BUILD TRUST AND CREDIBILITY WITH YOUR FOLLOWING BY ADDING INFLUENCER MARKETING TO THE MIX
By Taryn Grisham, Senior Project Manager
Influencer marketing is an ever-growing strategy for boosting brand trust and credibility. In fact, the influencer marketplace is projected to be worth more than $10 million by the end of 2020. Many startups, established brands, and everything in between use influencer marketing to get the word out about their brand, product, or service. While a successful program might look different from one brand to another, the following pointers can benefit anyone who wants to use influencer marketing to build brand trust:
- Use a mix of influencer types
- Invite influencer participation
- Leverage influencers to create engaging content
- Hold a sponsored giveaway or contest
- Establish brand partnerships
- Run referral programs for influencers
Keep reading for more on these influencer marketing pointers that can help you seed more trust in your brand.
USE A MIX OF INFLUENCER TYPES
If you’ve been on Instagram lately, you’ve likely seen your fair share of influencer content in posts on your feed or sponsored Instagram Stories. These influencers can be separated into groups based on the size of their following and potential reach:
- Nano-influencers: less than 1,000 followers
- Micro-influencers: 1,000 to 100,000 followers
- Macro-influencers: 100,000 to 1,000,000 followers
- Mega-influencers: more than 1,000,000 followers
There are pros and cons related to each influencer type. Once you weigh what’s most important to your brand, you can choose which influencer might be the best fit. We recommend working with nano-influencers and micro-influencers first because they tend to cost less and interact with their following more, which is essential for building trust.
While macro-influencers and mega-influencers can provide incredible reach to your target audience, they also tend to be more expensive and often aren’t going to interact with followers to answer their questions. This lack of interaction can create more legwork to ensure that your potential customers get the answers they need to make a purchasing decision.
If Facebook and Instagram are primary social media platforms for your brand, learn how to use Facebook and Instagram Live for business effectively.
INVITE INFLUENCER PARTICIPATION
Once you choose an influencer, it’s important to involve them in a campaign from the get-go. Including your influencer in marketing planning discussions or asking for their participation with new product development are a couple of ways to do this. If they feel involved, your influencer is more likely to work harder to successfully build trust in your brand because their name is just as attached to it as yours.
Pro tip: Since social media tends to be an influencer’s bread and butter, offer them the opportunity to do a “social media takeover” where they encourage their followers to follow your brand’s account for the day to see what the influencer is up to. This influencer marketing tip for building brand trust also helps you grow your follower base too.
LEVERAGE INFLUENCERS TO CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT
Another relatively easy way to build brand trust and credibility with influencer marketing is to leverage your influencer’s content creation expertise. Whether you share a blog post they wrote or ask them to post your branded photos and videos on Instagram, this user-generated content helps build up your company profile so that users begin to develop confidence in your brand.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to tag your influencer in any shared content. Tagging will encourage influencers to share it on their platform, or have it show up in their “tagged posts” on Instagram.
If you’re looking for new and engaging ways to share your content on social media, consider these creative ideas for better content marketing.
HOLD A SPONSORED GIVEAWAY OR CONTEST
Who doesn’t love free stuff? Holding a sponsored giveaway or contest is a fun way to build trust, gain followers, increase brand awareness, and boost social engagement at the same time. Your influencer can help promote the giveaway or contest on social media using hashtags like “#ad” or “#sponsored” to be transparent about the engagement they have with your brand. If your giveaway or contest uses an entry form, remember to give your influencer a unique URL to trace the number of entries they drove to determine how successful they were.
Make your sponsored giveaway or contest stand out with an eye-catching graphic! Unveil 7 graphic design trends in 2020 here.
ESTABLISH BRAND PARTNERSHIPS
If you’ve had success with a specific influencer, consider taking the relationship to the next level with a brand partnership. A brand partnership shows your influencer how highly you think of them and how much you value their role in building trust in your brand. When developing a brand partnership, you can work with the influencer to determine mutually beneficial terms. Ensuring the partnership contract is a win-win helps demonstrate your commitment and lends peace of mind that you have a social media partner that you can turn to at a moment’s notice.
RUN REFERRAL PROGRAMS FOR INFLUENCERS
Referral programs reward influencers for their hustle. The harder they work to build brand trust and credibility on your behalf, the more they get in return. Establishing benchmarks for rewards, such as free products, monetary contributions, or a percentage of sales they drive can be great motivators. Offering discount codes for an influencer’s followers can also turn into the gift that keeps on giving (as long as the codes don’t expire or have limitations on use).
Influencer marketing is just one way to build trust with new audiences and amp up your social media marketing strategy. When successful, it can drive more website traffic, increase sales, and build brand awareness. If you’re looking to convert more website visitors to leads and sales with influencer marketing, contact our Madison-area marketing experts today.
