How should small startups approach influencer marketing?
Anytime you watch a video of a popular YouTube personality, you’d notice a product being promoted. Companies pay social media personalities to essentially promote their products and services. The explosion of digital media and information has further made influencers a key part of the online marketing matrix.
The problem is this – most influencers are expensive.
Big companies are able to get the best influencers through sheer investment power. This is a big reason small companies never really get into the brass tacks of influencer marketing. It is naturally difficult for an up and coming company to stump a big investment for a huge social media celebrity or any other relevant influencer.
This perception of influencer marketing being all about hiring online celebrities is short-sighted and shallow. There are many different layers to influencer marketing one should consider.
In this piece, we cover how small startups can realistically approach influencer marketing and generate much needed awareness for their brand and business.
#1 – Match audience with influencer
The first step is matching the influencer with your target audience. The product or service you’re selling has a certain core audience. The influencer you choose should ideally be someone who holds sway in that niche.
Why does Coca-Cola hire big celebrities for brand endorsements? Coca-Cola has a wide market across different age group demographics and geographies. It makes sense for such a large company to hire a widely known influencer as opposed to a niche-driven personality.
The same wouldn’t happen if you want to promote a highly niche SaaS product online. It makes more sense to hire niche influencers on different online channels to promote your app.
The first step thus is identifying the right influencers and working on bringing them onboard.
#2 – Work with small and mid-level influencers
The second step is onboarding the influencers you identify. You cannot hope to hire an influencer with 10 million social media followers if you’re a small company trying to save money on marketing.
Your plan should essentially be to hire micro-influencers. A micro-influencer is someone with a small but loyal following. These are generally personalities who’re still at the nascent stage of their social media journey.
Onboarding these influencers is much easier for a small startup because they’re not as expensive as top-draw personalities. The advantage of working with small influencers is that you can hire more than one and expand your market share at a foundational level.
#3 – Grow gradually
The right influencers will slowly help your company expand its footprint in the niche. If you succeed in monetizing the buzz you generate, scale your marketing efforts by hiring influencers with greater reach than last time.
You can thus keep scaling your business without running the risk of plateauing after a period of time.
In conclusion
This article covers the way small startups can approach influencer marketing and truly leverage it to grow their business.
Getting influencers is a key part of the digital marketing puzzle. If you’re new to digital marketing, you should first start with a comprehensive course in the field. Kapil Heera academy is the best digital marketing institute in Delhi where students can learn the vagaries of online marketing.
