Using Video for the Ultimate Influencer Marketing Strategy
2018 is the year of the influencer when it comes to social media and marketing. Influencer marketing has taken off in the past two years, with influencers on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook gaining new levels of fame, notoriety and financial success.
The increased popularity of influencers means that influencer marketing has become an even more viable way for a business to build brand awareness, market new products and gain traction with a target audience.
Moreover, video is playing an increasingly important role in influencer marketing.
Raising Brand Awareness
When a new company is attempting to build a niche within an industry, recognition is the most common barrier holding them back. No one knows about your brand if it is only a few months old.
Creating promotional content that features your company, employees and products can help. But, unless those products have a “wow” feature that will get people talking, it is not going to get you enough traction.
However, partnering with influencers can take care of that problem. Influencers already have a platform for their content. Someone who is regularly uploading videos on YouTube or Instagram gets a lot of views each week, regardless of the products they are featuring in those videos.
Moreover, every online marketing statistic shows that video content gets more traction than text posts. It is why using video within influencer marketing is a sure-fire way to raise brand awareness.
Choosing the Perfect Influencers for a Video Campaign
There are two major questions to ask when selecting an influencer for a video campaign:
1. Are they willing to promote your product or service?
2. Is their audience relevant to your brand?
Many companies make the mistake of chasing after the influencer with the biggest name and audience. But those influencers may not be that interested in your product or service. They may name drop your product or show it off in a video. However, if they come across as disinterested, their audience will not care either.
And the audience of an influencer must have an interest in what you offer. If their niche is relevant to your brand, an influencer with 100,000 views a week is more useful to you than one who gets 1,000,000 views on each video.
Be Patient When Reaching Out to Influencers
Finding the perfect influencer for a video campaign takes time. It is not a case of emailing five influencers and hearing back from everyone within a few days. Some may never get back to you, while others can take weeks to respond.
Be direct and clear with your request. Do not sell an opportunity as more than it is. Influencers know how to play the game, and they can spot insincerity. If you have worked with other influencers in the past, mention it in your message.
The goal is to convince an influencer that creating videos featuring your product or service will benefit you both. A free product can always be enticing to influencers, but what they care most about is building and retaining their audience. If your product or service can help achieve that goal, they will be eager to create videos with you.
