What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is when a company collaborates with a person outside the company who contributes to exposing services and products. Many influencers started as bloggers who published blog posts on their own websites. Today, the influencers communicate in many different channels, and there is especially a lot of attention around social media such as Instagram and Facebook.
What kinds of influencers are there?
There are many different categorizations of influencers, but the four most important are:
- Celebrities who typically have many followers and are mainly a 'name' and a 'face'.
- Authorities are perceived as an authority within, e.g., food or travel. This group has professional insight and many followers in the core target group.
- Connectors can be used as a way of reaching groups of influencers where there are not yet good connections. Often few followers and not necessarily great activity on social media.
- Micro influencers do not have as many followers but possess visible potential and quality in both posts and engagement.
Regardless of which category the influencers belong to, they become part of your company's strategic communication the moment you enter a partnership with them.
How can collaborations with influencers create value for companies and organizations?
When companies and organizations have done a good preparatory work prior to the collaboration with influencers, they can get their product exposed in relevant channels with interested followers and recipients. The best influencers can tell in both words and images an authentic story that is rooted in a personal commitment to, e.g., gastronomy or travel - also when it comes to a paid collaboration. Followers and consumers are particularly responsive to ratings and reviews from other users and influencers whom they consider trustworthy and can identify with. 44 per cent of consumers between the ages of 25 and 34 trust what an influencer says about a brand. Only 21 per cent trusts what a brand says about itself according to a survey by Fullscreen. This is a clear indication of the added value influencers can create for a company and a brand.
Is it a good idea to collaborate with influencers?
Basically, we believe that it is a good idea to collaborate with influencers, as it is an opportunity to get marketing out to relevant target groups. But there are several aspects that must be critically considered before entering a collaboration. Some of them are based on the self-understanding of both the company and the influencer. It is important that the collaboration feels equal and fair. Therefore, ask yourself: Where do you as a company have the biggest resonance in your product? Is the product good enough to excite an influencer? Think realistically and be humble towards the influencer about your own products and services.
One example is that you have to decide whether you are willing to pay the influencer to prepare texts, images and videos and subsequently publish it. If the influencer is in demand and receives many offers, you often have to pay what is needed to settle an equal agreement. There is no way around it: Content from an influencer performs better than content from a brand. An influencer is often good at creating content and quite good at taking perfect pictures, writing a post or cutting a video. 51 per cent find that content from the influencer performs much better or better than the brand's own content. 27 per cent believe that the influencer's content performs as well as the brand's content. When you pay an influencer, you get professional content and better data for how the content performs, which is why a collaboration with influencers is worth considering.
What does a collaboration with an influencer entail?
Give the work with influencers structure and quality, just like everything else you do as a company. You have to invest in administration and strategy. If you do not allow the communication on, e.g., your social media to be executed on the basis of chance and lack of prioritization of time and resources, then of course this must not be the case with influencer marketing either.
Make sure you are professional in terms of your wishes and requirements – even if you do not offer payment. You must want and dare to go into dialogue with the influencer, especially in relation to aligning expectations and tracking results.
How to choose the best influencer to work with?
In order to reach a wide audience, the number of followers is of course an important factor, but certainly not the only one. Engagement and interactions in the influencer's channels also say a lot about the reach of the posts and the interest from the target group.
When choosing an influencer for your product or service, you should look at the quality of the communication. Will your products appear natural in the influencer's feed and the red thread in the posts? Is the influencer a skilled and creative storyteller? There must be quality, storytelling and aesthetics in language, images and video before an influencer manages to boost your product or service and adapt this to their own universe.
Which communication channels are best when working with influencers?
Although influencers today are active on many different platforms, there can be good reasons to maintain attention around the classic blog posts. A slightly more extensive and elaborate content published on a website is easily accessible via a search engine. At the same time, content on social media can drive traffic to blog posts, which are often available for a long time and therefore do not become obsolete.
The previously mentioned study shows that 74 per cent use social media when researching a new product, and they often scroll past an influencer in their search for product reviews and recommendations. However, it is far more interesting that one in three has bought a product based on an influencer's sponsored content. Selecting the proper channel therefore also plays a large role in the collaboration.
What should you pay extra attention to when working with influencers?
Remember to comply with the law. The company is responsible for making the commercial intention clear. All posts with publicity must be clearly marked with add, e.g., with "Add for [company name]" or "This post is paid for by [company name]" at the start of the post/on the image itself, so that the commercial intent is clearly exposed together with the content. It is not enough to write it at the end of the post.
