By partnering with a local brand influencer, your business can increase visibility and leverage the name recognition of a public figure in exciting ways! Catapult your brand awareness in a specific market, and harness influencer sway over new and captivated audiences! Find out how bringing local brand influencers onboard with your business can create buzz for your next marketing campaign!
What Is A Local Brand Influencer?
A local brand influencer is defined as an individual who holds name recognition, a level of celebrity or sway over a region or community. From radio hosts to television personalities to sports figures, these personalities traditionally have built-in audiences that follow or consume their content.
Social media influencers have become leading targets for brands and businesses looking to grow their reach within specific audiences or demographics. With Generation Z branded as the next hot target of content marketing campaigns, there are audiences everywhere ready to engage with quality marketing campaigns.
When searching for a local brand influencer to represent your business, here are some key considerations:
Shop local
A region-specific influencer is a valuable brand ambassador for your business. Their audience, represented through attendees at sporting events or via the number of followers on their account, clearly resonates with them and follows their careers or messaging.
Think Micro Influencer
Engaging influencers with global appeal or a huge following actually dilutes your brand message. The best content marketing is targeted to a specific clientele or audience. If you’re casting too wide a net, the specificity that allows good content to reach a target audience is lost. The message you’re trying to send often has to be widened in scope accordingly, and the subsequent ability to appeal to your specific, identified customer is harder to lock down. Look to the follower count of a targeted micro influencer for insight into their viability in your target market. However, finding micro-influencers that are relevant to your brand can sometimes be a challenge.
Leverage Engagement
If you’re considering reaching out to a huge celebrity or global personality, consider this: The odds of a huge (or macro) influencer spending the time and energy necessary to successfully promote your brand or small business are small… assuming they even respond to your initial pitch!
Rest assured, if you’re thinking of reaching out to an influencer with an amazing opportunity to promote your brand, others have as well. The bigger the influencer, the more brands they’re likely to champion. Don’t let your influencer campaign get lost in the shuffle!
A tip when it comes to engaging a local brand influencer with your proposed endorsement opportunity: Pay attention to how long it takes them to get back to your request, and with what urgency and interest they place upon the opportunity. This can provide great, free insight into the focus they will put on promoting your business if the relationship were to become official.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
When it comes to the value of local brand influencer marketing, there are many important factors
to consider. After all, they’re not quite the same as pay per click (PPC) marketing campaigns… they don’t ‘turn off.’
Going after local business? Leverage the follower base of an area influencer!
Micro-influencers are walking, talking, breathing representations of your brand… for better or worse. When engaging a local brand ambassador, it’s important to observe both their behavior and relationship within the community they represent. Do they align with the values and perception you want attributed to your business?
A well-suited local brand influencer can catapult attention to your visibility in a targeted market. They have an already-established relationship with the audience you want to reach, and their commitment to the influencer represents an attachment and loyalty you want to emulate. Creators, sports figures or social media personalities have worked to garner their respective followings — and if you choose correctly, their devoted followers could become yours.
How To Know if Your Business is Ready to Invest in an Influencer:
So you’re considering a partnership with a local influencer. How do you know if your platform is ready to piggyback off of the name recognition of your intended brand? Here are the relevant answers you’ll need to know before reaching out.
- Your products or services are ready and equipped to host a surge of new inquiries or customers.
- You’re ready to leverage the trust of a micro influencer’s target audience to align with dependability in your business.
- You want to increase the scope and reach of your client base, potentially attracting new demographics. (Remember, you’re exposing your business to a potentially untapped portion of a targeted geographical area!)
- You have a set, steady following and are looking to increase your client load with the addition of relevant influencers.
Now that you’ve determined you’re ready to engage a local brand influencer, it’s time to consider the engagement rates, strategy and ROI expectations of your proposal.
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Setting Up an Influencer Marketing Campaign
You’ve made the decision to link your brand to a local influencer. But which one, and on what platform? Knowing the trends associated with today’s popular platforms can go a long way towards narrowing down your perfect brand partner.
Here are 8 important considerations when looking to lock in the platform that best fits your niche content needs.
Now that you’ve identified your perfect promotional platform, it’s time to reach out and engage the services of the ideal local brand influencer — here’s how to ensure your strategy is an effective one.
The first crucial step is simply finding local influencers. Remember, one of the most important attributes of selecting the right partner is their visibility in your target market… meaning they shouldn’t be hard to find.
The key is being critical in regards to both their response and response time — you’re looking for an eagerness and enthusiasm to match the energy you want to see client-facing.
What to Look For:
- What platforms are your target influencers on?
- What niche do they represent?
- Do they respond quickly to social media engagement, or get back to emails promptly?
- Are you able to get on the phone with the local television host, or have access to the quarterback’s direct email address?
If they’re excited about your pitch, it’s time to move forward with the negotiations.
Best Practices When it Comes to Establishing an Influencer Marketing Campaign:
- Be clear about content usage rights on the social platform you choose. Usage rights determine who owns the content you create or share with your local influencer. In the case of brands or agencies, usage rights also determine the channels and platforms this created content can be shared on.
- Fixed pay-per-post or affiliate commissions?
- Do you want your local influencer to receive a predetermined amount for every post or deliverable?
- Would you prefer to offer a structure with pay incentives per sale?
- Negotiate brand exclusivity. After all, you don’t want your local influencer representing competitors in the marketplace at the same time they’re extolling the virtues of your ‘one of a kind’ product or service! (It’s also a good idea to look into the type of brand associations they’ve had before, to ensure you’re not their seventh promotion of a similar service.)
- Outline engagement metrics and expectations.
- What is considered a successful campaign in the influencer marketplace? Are you aware of the metrics or specific details of similar campaigns in your space?
- Are there incentives built in based upon reaching certain thresholds? Being clear and specific in these areas can avoid potential misunderstandings down the road.
- Offer free samples, or perks, such as free tickets to live events.
Remember, a clear and comprehensive compensation and incentive strategy only accelerates the engagement with your desired local influencer!
Results of Utilizing Influencer Content
You’ve engaged your desired local brand influencer, and launched the first of what you hope will be many successful content marketing campaigns. How do you measure quality engagement and ROI?
Here are some key metrics to look for:
Engagement Rate
This is by far the most important consideration regarding the efficacy of your campaign. Engagement rates determine how many people are actually paying attention to your message. The impressions on a social media post, for example, are excellent indicators of the reception to your message by a target audience.
Inquiries
Questions related to your product or service are worth their weight in gold. Without engagement, there are no inquiries. Your influencer’s audience could outline potential opportunities in regards to the clarification of your message… and the more clear the message, the more likely you are to reach your target audience.
Lead Generation
Are you seeing an influx of subscribers to your email campaigns, newsletters or promotions? Are your contest giveaways and promotions suddenly experiencing a host of new participants? Successful lead generation means a host of new outreach opportunities with qualified, invested prospects.
Keep in mind that communication and clear line of sight to your brand’s desired engagement rate can improve a local influencerr relationship. In the event that a particular campaign isn’t hitting the desired engagement or reaching the intended audience, don’t be afraid to collaborate on ideas or pivots that could drive up business opportunities the next time. The next marketing episode could be the one that really resonates with your target audience!
Your influencer will no doubt have valuable insight into the buying patterns and habits of your targeted audience… After all, they brought them to the table! They will surely appreciate the ability to act as the professional resource they are, and this collaboration will only drive the synergy of your association further.
Remember, direct sales shouldn’t be the focus of your local brand influencer marketing campaign. You’ve got an expert sales team locked and loaded to build upon the relationships and capitalize on the higher engagement your new ambassador has cultivated for you.
It may take multiple contacts with a prospective buyer to turn them into a dedicated client, but (with the right local influencer) you’re now armed with a robust audience to deliver your targeted marketing content to!
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