Social media advertising has now shifted its focus quite a bit from creating huge ad campaigns that involved a large number of people and were very large-scale to essentially recommending a person who has a large number of active audiences. That’s what’s called influencer marketing. It’s already proven that it’s the native advertising that bloggers offer for brands that pays off much more than advertising campaigns that take months to create in marketing departments. Let’s try to talk about and explain below why one person’s words can sell your product far more times than large prepared advertising campaigns.

Why is Influencer Marketing so popular?

In fact, the answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem at first glance, because the use of influencer marketing is a whole advertising tool that you also need to learn how to use correctly. So, in fact, there are several factors that explain why influencer marketing is so popular among large companies and small businesses and why it is one of the most successful ways to advertise your product or service to a wide audience.

1. The authority of the blogger and the credibility of the audience. Of course, bloggers with a large audience enjoy the trust and loyalty of their audience, therefore, when they recommend a certain product that they themselves use, their audience often wants to buy the same one, because they trust and want to imitate a famous person to some extent.
2. Access to a large number of subscribers. Bloggers have a large audience that constantly follows the content they post. Therefore, they allow you to achieve a high level of recognition and increase the number of potential customers for your product or service.
3. Creation of unique content. As a rule, each blogger has his own storytelling style and profile vision. For many years they have been building a certain image for themselves, for which the public loves them. Part of their job is to present the product in such a way that they would buy it, talk about it in their own style and advertise natively in the profile. Therefore, you can expect interesting and unique content that will receive a large number of reviews.

How to Work with Opinion Leaders?

In order for your cooperation with influencers to be successful, you need to understand that you need to study their profile in advance and make sure that your audience is their target audience. It is also very important that the values that the blogger broadcasts are consonant with the values of your brand and that he does not express other opinions anywhere in the public space. It is also always worth asking for page statistics in order to understand the quality of the existing audience, how responsive and involved it is in the blogger’s page. It depends on how many potential customers you can get at the end of such cooperation.

Often it is also advised to establish clear contract rules and discuss exactly how the blogger wants to advertise the product. There are two options for cooperation, where the influencer himself chooses how exactly he will talk about your product or service, or where your marketing department comes up with the concept of cooperation and prescribes the steps that the blogger must take to advertise your product. When choosing the second option, it is worth remembering that the content broadcast by the influencer must be in its authentic style and it is better if the advertisement is shown as a personal recommendation. Often large companies invite bloggers to press tours where they provide the opportunity to use their product and tell their audience about it. Bloggers share their impressions and the customer receives potential customers for his brand. 

You can also sign a contract with a blogger for long-term cooperation and he will represent your product for several years, depending on your decision. Then in his publications he will have to broadcast your product more often and speak at various marketing events. It is better to immediately discuss the issue of not using the products of your competitors for this time, because this can cause dissonance among the audience. Such cooperation can bring you active subscribers throughout the entire time of the advertising campaign.

What Should You Avoid When Working with Influencers?

I would like to dwell on the fact that some things in working with opinion leaders should be avoided and controlled so as not to make a mistake and lose a large amount without getting clients.

• Unclear arrangements and lack of a written agreement between the parties. Be sure to discuss all the deadlines, rules and points that concern you.
• Too direct advertising. Content should be native and organic. It is necessary that it matches the voice of the blogger and then the audience will really be interested in the product.
• Poorly done research. Be sure to leave yourself enough time to study the blogger and his metrics. Do a very thorough assessment of profile reach and conversions and make sure your customers are the audience of this influencer.
• Unpreparedness of the brand profile for the advertising campaign. Users will go to your account from the blogger’s page and it is important that your page is also attractive, prepare in advance and make a product presentation, fill your profile with photo and video content that will be interesting to the user, you can use instagram reel templates and this work would be more structured and fast. Be prepared for a rapidly growing need to communicate with customers. 

In general, these are the main mistakes you can make when you start working with opinion leaders, but as you can see, if you work through them at the very beginning, there will be no problems and you will get a quality, solvent and interest in your product audience.