ethnic background
  • Level of education
  • Where they live and visit

 

Pretty much any information you can think of to better narrow down your audience. While it can sound a little invasive, it is crucial to ensure you get the information out correctly.

 

For example, if you know most of your audience is located in California, you will have a better time launching your content with their pacific daylight time zone. Furthermore, it helps determine how or what content to create and where to put it. Finally, 18 to 26 are more likely on Instagram than Facebook to give you another example.

 

10 Ways to Get to Know Your Audience Better

 

Highlight their Psychographics and Pain Points

 

This section focuses on why they buy and can better help you communicate your message.

 

Questions that determine this include:

 

  • What common problems do they have?
  • How do they live? What is their lifestyle like?
  • What are their interests and hobbies?
  • What are their buying patterns and habits like?
  • How do they behave in your industry?
  • Do they like brands, and if so, which ones?

 

Compare Your Content and Services

 

Once you have your demographics and psychographics outlined, you can better understand what to create and who to put on your team. Next, you want to compare your products or services to the information you determined above to select your campaign and influencer type better. The most important is that they share your target audience. How big their following is does not matter if their engagement rate is low and their audience doesn’t have any interest in starting.

 

Anything in business, including influencer marketing, starts with your audience. If you can’t determine the right target audience, anything you do next will only lead to poor or inconsistent results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why Influencer Marketing Works

In 2020, Influencer marketing was worth more than nine billion dollars. It is now expected to grow beyond thirteen billion dollars. Showing you that it is here to stay and only growing stronger. Influencer marketing is a form of worth-of-mouth or online marketing using social media platforms and influencers who share content to promote products or services for companies with similar target audiences.

 

The goal is to influence their audience to increase their conversions, usually in increased sales, traffic, or engagement. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are currently the top three social media platforms used by many influencers and companies worldwide to market their products, services, or ideas.

 

Here are the main reasons why influencer marketing works and why it is so beneficial to your brand:

 

Influencers Build Trust and Establish Creditability

 

Not only can influencers help you find your target audience more easily, but they can also help you connect and engage with them. An influencer has an audience because they have similar interests to them and appreciates their opinion.

 

Meaning the influencer already has established trust and credibility. When they partner with a company, that trust and credibility often transfer over. Without these two factors, you can’t expect to make a sale or increase your conversions. Customers need validity in exchange for their time and revenue.

 

Influencers Create Engagement and Long-Lasting Relationships

 

Along with trust comes needed engagement. What kind of engagement you need is up to you and your business goals? For many, that includes more likes, comments, shares, and clicks to their websites to make a sale and increase their revenue or exposure hopefully. Not only do they increase your engagement rate, the relationship is more personal too. Meaning they can form deeper and stronger relationships, further increasing the trust and loyalty to your brand.

 

Influencers Expose You to Larger and More Loyal Audiences

 

Establishing a relationship with several different influencers allows you to get in front of more people with the same target audience as yours, especially when comparing it to traditional online ads. In addition, your target audience is less likely to skip over it when an influencer is involved as it humanizes your brand.

 

As you can see, if you haven’t added influencers to your marketing strategy yet, then you are likely missing out. In fact, according to a Mediakix survey conducted in 2019, nearly 17% of companies use or will use half of their marketing budget on influencers alone. While that is a small percentage, many companies reported in the same year that they want to significantly increase their influencer budgets to keep up with the current demand for social media content. They believe influencer marketing is paramount to their success now and in the future.

 

 

 

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These Niches Benefit the Most from Influencer Marketing

Any product or service can benefit from influencer marketing. However, some certain niches or genres perform better and see far more success than others. This is likely because the content is easily shareable, visual, consumable, and in high demand.

 

The following are the most popular industries for influencer marketing:

 

Beauty and Fashion

 

This is probably the most obvious niche within influencer marketing as it makes up the bulk of it. Products and services within this niche are built on their ability to make bold, beautiful, and colorful works of art. They are highly shareable and consumable, making them a powerful product to influence. The Instagram platform is a visual social media that is one of the most used for this niche as the niche creates amazing visuals.

 

Gaming

 

Another niche that probably won’t come to you as a surprise. This industry is worth over 130 billion dollars. Those who love gaming thrive for information to learn how to complete their game or compete at the highest level against their rivals. Sharing reviews on the most anticipated game of the year or console or walkthroughs and guides on how to achieve the highest level in competitive play are just a few things audiences crave. You can often find gaming influencers on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and even Twitter.

 

Health and Fitness

 

Most people want to learn how to be healthy, improve their apparencies or maintain their weight. It is vital to your survival, meaning there is high demand for needed information. Weight loss how-to videos, advertising sportswear, or selling weightless programs are a few great things in this niche that influencers can promote.

 

Food and Travel

 

Mouthwatering dishes, videos on how to bake the perfect cake, how-to guides on traveling the world on a small budget, or simply sharing the meals you’ve tried while traveling to exotic places are just a few examples of content audiences crave within these niches. Many young adults have reported using Instagram as their source of information before they book their travels or YouTube to learn how to cook a new meal.

 

While these are the most common and successful industries in influencer marketing, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a try if your niche didn’t make this list. You can be an innovator and start something new within your industry as long as you use the right tools and resources.

 

Find the right social media platform and influencer, and create the best content with your target audience and business goals in mind. This extensive list shows that influencer marketing will likely benefit your company as long as you can provide visual content that solves a high-demand problem. Influencer marketing thrives on high-quality visuals and in-demand content.

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Social Media Marketing

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Influencer Marketing and the Pyramid of Influence

The pyramid of influence is a great model or image to categorize your different audiences and the influencers who represent them. It’s designed to quickly show you who and what makes up the most of your engagement to create the right content and materials to develop and run a successful campaign.

 

To put it simply, a pyramid of influence is designed to allow you to quickly understand who makes up your community and how they each influence your audience. This way, you can easily develop content and strategies to reach your target audience more efficiently and ensure you get the right influencer on board.

The pyramid of Influence is made of the following levels:

influencer Pyramid

First Level: Brand Content Creators

 

They are the brand experts and make up most of your content that your influencers can’t wait to use, share with their audience, or use inspiration to make new content. The content is produced by your company, by those you hired, or even mega-influencers.

 

Second Level: Influencers or Leaders

 

This is where digital influencers come in and make up the bulk of the content and engagement. They spark interest within those who want and must get your products. They inspire and influence transactions and engagement. They are the ones that will do anything to get their hands on your product and share it with their audience because they love your products or services. They are the leaders of your content and mission.

 

Third Level: Prosumers or Seed Planters

 

Prosumers are active in the community consistently, usually using third-party platforms such as Facebook or YouTube. They are the ones that build groups and posts questions or spark interest in topics supporting your niche or brand. In other words, they plant the seed of interest and increase engagement and interaction.

 

Quite a few people in this level of the pyramid will eventually move on to the second tier as low level, or nano influencers can also be found in this level as they often plant the seed. They look up to those above them in the tier to help them create content, answer any questions, or sound the alarm to a common problem within the industry.

 

Bottom Level: Consumers or Readers

They consume content but don’t generate it. They are known as consumers and will make up the bulk of your audience and are responsible for revenue. They are the ones that are influenced by the rest of the pyramid and make purchases or other actions that can positively affect your conversions.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages

Understanding the pyramid of influence helps you see how your customers, influencers, and content writers can influence different types of people. The ones on the top have the most impact, while those on the bottom make purchases and increase your conversions.

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Putting It All Together And Developing A Routine That Will Keep You On Track

Over the course of the past six blog posts, we’ve talked about the importance of consistency and how it can help you grow your traffic, your subscribers, your customers, your product catalogue, and most importantly your income. Now it’s time to bring it all together and create a daily, weekly, and monthly routine that will keep you on track to continue to grow your business.

 

Any online business can be broken down into three different areas that need your effort and attention. They are traffic, list, and offer. You need visitors to your website. Then you need to convert those visitors into subscribers. Finally, you need to make those subscribers an offer so you can make money. Keep this in mind as you build your routine.

 

Do something every single day to send more traffic your way. This could be content marketing. It could be social media. It could be tweaking your SEO. Or it could be paid ads. Start by making a master list of things you can do to get more traffic. Pick things you can quickly do and rotate through one or more of them on a daily basis. Things that take a bit longer should become part of your weekly and monthly routine. For example, you may choose to learn how to run Facebook ads this month as one of your bigger projects. The most important part is to do things consistently to drive more traffic to your website.

 

Next, think about what you can do to get more subscribers. Adding an opt-in box to your latest blog post is a quick task that could go on your daily to-do list. Setting up a new opt-in funnel with a fresh lead magnet may make a great weekly project. Writing a book to tap into a new market via Amazon would be more of a project that takes a month or more. Come up with a variety of different things you can try, tweak, and do more to grow your list consistently.

6 Things to Include on Your Freebie Opt-in Page

Last but not least, you’ve got to make an offer. This could be something evergreen like crafting a new autoresponder email for your flagship product. It could be a daily task of running and tweaking ads. Or it could be a free SEO and social media campaign that you work on for a few weeks. Make a list of what you can do to get your offers in front of fresh eyeballs and get to work. And don’t forget to set aside some time each week to work on the next paid product as well.

 

Keep chipping away and continuing to build and fine-tune your routine. Your consistent efforts will start to pay off and more importantly, they will begin to compound as you get more traffic, grow your list by leaps and bounds, and add more products each new customer may be interested in. Keep at it. Consistency is the key to long-term profit.

 

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Set Up A Product Creation Schedule For Yourself And Your Team

Let’s talk about money. More importantly, let’s talk about how you profit from your online properties. You do it through ads, by making affiliate sales, or my personal favorite – by selling your own products. Those products are what we’ll be talking about today. More specifically, we’ll be discussing creating information products consistently. Why information products? Because you create them once and sell them again and again. No supply line, no storage, no overhead. When you make a sale, it’s almost pure profit.

 

I’m going to let you in on a secret it took me a while to discover when I first started out. It’s much easier to sell an existing customer a second product than it is to find a brand new customer. It’s even easier to sell them the third, fourth, fifth one. You get the idea. That’s because you’ve done all the hard work of earning this person’s trust already and if you’ve done your job right, the first thing they purchased from you is already helping them solve their problem. That’s what information products are all about. Solving a problem. To create that next product, look at where your customers are at and think about what they need to do next. What’s another problem they will face and how can you help them solve it.

 

For example, your first product may be an eBook or course on setting up a WordPress site. Next, your customers may need to learn about creating content that attracts the right type of reader. And then they need to learn about traffic, and list building, and effective social media strategies. Each one of these could be a new info product or new content for your paid membership site.

 

Once you have an idea of what types of products you want to create, it’s important to get them out consistently. You want to have a new product out there for your existing customers to buy. Of course, you’ll also attract new buyers along the way who will then not only buy the new thing you’ve come out with but hopefully also some of the other titles and courses you have out there.

 

Start with a list of products you want to create. Do your best to estimate how long it will take you to create the product and all the infrastructure that goes along with it like a sales page, a download page, autoresponders, and solo emails to promote it, a promotion schedule, etc. Make a list of everything you need to do before you can launch this new product. Then get to work. Chip away at it every day and continue to consistently work towards each of these new product launches, adjusting your timeframe as needed.

Outsourcing: The Key to Success for The Life Affirming Entrepreneur

In the beginning, it will probably be just you working on this product creation. Maybe you’re hiring out the graphics. Put that on the schedule and communicate with your graphic designer early to avoid bottlenecks. As time goes by, you may choose to outsource some of the product creation. Maybe you’re hiring an editor to proofread your work. Or a VA to help with the setup, infrastructure, and customer service. Eventually, you may even hire some writers to create these products for you. As your team expands, it’s even more important to have a schedule everyone works off to make sure these new products come out regularly.

 

 

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Work On Your Funnel Each Week And Continue To Branch Out

You should already have at least some very basic funnels set up for your online business. To make sure we are all on the same page, let’s quickly define what a funnel is when it comes to your website. It’s a way for people to work their way through what you have to offer. This could be going from the content of your blog, to signing up for your email list, receiving a series of emails and getting an offer for one of your products or services. That’s one simple funnel and I hope you already have that one set up.

 

While that’s a great start, it should be your only funnel. The goal for any business is to continue to find new ways to draw in more potential customers and engage them. That may mean setting up several new opt-in offers. It may mean sending out a monthly or weekly newsletter. It should always mean creating new products, or making offers for existing things. And of course it could mean presenting affiliate offers.

 

Funnels are great and they are never done. For starters, things change. Links break, you find better offers, and you learn more about your subject matter and have more or even better information to present to your audience. That’s why it’s a good idea to audit your existing funnels from time to time, updating, editing, and fixing them as needed.

 

It’s also a great idea to test and optimize your funnels. For example, you could split test two different lead magnets and see which one converts better. Test what product you present to your subscribers when. Tweak and test to improve your overall conversions, open crates, and click-through rates. Split test your sales pages … The sky’s the limit when it comes to testing and tracking your funnels. The goal will always be the same – try to do a little better than what you have been doing. Over time, you’ll make huge improvements that translate into a bigger bottom line.

 

In addition to improving your existing funnels, you also want to set aside some time each week to consistently work on expanding and adding new ones. This could mean adding a couple of new autoresponder emails to your first funnel this week. And it could mean creating a new lead magnet next week that attracts a slightly different audience into your circle of influence. The important part is that you work on your funnels every single week. Consistency here, like in so many other areas of your online business is key. Doing a little bit each week, will help you grow, expand, and improve your funnels.

HBA Funnel Builder…