What is an Instagram influencer, and how can influencer marketing benefit my brand? You don’t need Kylie Jenner

What is an Instagram influencer?

An Instagram influencer is someone who has a large following on the social media platform (Instagram) and has built up a large fan base by engaging and encouraging others to get involved on their page. An Instagram influencer has a virtual group of people who watch their videos and like their posts regularly. These followers trust the influencer’s opinion and are often strongly influenced by their decisions, hence the term ‘influencer’.

For many influencers, this is their full-time job and can make a large amount of money doing so. Due to their large and loyal following, they promote and sell various products.

Influencers can work for lots of different companies or brands, and get paid to promote certain products. A key way this is done is through the use of discount codes, and the influencer will then receive a proportion from the sales generated.

In the last five years, there has been an increase in the number of people that have taken up the influencer lifestyle. Influencer marketing is on track to become an £8 billion industry by the end of 2020. Due to the increase in online activity, there are now different categories of influencers, and they go up in stages based on how many followers they have.

People with 1,000 – 10,000 followers are called Nano-influencers. The next level up is the people with 10,000 – 100,000, who are called micro-influencers, and lastly, the people with way over 100,000 and into the millions are called mega-influencers.

It is really important to know the difference when it comes to influencer marketing and looking at how your business can benefit.

How can influencer marketing help my business?

Whether you own a small business or a multimillion-pound business, Instagram influencer marketing is a great way to spread awareness for your products. Having an influencer with a large following to promote your products and give them a good review, increases the opportunity for others who have never heard of your business before to buy your products and follow your brand.

When you are choosing which influencer to contact, try to find someone who already supports similar products to yours. This can act as a key advantage, as they will already have a following that is already interested in that specific area or market.

An example of this could be vegan food. If an influencer has made it clear they are vegan and on their profile, they promote vegan bars, they are very likely to have a large vegan following. This would be a really useful boost if you were running a vegan business or sell vegan products.

If you’re just starting up a business, giving free samples to nano-influencers or micro-influencers could increase sales. This is because they have the highest engagement rate of all the categories.

This means even though they have the least amount of followers, the followers they do have are normally more loyal and active on the account. You are more likely to reach a higher percentage of active followers from ten posts on a micro-influencers account than with one post on a mega-influencers account.

It also means that you won’t have to pay them to sample and review your products, as they are less likely to require payment over some of the bigger influencer names such as Molly-Mae Hague or Bretman Rock. There are a lot of people on Instagram as it is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

If you can get your products posted on multiple pages then it’s going to gain a lot more traction. The more times people and potential customers see your product the more times they will look into it and think about purchasing it.

The key is to make your business as big and as spread out across as many different groups of followers as you can, this gives the illusion to people your product is being used and promoted everywhere.

Things to know before getting involved in influencer marketing

Before getting involved in influencer marketing there are a few things you need to be aware of; for example, not all influencers will be willing to give reviews for certain products. Therefore, to avoid wasting time, do lots of research into their page before asking them to partner with or promote your brand.

One of the main things to look into is how many likes and comments they get, this is to see if they have a high engagement level on their page. Another thing to look into is to see what kind of following they have and if they have a specific target audience. If their target audience is clear make sure that it matches the audience your product is designed for.

This could be any group from those who enjoy reading and love cats, to teenagers passionate about make-up and concerts. More factors to consider include: do the influences have the image that you are looking, do they speak the language that is important for you, are they the right age, the right gender and do they live in the right location.

These are all factors to think about before deciding. The influencer you chose will then be the face for your product and brand, so making sure that person is what you want is important.

One of the things that businesses must do before deciding who they are going to ask, is to look into how many other promotions they have done and see if they were successful.

Reading the comments is so important as it allows you to see if their followers still trust their opinion and if their following is also actively buying the products.

This also allows you to see if the influencer is positive and active at answering the questions people may ask them, as that could help increase sales as lots of more information could be given.

Once you’ve found the influencer or influencers who you believe could help increase interest and raise the sales of your products the last step to take is making sure that if you agree to pay them, you are paying a fair price for the service they can provide.

Having an agreement such as posting one promotion every month can allow for you to see how much you are gaining from having an influencer marketing your products. Therefore, you can see if its working and then you can look into hiring another person.

However, if you don’t think it’s working and benefiting your business, you can stop. It’s a very easy and potentially cheaper type of marketing, that you can get into and benefit from.

If you are interested in Instagram influencer marketing check out our Insta Business book on Amazon for more guidance and tips to making it on Instagram.