A Guide To Influencer Marketing For Startups And Tech Companies

in Influencer Marketing

The use of influencer marketing has grown enormously in recent years. Using social media to spread the word about your product or service is a powerful way to reach your target audience, and it’s even more effective due to the nature of influencers. They are more likely to trust someone who has the same interests and passions as them, so reaching an influencer can be a massive success for your startup or tech company.

In this blog, I will tell you everything you need to know about Influencer Marketing for Startups and Tech Companies. I will explain why you’d want to use this marketing strategy.

I will also give you tips on how to choose the right influencers to market your business, how much it costs, and how to go about setting up your Influencer Marketing campaign.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing aims to reach an audience more significant than the one you can get through normal advertising channels.

Influencer marketing also works well for driving engagement and sales. When an influencer posts about your brand, they’re likely to include a call-to-action, asking their followers to like, share or purchase your products or services and successful influence is achieved.

While influencer marketing is still relatively new, it’s one of the fastest-growing channels available today. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise — it’s an effective way to reach people. Moreover, it’s tangible and measurable. You can see influencers’ specific results on business metrics like sales and revenue.

As a result, nearly every company out there is looking at influencer marketing in some capacity. Some are just getting started, while others are already seeing significant benefits.

How Can Influencer Marketing Help Your Emerging Brand?

Influencer marketing is an effective way to gain brand awareness, increase traffic, and drive engagement. It works exceptionally well for brands in the e-commerce space, where visual storytelling can be leveraged.

In many cases, influencers will create content around your products or services and then distribute it to their audience. Today’s consumers are savvy and don’t always respond well to traditional advertising efforts. Influencer marketing is more authentic, making it easier for customers to trust the influencer’s recommendations.

Different Types Of Influencers

Influencers can be separated into four categories:

Nano influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers)
Micro influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers)
Macro influencers (50,000 to 500,000 followers)
Mega influencers (over 500,000 followers)

Nano-influencers are the smallest, with just a few thousand followers. They’re often just ordinary people who happen to be active social media users and have cultivated a loyal following over time.

Micro-influencers are a step up from nano-influencers, with tens of thousands of followers. These people can be celebrities in their own right, or they might just have an attractive personality that people enjoy watching.

Macro-influencers have a huge following, with hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of fans. They’re often celebrities in their own right, though there are many exceptions. These influencers charge hefty fees for even the smallest posts and only partner with large brands they like.

Mega-influencers are the biggest names in the business. While they might not be A-list celebrities outside of social media, they command millions of followers on each platform they use.

Examples Of Different Channels That Influencers Can Use

Influencers can work with brands on a variety of social media channels. Here are some examples of the best influencer platforms available:

Instagram. This is the most popular channel for influencer marketing, as it’s a visual medium where influencers can show off their lifestyles and products. Engagement tends to be high when influencers post about products, and many influencers specialize in this channel.

Facebook. Facebook has been gradually shifting to become a private messaging platform, but it’s still one of the best for sharing content. This makes it an excellent place for influencers to share content like branded videos or blog posts.

Twitter. Twitter’s short format makes it easy for influencers to share their thoughts on products and link to brands’ content. Some brands choose to use Twitter advertising instead of working with influencers. Still, there are plenty of reasons why using live tweets is better than promoted tweets — the most important being that they’re more authentic and come from real people rather than marketing departments.

YouTube. Video is an excellent medium for influencer marketing because videos can tell stories in ways that images and text can’t match. Because YouTube is a search engine and a social network, it’s also possible for YouTube videos to get more exposure than posts on other platforms.

TikTok. TikTok is a social media platform built around short-form videos that users can create and share. It’s owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company based in Beijing. Tik Tok was launched in China in 2016 as Douyin and was rebranded to TikTok the following year after ByteDance bought Musical.ly, one of its largest competitors, for $1 billion.

Blogs. If you want to make a blog that has a high value for your audience, but you don’t have enough time to do the research yourself, you can use the strategy of influencer marketing to get a lot of great content from other bloggers.

You can find a lot of great content on the internet that is created by bloggers who are experts in their niche. They will be able to share with you their knowledge about the topic that you are writing about. You can also ask other bloggers about their opinion on certain topics or ask them for advice if you need some help with your own blog post.

Twitch. Twitch is synonymous with live streaming and gaming, but it has also become a popular destination for influencers across various industries. Given that the platform claims over 15 million daily active users, it’s no wonder.

With such an engaged audience, it’s easy to see why brands are flocking to Twitch as a top pick among marketing channels.

Four reasons Twitch is an excellent influencer marketing channel:

Users are highly engaged and spend about 95 minutes watching live content each day.
The platform has a strong sense of community, making it easy for influencers to build long term relationships.
The chat feature allows influencers to interact with their audience in real-time. Audience members can ask questions and share feedback or product ideas directly with the influencer. The chat feature can also be used by influencers to share links to brand promotions or products.
In addition to sharing live videos, Twitch influencers can create highlights of their best moments and post them as clips that can be downloaded or embedded on other social media channels. They can also host archived streams that were previously recorded and shared live.

How To Get Started With Influencer Marketing For Your Brand

Influencer marketing is a powerful method for getting the word out about your product and building brand.

By partnering with an influencer who already has an established audience, you gain instant access to their followers, who are likely to be interested in what you have to say since they already follow your partner.

But before we get into how to make influencer marketing work for your brand, we need to clear up a few things.

Figure Out The Goals Of Your Campaign Beforehand

What do you want to achieve with this campaign? Do you want more brand exposure? Do you want to increase sales of a specific product or service?

Make sure that influencers are relevant to your business. You can have a significant influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, but the campaign at an early stage won’t resonate with their followers if they aren’t relevant to your business.

Determine Your Target Audience (Or A New Audience You Want To Reach)

Review your website analytics to identify the content that has led to conversions. Then check out who shared that content on social media.

Even better: Ask your customers and prospects which influencers they follow and why.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to influencers you admire (assuming they have a significant following). The worst that can happen is they’ll say no.

Find The Right Influencer

Pick your partners carefully. Influencers can be celebrities like Kim Kardashian or Beyoncé, or they could just be someone with a large and dedicated following on social media (also known as “micro influencers”). Just because someone has millions of followers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the right fit as your brand ambassadors. Examine their audience and content to see if it’s a good match for what you’re trying to achieve.

Once you’ve figured out what kind of influencer will best support your goals, you should look for them using an agency or platform like Sideqik, where we can connect with companies that align with their interests.

Allow Them To Help Craft Your Campaign

Influencers know their audiences reasonably well. Most of them spend time engaging with them for years. Working together with them will give you an advantage because they might have great ideas for content that will drive sales.

Diversify Your Content Types

Diversifying the types of content you create is a great way to test what resonates with your audience. Content types include video, articles, podcasts, webinars, and live streaming. If you’re looking for feedback on which type of content to produce next, look at what your competitors are doing and ask your followers which kinds of content they’d like to see more of.

Assess If Goals Were Met

Measure and evaluate

By the end of the campaign, you should clearly understand whether the goals were met. This can be done by comparing metrics to your objectives and seeing if they align with what you had in mind. For example, if your goal was 100 new followers and you only gained 50, you know that you either need to reassess your influencer or try a different strategy.

Once you’ve collected all the information needed, it’s time to analyze the data and see what worked best for your brand. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to identify which strategies are worth repeating and which ones should be avoided in the future.

Scale Your Marketing Platform As You Grow

If the campaign succeeds, then add more budget behind it and evaluate those results. Keep scaling as your business and success grow.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing has grown at an alarming rate in the last couple of years. It’s a form of marketing where brands work with prominent figures in their industry to promote their product through social media channels.

Not only does this allow brands to reach a wider audience, but it also helps them to generate more qualified leads.

75% of marketers who invested in influencer marketing found it effective in achieving their goals and objectives.

“Influencer marketing is very effective,” says Anand Srinivasan, founder of e-commerce platform A1 Gifts. “It builds trust between your brand and its customers as it authenticates your brand through another person’s recommendation.”

Sources

Sideqik Knows Influencers

Interested in working with influencers to boost brand awareness for your company?

Sideqik’s platform allows your brand to not only source the influencers that match your brand’s standards but track their creator campaigns for your products through robust social commerce integrations. We offer an end-to-end suite of services for your influencer campaigns, including over 20+ million influencer profiles that appeal to hundreds of interests. From micro-influencers with intimate access to their audiences with niche interests to mega influencers that are household names with unmatched reach, Sideqik has them all.

Interested in how Sideqik can help you elevate your brand with influencer campaigns and keep you ahead of changes like these? Contact us today for a free demo.

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