“A moment of gratitude makes a difference in your attitude.”
- Bruce Wilkinson, Teacher
The influencer market is a broad and current interest on social media, and by looking at the trend, one can expect more influencer marketing posts coming to their feed. It is bound to get bigger and better this year and experts are expecting it to become an 8 billion dollar industry.
Marketers are using new enhanced ways to keep their influencers happily engaged with them. Influencers have constantly shared their experience and appreciate the increase in the budget of influencer marketing by the brands. A big and healthy amalgamation is expected between brands and influencers shortly. A brand name “Estee Lauder” recently announced that they would allocate 75% of its marketing budget in influencer marketing strategies. This trend was seen in many other brands as well. And when it comes to the context of fostering influencer marketing, rewards and appreciations from marketers have a separate impact altogether.
With 49% of consumers depending on influencer recommendations while buying a product, marketers are heavily relying on the potential of celebrity endorsements and other forms of influencer marketing. This is one primary reason why new-age marketers across the globe are continually focusing on the aspect of appreciating the efforts of influencers by all means. Most of the digital entrepreneurs know that the key to securing an upward business success graph lies in patronising influencers.
Here are the five best industry practices that will give you an insight into the influencer appreciation drive embraced by different marketers in 2020.
Happy reading!
Table of Contents
1. Give influencers exclusive access to your product
We all love to be appreciated, and influencers are certainly no exceptions in this matter. So, how about giving your influencer an early bird ticket to try out your product exclusively?
Christina Galbato shared her experience and told us that she loves the exclusive access to the products and get more enthusiastic about her work. She suggests another influencer to get this kind of access and create IGTV video content of the products they get. It also helps in engaging the community in a more profound way which provides excellent value.
In one such case, the influencer Carole Radziwill, known for her significant influence on youth. She has been working to promote Audible audiobooks uniquely, and it helped the brand in establishing its market. She tried the product in a paid partnership, which gave her exclusive access to the product. This strategy gave her upper-hand over any other kind of approach, and was highly useful for the brand and the product.
Source: Instagram
This worked like magic for the brand. The influencer tried out the product and shared positive feedback, thus, contributing to the success story of Audible. She even mentioned a link in her Instagram bio for prospective users to sign up for a 30-day trial of the audiobooks for free. Talk about add-ons and brand exposure!
You can leverage such ideas and implement them in your business as well. For example, if you deal with academic software application development, invite the influencer to be the first one to try out the grammar checker you have recently created.
That would be a prestigious opportunity for the person to grab as well as an excellent scope for you to ensure awareness for your new product across different social media channels.
2. Get your influencers a badge or a title
This has always been the best strategy for the brands. When the brands give them a special badge or a title, then the influencer becomes entitled to give reviews about the product. Appreciation is, by far, one of the most powerful tools to acknowledge other’s effort and motivate them to keep running the show like a boss.
Some of the badges or titles given to influencers are “Top fashion influencer”, “Top blogger”, “Head Content Creator” and so on. This is a win-win situation for the brand as well as the influencer. It gives tremendous confidence and energy to the influencer. This leads to an increase in energy they put in the work, and that is visible in the output of the brand.
Fancy digital badges engraved with a prestigious title are said to be one of the most effective components to ensure mutual respect and commitment between influencers and their clients.
Getting a verified Instagram badge or other accolades carrying prestigious titles help influencers expand their operational avenues across a wider audience. It will work as a pat on their back and boost their morale so that they can produce more intriguing and compelling content soon.
3. Send freebies to your influencers
This strategy is well known in all sphere of marketing. Everyone loves freebies, and it gives the person the feeling of more content in their work and they put in more effort in their work. The strategy was successful when mattress brand Casper gave free mattresses to its influencers. It resulted in the brand being recognized and appreciated among all the followers. The target audience was influenced in the right way, which benefited the brand a lot.
Marketers these days are gradually embracing more of these ideas to make their brand’s presence felt among different platforms. The company encouraged the influencers to share their individual, unbiased experiences with their followers. As a result, the brand was recognised and appreciated among various followers and other target audience across the globe. Here’s a snapshot of an influencer sharing her experience of using Casper mattresses.
Source: Instagram
4. Dedicate a blog post to your influencer
A dedicated blog post influences the influencer. It works as a great appreciation for the influencer, it motivates them and boosts their morale. This gets reflected in the results in the sales of the brand. Try coming up with blog posts that feature your products and services and talk about how your influencer is changing the game for the better.
This will boost the influencers’ morale and motivate them to share the featured post that talks about their contributions and expertise. After all, we all are narcissists to an extent and cannot resist sharing our role in a success story.
As a result, your brand will secure the maximum shares and the coveted exposure across a gamut of digital platforms. The idea is to dedicate blog posts to your influencers and provide them with the link of the post, so that they could share the content easily.
To cite a real-life example, social media influencer Aaron Agius was recently featured in a blog post by BigCommerce, which was eventually re-tweeted. The campaign created quite a buzz among other marketers.
Here’s the snapshot of the blog re-tweet that featured Aaron Agius.
Source: https://www.jeffbullas.com/
5. Never underestimate the potential of micro-influencers
Talking of marketers incentivising influencers, underestimating the potential of micro-influencers is a big No-No.
Patrick Brightman from 3E Public Relations says, “We have seen greater success working with micro-influencers because they tend to have a more targeted and engaged following”. Getting micro-influencers to create product tutorial videos can be a great way to make them feel important.
It goes without saying; product tutorial video is one significant component that ensures consumer engagement. So, how about letting micro-influencers take charge of the job by including them in your video content production drive?
This will make them feel special on being given a chance to be at the forefront of content creation. As a result, they will create more content that fosters high engagement and drive brand loyalty and a promising ROI end of the day.
Parting Thoughts
Marketers around the world are expanding all possibilities to rope in influencers to market their products and services. It is high time that you pick your strategy and play your cards well. Here’s a glimpse of the vital industry practices we have explored in this blog.
If you have any other strategies up your sleeves, feel free to share it with us. Cheers!
Author Bio:
Gracie Anderson is a software developer dedicated to designing and building applications such as online assignment help and Law Assignment help on behalf of a leading firm in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Apart from that, she is a dedicated assignment writer, currently associated with the online academic forum MyAssignmenthelp.
