In the promotion of a product, one of the most curious issues is gaining the steady attention of your target audience. From the very childhood, we remember such things as TV advertisements, rumors, impressions, and other things that attract attention to a product or service. But this is pretty far from the concept of modern marketing (even though these means are a part of it).
Modern problems require modern solutions, and as most people prefer social media to TV channels, marketing now turned from using celebrities to influencers. But how to use influencer marketing to make lead generation more effective? Leads by Belkins’ are driving results so good with this mean too, so let’s find out how it works.
The idea of lead generation
The definition of the lead generation process refers to the use of different resources to attract, identify, and multiply the potential clientele of a company. Simply put, while generating leads, you collect people’s contact information, interact with them to learn if they are interested in the product or service you offer, and organize little arrangements to convince them that your product is worthy of attention in the long-term perspective. But the result of the work is pretty indefinite for two reasons:
- you work with a large audience;
- your offer is formulated more or less universally for everyone.
So how to make people remember your brand if they will need something you can provide? Make your brand remarkable, frequently mentioned, and known as credible. One of the best ways to reach all of the mentioned is the usage of influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing
People often hear about using this type of marketing for the product or service promotion, but subtleties often stay hidden. The main point is that it refers to social media marketing, but how exactly does it work?
The body of influencer marketing
Let’s clear up who are influencers first. They can be mistakenly confused with celebrities, but this comparison is mostly wrong. One does not necessarily prevent the other, but most frequently, the influencers are famous on social media, while stars – are in real life.
Influencers are people active on social media that have worked on their authority and gained some trust concerning specific matters. Influencers are not necessarily highly followed, but if their audience is big and loyal it’s the best option for influencer marketing. The advantage of social media thought leaders over a celebrity is that they can be found in every sphere of activity, and their audience is far more active.
The main point is that the influencer’s opinion is trusted and respected, so if the one promotes something, it has much more value than if some celebrity would celebrities the same product. However, for this specific reason, an influencer will not just take your money and say something good about what you offer. These people have their vision of what is about quality, they have worked hard to gain followers and make their opinion valuable, so they will use and promote only those things that will help them raise their pages’ performance.
Considering the information above, it needs to be mentioned that using the advantage of influencer marketing, you shouldn’t expect your campaign to drive quick results. The process of making an influencer interested is long and complex. After you agree about collaboration, remember that you work on background support for your brand to be remarkable and recognizable, and this makes all the other marketing efforts far more efficient.
How to work with influencers
The whole collaboration process can be divided into three periods:
- Pre-collaboration: you find one or several opinion leaders, integrate your activity into the influencer’s community, participate in discussions actively, and make yourself noticed through all the noise made around the page. This step opens several possibilities before you. First, you attract people’s attention even before you directly contact the influencer with an offer of cooperation. Second, you allow the influencer to find out who you are, what is your specifics, and how it meets his/her requirements.
- Collaboration: you discuss the offers, the possibilities, and what both parties can benefit from this joint effort.
- Post-collaboration: you support relationships with the influencer and the audience whose attention you’ve gained.
The busiest schedule you have in the second period. Before talking to the influencer, you have to understand clearly what your plan is, what place influencer marketing has among all the other resources you use, and what your budget is. To coordinate your budget with all the other aspects and stay organized, you need careful research on every step. So take care about the meaningful estimation of what you do.
When planning the cooperation, learn about the working conditions of your future ally and the schedule that is comfortable for him. Arrange communication – preferable this to be meeting in person. It will help you understand better what kind of personality is before you, how to work with this person, and what pitfalls can expect you.
Take care about the right tone of communication: people do not like communication way too formal. Keep it on an equal and speak as a person who has something to offer and benefit from the other person because the influencer you will talk to perceives it just the same.
The correlation
Now let’s return to the question of lead generation. How the process described above helps build strong relations between the brand and the audience?
First, as we mentioned, influencer marketing is not about quick results. It is more about background support. So you will notice the impact on lead generation results after a little while. But the key is the quality, so when your brand is associated directly with your product or service, your lead generation will bring in far more qualified leads and thus – will lead to better sales performance. At this point, it’s more likely for interpersonal relations to work as your marketing tool. When the brand’s popularity skyrockets, the crucial point is to prove the credibility of the products or services you provide people with. So here, the last of the work is made just by what you offer and on what conditions.
Furthermore, from the side of long-term cooperation, this type of marketing gives a chance to raise the performance of appointment setting results. It is particularly beneficial for B2B sales. As your business is known and your brand is widely recognizable, many people want to work with you on great projects. The more reliable you are known to be, the more customers return when they feel a need. Thus, you form a great base of loyal customers of all groups, so you can develop your business faster and steadier.
Generally, influencer marketing is a powerful tool to support your brand’s most-talked-about status within the niche of the opinion leaders you’ve chosen for collaboration. It has a long and strong impact on lead generation, appointment setting, and other sales operations. But to make the best of this enterprise, you should follow the principles of constant planning, repetitive research, and human attitude along with a quality product you want to market with the help of other people appreciating their time and authority.
