Giveaways were a hit in 2018 when it came to raising more brand awareness for companies across the globe. Influencer marketing exploded last year and marketers spent more than $1 billion on this channel of marketing alone. The problem many brands seem to run into is finding quality influencers that help them see a measurable return on investment (ROI).
One way brands can achieve this is through influencer marketing promotions, but it depends heavily on the influencer themselves and their ability to get fans involved.
Influencer Marketing and Brand Awareness
Influencer marketing has indeed spiked when it comes to helping brands spread awareness. However, not all brands can or wish to spend top dollars on huge celebrities and industry leaders to help them gain followers.
Before jumping into brainstorming influence marketing promotions, it’s essential to know what influencer marketing is and how to find influencers that fit your needs.
Who’s Considered an Influencer?
The simple answer is that anyone can be considered an influencer. With social media only becoming more popular, influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method, according to Digital Marketing Institute.
Typically, influencers include people who have garnered a community of followers on social media and other online platforms, such as…
- Celebrities such as sports and entertainment stars, or typical spokespeople who are known for their work offline.
- Social influencers like bloggers and vloggers, or people who primarily make their living being engaging and active on social media.
- Micro Influencers who have relevant followings and opinions online, but who may not consider social influence as their main profession.
- Brand advocates have built a smaller social following but influence their in-groups. These are consumers who are passionate about brands but typically have limited influence.
- Brand loyalists who have limited influence but care deeply about your brand. These are everyday consumers and champions of your brand.
Tools like Sideqik can make searching for relevant influencers at any size much easier. Search by brand affinity, following size, and keywords to find the perfect fit for your brand. Contact our team for a demo.
What to Look for In an Influencer
Searching for an influencer that fits your brand’s needs can be as straightforward or as complicated as you make it. When it comes down to picking one that is right for you, keep these thoughts in mind:
- Authenticity
- Niche
- Reach
- Engagement
The problem really isn’t finding quality influencers, its finding those that can drive action. There are quite literally millions of social media users that are looking for opportunities to work with brands that they idolize. The problem becomes gaining influencers that can drive significant actions amongst their followers.
Sideqik puts aggregate of influencer data in a single platform and makes it easy to boil down everything you need to know about a potential brand ambassador in one place. To learn more, contact our team for a demo.
At this point, influencer marketing promotions can become a big help for marketing teams who are deciding amongst varying influencers.
What Are Influencer Marketing Promotions?
An influencer marketing promotion is essentially a contest that your influencer runs for his or her followers. Promotions can attract and deliver the most engagement from target consumers during a given campaign. Influencer marketing promotions are a great way to get influencers and their followers fired up. These competitions traditionally have some sort of prize involved for the winning followers.
6 Examples of Influencer Marketing Promotions That Work
Social media is great for influencer marketing promotions because it challenges would-be influencers to make the magic happen and get their following involved. Not only is the influencer getting something out of these promotions, but they help create an enormous amount of brand recognition.
There are countless different ways to create promotions that bring attention to your brand, so we’ve compiled a list of six influencer marketing promotions that will be sure to get you results.
1. Tag to Win
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are all great platforms for using tags to win contests for influencers. They can be run in any number of ways; however, they typically go down in one of two ways:
- Tag x-number of friends and usually accompanied by a given hashtag to differentiate between influencers
- Tag your influencer of choice
Either way, the total number of tags is tallied up, and the winner will be announced depending on the promotion’s guidelines.
2. Comment Contest
Comment contests are another great social media promotion to help get fans engaged. Typically, this consists of commenting on a given influencer’s post and seeing which influencer can garner the most engagement.
3. Follow/Like/Retweet to Win
Many influencer marketing promotions involve following/liking or retweeting a given post or page for the brand to garner more engagement.
The promotion usually requires an influencer to instruct their following to either like or follow a brand’s page or retweet/share a brand’s post. The influencer is typically tagged in the post/comment once a user has followed, liked, retweeted or commented. Each of these counts as an “entry” into the contest and the winner if often chosen at random.
4. Selfie Contest
Selfie contests are a great way to spread not only brand awareness but topic awareness. These are especially great for skincare or beauty brands because they typically revolve around taking selfies with the brand’s product. Again, like a few other promotions, these contests usually must include a user tagging a specific influencer who “challenged” them or requiring the use of a given hashtag.
5. Caption This Contest
“Caption this,” contests are a fun way to get users involved in promoting their favorite brands and influencers. Who hasn’t seen a meme and shared it with their own clever caption before? It is an excellent way to increase brand engagement.
6. Direct-Action Contents
Direct-action contests allow users to complete actions to score points toward promotions. Things like liking a page or submitting a photo earn a contestant entries. A random entry is selected to win the prize package. This is a great option if you have more than one goal of the contest.
While some promotions are as easy as using a hashtag, more involved promotions can be aided by a promotions tool. Sideqik’s promotions tool helps brands activate and interact with their fans in a few clicks. Reach out to find out more.
Fans Want to See Their Influencers Succeed
When it comes to influencer marketing promotions, fans want to win and also to see their favorite influencers grow and gain popularity. It is one of the reasons that influencer marketing promotions work so well for brands looking to not only find new influencers but to help raise brand awareness.
Sideqik includes the functionality to help brands manage promotions for influencer marketing campaigns. Learn more about the platform or schedule a demo to see it in action.