How to Create an Effective Influencer Marketing Strategy for Your StartUp

The power of influencer marketing can’t be denied. Although the industry is still relatively new, it is set to reach $10 billion by 2020.

What makes influencer marketing so powerful?

Well, besides the fact that over 2.8 billion users have made social media a part of their everyday lives, it works so well because people tend to trust influencer recommendations over celebrity recommendations. A recent social media report indicated that for every $1.29 spent on influencers within the beauty industry in 2017, brands received an average return of $11.38

This is great news for small businesses: just connect with the right influencers and let them speak positively about your brand. But how exactly do you guide your leads through the sales funnel?

Most marketers tend to view influencer marketing as being a part of the “awareness” stage of the buyer’s journey. This is understandable, considering how we usually measure the effectiveness of campaigns based on metrics such as reach or impressions. Others skip over brand awareness and just concentrate on affiliate marketing programs. However, influencer marketing has the potential to play a significant role in all three stages of the buyer’s journey. 

Using influencer marketing throughout the buyer’s journey can help convert them from leads to customers.

In this post, we’ll help you understand how to create content for each stage.

Influencer Marketing for the Awareness Stage

The traditional buyer’s journey starts with the awareness stage. This is where the buyer identifies a challenge they have that needs to be addressed. 

Influencers can be an instrumental part of this stage because they have the opportunity to introduce their audience to your products or services.

How?

By naturally addressing those challenges and making their audience aware that your business can help them solve these challenges.

For this stage, the influencer can write a post about your business, mention your product in a post, or even just post a pic with your product in it. 

The goal is to let their audience know that your business exists.

They haven’t yet decided that you’re the right business for them, however, the fact that one of the influencers they’re following thinks highly of your business will intrigue them about you and what you have to offer. 

Influencer Marketing for the Consideration Stage

At this stage, your buyer is aware of his or her problem and they are considering different solutions.

In order to help your market pass-through this stage and into the next one (decision stage - where they hopefully decide your product is best for them), your influencer and marketing team needs to create content that addresses the different solutions to their problem.

To help you understand this, let’s say you operate an organic food restaurant or delivery service. What are some of your market’s challenges when it comes to customer acquisition?

• Leading a healthy lifestyle while being a busy professional
• Cooking food that’s both delicious and healthy
• Lack of time for meal prepping

Your influencer can address these challenges in different ways, including speaking about what to look for when trying to purchase organic foods and the convenience of opting for an organic food delivery service. They can then link to one of your landing pages to help their audience learn more about your business.

Influencer Marketing for the Decision Stage

Once the buyer has considered different solutions to their problem, they decide on the most relevant solution for them. However, they may not have decided on which business to buy from.

So, using the organic food delivery service example, at this stage, your market knows that a delivery service is the most convenient way for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They just haven’t decided that your business will help them achieve this.

To help persuade them, your influencer can create a product comparison video or post.

They can then naturally speak on some of the benefits of your product over the other options. Besides comparing your product to your competitors, they can also give a discount code and highlight why they prefer your service.

Authenticity is a very important part of this stage. Anything that feels scripted won’t work because their audience is genuinely looking for a solution. So, let the quality of your product or service speak for itself. What helps is if your influencer genuinely uses your product in their everyday lives. They’ll be able to speak and connect with your market more authentically.

Effective Influencer Marketing Takes Time

It’s going to take more than just a couple of influencer posts for you to start seeing considerable ROI. How many? Well, marketing’s Rule of Seven states that your market needs to consume your messages at least seven times. This highlights that your influencer marketing campaign needs to be an ongoing effort. 

As discussed above, we know that influencer marketing is effective because buyers take recommendations from influencers seriously. So, using the above tips, make the most of this new marketing tactic and create the right content at the right time to help grow your business.

About the author:

Raul Galera is CandyBar and ReferralCandy’s Partner Manager.

Raul has spent the last six years working closely with startups and tech companies, four of them helping ecommerce businesses grow their sales through referral marketing.