If your not a marketing professional , you might be wondering if your brand or business would benefit from a partnership with a social media influencer.
Back when social media influencer marketing first became a “thing”, there weren’t any regulations as it was a completely new way of advertising. But the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) caught on to the way this could be deceptive to users and enforced the requirement of the influencer having to state in the post that it is an advertisement or paid partnership. With that being said, users are beginning to see through these posts and they’re becoming less effective and trustworthy.
But don’t write off the idea of social media influencer advertising just yet.
If you’re going to do it, do it right.
We think this way of advertising is best for businesses that are selling a product or service with easily showcase-able results. The reason being, the user can see the results and be swayed much easier to buy the product than if the influencer just posted that it made them feel great…
Example:
I mean, let’s be real, this girl is a MODEL. I would never believe for a second that this product is the reason her tummy is flat, and below is one of her very first posts, before she was an influencer, and her tummy looked like that long before this tea was introduced to her lifestyle.
Example 2:
Now, this is not an advertisement for FlatTummyTea BUT if the influencer had showcased the product like this instead of the first example, I would have bought this product in about 5 seconds.
If you think your product or service can be showcased in a similar way, let’s go through the correct steps to orchestrating this.
First, do your research on many different social media influencers (200,000 followers and up) and their following/fan base. Make sure it aligns with your business.
Second, once you’ve found your influencer, be clear on what type of content you’re looking for them to produce. For example, if it’s something like the product above, you could
- Have the influencer do before and after photos
- Have them showcase the whole journey from start to finish, maybe 8-10 posts all-together, but this will most likely be more costly
(Make sure to let the influencer know you want to approve the posts before they go live so your not paying for something that isn’t what you wanted.)
Third and most importantly, give the influencer a unique promo code to advertise with the post so you can track how many purchases were actually made because of the post alone. This will help you decide if you want to continue a partnership with the influencer or if you should explore partnerships other influencers with different fan bases.
Lastly, put some advertising dollars behind your own post of the original (the influencers) with a different promo code and compare pricing and ROI on each method.
Happy social media influencer advertising!
