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12 Instagram Marketing Tips for Business

October 14, 2020 No Comments

Check out these tips to help drive your Instagram marketing strategy toward better engagement and higher ROI.

If you’re looking for a way to grow your business, you may want to consider Instagram marketing. Instagram is an essential part of many business owners’ social media marketing strategies. This guide covers the benefits of using Instagram for business and top Instagram marketing tips to follow.

Business benefits of using Instagram

Instagram is a smart marketing tool if your business has products and services that can be presented visually and your audience is active on the channel. If your business checks those boxes and you carefully plan and execute your Instagram social media marketing strategy, this social media channel can have these big benefits:

Increased brand awareness
Followers’ trust
Brand loyalty
A boost in website traffic
New leads
New customers
Repeat business

Instagram marketing tips and best practices

Instagram marketing strategies vary from business to business. Although the following Instagram marketing tips have been effective for select brands, you should cater each tip to your unique audience and sales offerings.

Know your audience.

If you don’t know your audience, you are essentially creating content blindly. Many small businesses think their audience is everyone, which is almost never the case.

To help pinpoint your target audience, HubSpot suggests creating buyer personas. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. You can have more than one buyer persona, but limit them to five to ensure they are manageable. Include important details about your target audience, such as their demographics and how they think and act. For example, consider the following characteristics:

Age range (keep it within 10 years)
Specific location (city and state)
Job title
Gender
What motivates them at their job
What motivates them at home
Three main problems they have
Where they go for information (e.g., business.com, Facebook or a local radio station)
Any additional information you can identify (e.g., if they have pets and/or children, their salary range, their hobbies)

When developing buyer personas, make them as clear and as detailed as possible. The more specific your buyer personas are, the better you’ll succeed in creating content that appeals to your audience. If you’re unsure where to get this information, start by surveying your current customers. Email them a survey, letting them know how long it will take to fill out. Keep your questions brief, and offer multiple-choice and open-ended options.

To further entice your current customer base to take your survey, you could offer a promo code to be applied to their next purchase, and you might even get some extra business from it. If your business is brand-new and you really don’t have any idea where to begin with surveying your customers, reach out to your personal social media networks for assistance. There has to be an audience you had in mind when you started your company. Find those people, even if you have to go through your personal Facebook friends list and phone contacts.

Another option is to use a paid digital tool to survey a group of people. If you choose this route, start with an audience of 100 or fewer people, and increase it as needed. Sometimes, a small sample is helpful and saves you money.

Optimize your bio.

Your bio is an important part of your Instagram page, and it needs to be optimized. Include the following elements:

A clear and engaging Instagram profile picture that’s sized appropriately
A bio that tells a story of what your brand or Instagram influencer page is about
A link that visitors can access for more information
Hashtags (when applicable)

Your bio is an important part of your Instagram page, and it needs to be optimized. Include the following elements:

A clear and engaging Instagram profile picture that’s sized appropriately
A bio that tells a story of what your brand or Instagram influencer page is about
A link that visitors can access for more information
Hashtags (when applicable)

Example: Just for fun – micro-influencer Instagram bio Zoey the Maltichon

Incorporate relevant hashtags.

Hashtags, including those that are trending, can help people find your page on Instagram and Twitter and are essential to grow your audience and sales. Josh Stutt, founder of ABCD E-Commerce, said to make sure to research hashtags before you start using them. If you’re not a widely known brand or celebrity, using generic hashtags won’t get you anywhere. For example, if you’re a new vintage T-shirt brand, don’t waste your time with broad hashtags such as #fashion or #tshirt.

“You need to find hashtags that are typically on point [and] have a good following but aren’t being used by everyone else in your space,” Stutt said. “By using the Instagram search function, you can see the popularity of any given tag (#tshirt has 38.5M posts, but #vintagetees only has 388K). Dig around and find 50 or so tags that are applicable to you.”

Once you’ve done this, use about 15 hashtags in various combinations on your posts, and keep track of where you use each one, Stutt suggested. After that, he said, review the results, looking at which posts resonated, which hashtags brought people in and what people talked about in your posts.

“As you learn which ones work for you, use them continuously while slowly adding in other ones and trying to scale up as you gain popularity,” Stutt said. “Once you start connecting on certain tags, that’s when you can hit the Discover section, and that’s how you get Instagram working for you instead of the other way around.”

Interact with other users in your target audience.

Building relationships is an age-old sales tactic that is effective in social media as well. It is also the best organic way to increase your audience and get new business. The key to building relationships is to be genuine. Here are a few ways to build relationships on Instagram:

Follow people in your target audience who interest you.
Like and comment on their posts.
Sometimes, share their posts to your stories.

It can take time to build these relationships, but doing so can generate some of the hottest leads.

Team up with other brands to host giveaways.

Jenna Labiak, owner of The Silk Labs, said hosting giveaways with other small businesses that have the same values, location and target audience has been beneficial to her business on Instagram.

“This way, we can have a mutually beneficial relationship within this giveaway and share both of our audiences with one another,” she said. “On average, I would say for each giveaway with another small business, The Silk Labs gains 200 new customers.”

Use a link tool to drive traffic to your website and other important links.

There are quite a few link tools available, but one of the most effective and widely used is Linktree. When you set up and add Linktree to your Instagram profile, users who click the link are directed to the Linktree page that shows all of the links you have added. You can customize the Linktree page with a profile image, such as your company logo, and edit the links at any time. The Linktree tool has a “forever free” plan that is ideal for small businesses. Additional plans start at $6 per month.

Capitalize on affordable influencer marketing.

You may know that partnering with Instagram influencers, or people with large followings for a particular interest or category, can be an effective marketing strategy. However, it often comes with a hefty price tag.

As a more affordable alternative, “Strike a win-win deal with other companies that have affiliations with influencers, and do a collaboration,” said Amy McWaters, CEO of The Hamper Emporium.

As an example, McWaters’ Australia-based company collaborated with Ponting Wines, which is promoted by Ricky Ponting, a cricket legend. As part of the collaboration, her team created stories featuring him and, in return, he promoted his wines in The Hamper Emporium’s e-commerce store.

McWaters said her company received a lot of direct messages asking about the products, and the campaign resulted in an overall sales increase of 43% that quarter.

Humanize your brand.

This is a strategy that works well across all social media channels. Think about the content that resonates with you on the pages you follow. Most likely, it’s the stuff that you can connect with personally, not corporate business posts. That’s why it’s so important to show your human side.

For example, payment processing company Priority Payments Local created a “Meet the Team” series and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, got its team together to convey the message “We’re all in this together.” The photo of the company’s business development manager, Vincent Napoli, shows him in a different light than his clients are used to seeing him in: with his son.

Leverage Instagram analytics (also called Instagram Insights).

Instagram Insights, Instagram’s analytics tool, is available to use for free on the Instagram app and is available on business accounts and contributor accounts (sometimes called influencer accounts). The tool provides the following metrics:

The number of accounts reached (with increase or decrease percentages)
Content interactions (with increase or decrease percentages)
Total followers (with increase or decrease percentages)
Content your page shared
Instagram story content
IGTV video content
Promoted post data

This information is available for the previous seven-day period. Unfortunately, unlike Facebook’s analytics tool, it does not show the best times to post different types of content. If you have a Facebook business page, experiment with the best posting times (as determined by when your audience is online).

Post awesome content.

You and your audience may not have the same idea of what constitutes impressive content. Research what types of content get the most engagement on your competitors’ pages.

Fill your followers’ Instagram feeds with engaging content. Note the type of content that gets the most engagement, so you can keep giving your audience what it wants. For example, some brands do better with Instagram Live posts than they do with Instagram Stories. Ultimately, you can define “awesome content” by how well it performs. Your posts should be carefully planned, crafted and distributed.

Grow your page and your business with Instagram advertising.

Instagram advertising can be beneficial for expanding your brand’s reach across the social media platform, thereby growing your following and increasing sales. Depending on your industry, for Instagram to be effective, you may need to run your ads through a sales funnel, like Credit Repair Kings did. The company’s strategy was to target consumers within a specific age group in the local area who had an interest in the credit services and financial categories. When someone clicked on the ad, Credit Repair Kings used ClickFunnels to capture the lead to schedule a call with them using Calendly.

Test and try again.

The social media landscape is always changing, so it’s important to test new tactics. Don’t be afraid to create Instagram content that gets zero or little engagement. Learn something from every post, and keep trying. With time and practice, you could find yourself with a flood of new sales straight from Instagram.

By Marisa Sanfilippo,

Sourced from business.com

In News

Online Marketing Tips That Actually Work

August 18, 2020 No Comments

By Evan Varsamis,

This year has been quite a roller coaster for marketers so far, and it’s still unclear how things will go in the next few months. However, when it comes to designing a marketing funnel, you can’t stick to your traditional methods anymore. You have to start thinking outside the box and picking up new techniques that can enhance your brand’s presence on the web. Online competition has grown massively over the last few years. It’s not just about being present on the web anymore. It’s about sustaining an omnichannel presence.

What Is An Omnichannel Presence?

Years ago, we used to think of online marketing as finding the platform that works the best for you and prioritizing your activities there. Today, with so many different platforms having unique structures, it’s even more difficult to figure out what works the best for your brand. It’s not about finding your best platform anymore. It’s about learning how to be present on every channel and make the most of it.

What works on Facebook won’t work on Pinterest. You have to figure out how to be present on both channels with equal effectiveness.

Now that you’re familiar with an omnichannel presence, let’s take a look at trends and online marketing tips that will help you sustain your business in 2020.

Cobranded Content

Every individual is loyal to a certain number of brands. As a marketer, if you can leverage that engagement by combining two brands, there’s nothing like it.

Sophia Bernazzani explained this concept beautifully on HubSpot: “One of my own beloved childhood memories was a product of co-branding: Betty Crocker partnered with Hershey’s to include chocolate syrup in its signature brownie recipe. There’s something brilliant about that co-branded product: It’s a fun way to marry two classic brands into one delicious experience for fans of baking and chocolate alike.”

So, to make your 2020 marketing work, you can connect with brands that appeal to you and use that collaboration as a marketing campaign. You could choose to go for video advertising or even audio influencing through podcasts or webinars. Either way, cobranded content can help you soar high with the help of loyal followers.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

If you have experience with influencer marketing, you’ll know why micro-influencers are the near future. Reaching out to big-time influencers is difficult, and you can’t expect them to review free samples that easily. So brands that are tight on budget can opt for micro-influencers who cater to their product niche.

These influencers have enough popularity to still be influential, and they also tend to have better engagement rates with their followers because they are less overwhelmed with sponsorship offers, which gives them the bandwidth to keep in touch with their followers. A study (paywall) from HelloSociety suggests that micro-influencers with around 30,000 followers have 60% higher engagement and are about 6.7 times more cost effective than influencers with more followers.

Nontraditional Social Media Marketing

Ever since we started social media marketing, we’ve primarily used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While these platforms continue to be the rulers in the industry, there are several others that are making their way up with the help of the younger generation. These platforms include Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and Medium.

So when it comes to planning a successful marketing campaign, you need to think outside the box and come up with ways to work on every platform instead of sticking to just one or two. In fact, it may seem far-fetched, but TikTok could work for your brand, depending on what you are trying to promote.

Contextual Targeting

When you throw random ads at people, you can’t expect the click rate you desire. That’s because not everyone will want to see the product you are showing them. Instead, with contextual targeting, you can showcase your ads on pages with related information. People who see your ads will have a higher chance of clicking them because they are already interested in your product niche.

Programmatic Audio

With podcasts and audio streaming apps becoming more and more popular, they’ve turned into avenues for online promotion. The advantage of programmatic audio promotion is that it enables you to place ads in the audio content.

Depending on your preference, you can opt for ad formats such as companion, ad pods, or pre-roll and midroll ads. Currently, companies including Google, Rubicon Project, SoundCloud and the BBC offer audio advertising features.

Video Advertising

Every social network is focusing on video content. Many are even looking for ways to implement product shopping directly from videos.

Consider using traditional video advertising methods by placing your ads on YouTube. You can even work with brands on Facebook and Instagram to promote your products in videos.

Mobile-Friendly Emails

As more people switch to primarily using their smartphones, the entire email marketing industry will change. Email designs need to be mobile-friendly and minimal, and they must have the call to action (CTA) button in a place where the user can easily find it. Another crucial point is to avoid too much content in your email. You can always opt for a drip email campaign to send out information sequentially.

Augmented Reality (AR) And Virtual Reality (VR

If you are an e-commerce brand, chances are you’ve already heard of implementing AR and VR for better product discovery. By implementing these technologies in your marketing funnel, you may be able to draw the attention of people who hesitate to purchase online. Give them the opportunity to try out products virtually before purchasing them.

Having said that, it’s also crucial not to forget the tone of voice you use while implementing all your marketing campaigns. The world is going through a massive change in 2020, and it’s important to understand the emotion of your audience before you try to promote a product or service to them. An empathetic and genuine tone can always take your brand a long way.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Evan Varsamis,

An entrepreneur and Founder/CEO at Gadget Flow, as well as an investor and marketing advisor at Qrator Ltd.an entrepreneur and Founder/CEO at Gadget Flow, as well as an investor and marketing advisor at Qrator Ltd.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Proven Influencer Marketing Tips For Those Just Getting Started

May 14, 2019 No Comments

By Will Robins

Influencer marketing can be a powerful way for businesses to connect with consumers. Today’s brands are leveraging the power of influencers in mutually beneficial ways. Fortunately, this is a great time to get involved. Here are a few reasons why:

• According to Reuters, 27% of consumers in the United States use some form of ad-blocking software on a day-to-day basis. Antiquated ad models are no longer working, and companies are turning to influencers to reach their target markets in more humane ways.

• According to a study conducted by Collective Bias, 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product that is recommended by a non-celebrity blogger. Additionally, non-celebrity influencers are 10 times more likely to drive in-store purchases.

• Linqia, an influencer-focused marketing company, found that 39% of marketers plan to increase their influencer budget in 2018.

Stats are great, but how do you apply influencer marketing to your brand?

Don’t just focus on growth. Finding the right fit for your product is the first step in the process of building meaningful relationships with influencers. Focus on the fit. This should be easy at first. If you are a health-related company, engage with health-related influencers. And don’t underestimate the power of microinfluencers; they make for a great testing ground when you first begin.

What do you need to know to get started?

Starting is easy. Begin surfing the web. You can use a lot of different tools, but here are my favorites: I use the search function on YouTube to find influencers in my niche. Next, I document on a Google Sheet their social media stats and contact information. Many creators have their business emails listed in their Twitter profiles — I’m not sure why, but I’ve noticed it is a common place to find contact information.

How do you know which influencers to work with?

Testing is the answer to everything. While you may not be able to judge performance and results in the beginning, use data to your advantage throughout the process. Start by looking at the percentage of views the influencer has in your country. That will be the first number to use for all calculations. Use that percentage to calculate how many people are going to see videos that the influencer will share for your brand.

In my experience, YouTube videos have a longer life cycle than other channels. Videos gain views over time, and that helps attribute for the cost of the engagement.

How can you leverage influencer relationships for mutual benefit?

Look for influencers in your market to ensure brand alignment between your company and the influencer. It is better to micro-niche down and work with influencers who have smaller but engaged communities. Don’t try to hit home runs — hitting singles is a great way to engage customers over time. Here is a quick list of action steps to get started:

• Start by working with five smaller influencers and test.

• Know your numbers for conversions on your website. Views become site visits. Site visits need to convert. These numbers will inform the results you expect from your influencers and how much to pay them.

• Have continuous outreach efforts.

• Look for deals. Who can you work with at a discounted price?

• Influencer marketing isn’t just a visual medium; ask the influencer to include copy in the description and comments of an Instagram post or YouTube video.

• Create a campaign document that outlines phrasing and copy to be used when describing your brand, and hold your influencers accountable for that language.

• Ask to view every video first before it goes live for any errors or off-brand comments.

• Get meaningful feedback early on and adapt.

• Channel into different sub-niches. For example, instead of the general “health” niche, consider keto, paleo and fitness influencers.

• Build an influencer page for your brand — I get new domains from NameCheap.com for $0.88. Then, create an email campaign and send out the site link asking for signups and directing people to “pitch you.”

What is the pay structure of an influencer like?

I get this question a lot, so I wanted to address it in this article. A survey conducted by Later, an Instagram scheduling tool, found that 66% of brands pay under $250 per post. However, the bigger their follower count and engagement, the more an influencer will be able to charge. After all, it’s not uncommon for influencers to be paid $50,000 for a single post.

When evaluating how much to pay, focus on engagement and potential return. Look for smaller influencers (with less than 100,000 followers) and do a test campaign at an inexpensive price. Track the results; if it performs well, then engage the influencer for multiple videos.

The most important part of the pay structure is the ask. Don’t be afraid to test first before you commit to a relationship. Stacking up smaller wins is more important than signing on for one huge deal with higher risk. Once you know your numbers, you can go for bigger deals — they aren’t as risky once you have a proven model.

Final thoughts: How can you ensure influencers and subscribers actually like you?

Don’t just think about the numbers. I know, I know — I base all of my decisions on the numbers. But it is just as important to engage in meaningful conversations with the influencers with whom you are working. Don’t be all promo all the time. Let them promote you while you engage their fans.

You can do so by buying ads to promote the video of your brand on their channels. Watch and comment on their videos. It takes time to have a relationship. Make it fun, but remember that the human element is the most meaningful way to stand out. When influencers and followers realize that you are a likable person who really cares about other people, then everyone in the community will relate to you more. That is when your influencer marketing can start to soar.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Will Robins

Organic Marketing Director at Manscaped.com, Overseeing SEO, influencer marketing, and branded content.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Get Your New Small Business Noticed With These 13 Marketing Tips

May 3, 2019 No Comments

By Matt Reinstetle

So you’re in the early stages of launching a small business. You’ve got a great product or service and obtained funding to get the company off the ground, but what about marketing? Do people know your business will be opening soon?

Getting noticed is one of the biggest challenges facing new small business owners. There are many different ways to market your business, such as using internet ads, social media pages, content marketing, in-person networking and more.

Some methods may be more effective than others, depending on your industry. But two areas all businesses need to excel in are internet-based marketing and in-person networking.

We’ve compiled a list of small business marketing tips, strategies and ideas that will help get your business noticed before, during and after opening.

13 Small Business Marketing Tips, Ideas and Strategies

Below is a breakdown of different tips, strategies and approaches on small business marketing. These tips and ideas are ranked based on when you should consider implementing them during pre-launch or in the early days of your business.

1. Create a Marketing Budget

For small businesses operating on a shoestring budget, it can be tempting to save money by not setting aside funds for marketing. But if your marketing strategy is to rely on word of mouth to promote your business, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Josh Rubin, CEO of Post Modern Marketing, tells small business owners they have to create a marketing budget, and the value of that budget can’t be an amount that will break the company if it doesn’t produce immediate results.

In the early days, you’re going to be spending time determining your company’s identity and figuring out what messaging connects with new customers. Be prepared for a lot of trial and error. “So set a budget that you’re willing to lose,” Rubin says.

2. Secure Your Company Name

You have an idea of what to name your small business and think it will connect with your target audience, but is that name available online?

“I see a lot of business owners that think of the name of their company but then don’t think about reserving a URL with [that name],” says Sherry Bonelli, owner of Early Bird Digital Marketing. She is also a small business mentor with Score, a volunteer group supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration that connects business owners with mentors from similar fields.

Having a website address that matches your company name is important, as people are doing more business online. It might be difficult for potential customers to find your website if they don’t match.

Once you have a business name in mind, go to a domain registrar, such as GoDaddy or Google Domains, to see if the web address is available. Prices start at $12 per year to reserve a domain name using Google Domains.

3. Create a Logo and Brand

If you want to be taken seriously as a business, you’re going to need to look the part. It might be tempting to create a generic logo and use a website template or stock photos when launching, but that isn’t necessarily good in the long run.

“I think many small business owners skimp on this step, and that’s a big mistake because if you don’t look like a real company, customers and clients are not going to trust you,” Bonelli says. Freelance websites such as Fiverr, Upwork and 99designs connect business owners with graphic designers who can create a custom logo, color palette, business cards and overall design for your business. This can cost anywhere between $300 and $500.

4. Build a User-Friendly Website

Once you have your logo ready, it’s time to build your website.

The way people search online has created many changes to website design. Having a site that looks good on smartphones and tablets is more vital than ever.

Website builders like WordPress.com, Squarespace and Wix, come with mobile-friendly features. They offer multiple templates, customization options and support for a monthly fee. Think like a potential consumer when building your site and make sure it has all the features and information you’d want to see.

5. Make Your Website SEO Friendly

Now that you’ve built your website, you should make it as easy as possible for people to find it when searching the web. Search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is the process of getting web traffic from search engine results. SEO plays a crucial role in helping local and small businesses get discovered online.

Several factors determine a website’s search engine ranking. These include posting well-written blog pages that establish your topic credibility on a regular basis and using correct keywords associated with your business. To learn more about best SEO practices, check out free resources on sites such as Moz, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.

If you’re planning on opening a physical location such as a restaurant, store or office, don’t forget to create a business profile on Google My Business, a free business listing service, that provides your essential info,such as a street address, phone number, hours of operation and business description.

One of the primary benefits of Google My Business is that it drives the “Map Pack” on Google search results, which may increase your visibility, in-store visits or calls This service is only available for local businesses with a physical address, not internet-only companies.

6. Create Social Media Pages

A woman with curly hair and glasses types on a computer in her office. — When owning a company, you should watch what your competitors are doing with their social media platforms. “If a competitor is using Pinterest and it seems like they’re gaining a lot of engagement, then Pinterest might be a place you want to go,” says Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder

Now it’s time to create social media pages on platforms your audience uses. You can count on using the major platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn — to promote business news and engage with your customer base.

At all stages of your company’s life, you should also keep an eye on what your competitors are doing with their social media platforms. “If a competitor is using Pinterest and it seems like they’re gaining a lot of engagement, then Pinterest might be a place you want to go,” says Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies, a small business marketing firm.

7. Find Free or Low-Cost Business Services

Money is going to be tight in the early days of starting your small business, so it helps to use free or low-cost services to help your marketing. Below is a list of programs that can help you save money running your business.

Buffer is a social media tool that allows users to schedule posts in advance or post the same content to different platforms at once. It has free and paid versions, starting at $15 per month.
Google Alerts are free and will help you keep up with what people are saying online about your business or keep up with specific keywords.
KeywordTool.io is a free service that allows business owners to do keyword research for their website and ads.
Apps such as Grammarly and the Hemingway Editor can be useful when writing blogs or content on your website. These will help you write more succinctly and catch grammatical errors. Grammarly has a free version and a premium version that includes features such as a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement and genre-specific writing-style suggestions. The premium versions costs $29.95 per month (or a discounted rate of $139.95 when paid annually).

8. Buy Online Ads

Once your business has opened, it’s time to start advertising. Google Ads, which appear when you search on Google, is an obvious place to start because of the search engine’s popularity. According to Google, businesses generally make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads.

Bonelli says the problem with Google Ads for new small-business owners is that it can be expensive. To make it effective, she says to include your ad the information that users seek when they search on Google.

For example, if someone is searching for “wedding gown alterations,” the web page your ad sends users to must emphasize that your business specializes in wedding gown alterations.

9. Set Up Email Marketing

People who sign up to your email marketing program tend to be the most engaged members of your audience. These members generally read more articles after opening the email and are more likely to buy your products or services. That’s why it’s important to provide content and information your audience cares about in every email blast you send.

“If you’re mailing out to a random [email subscription] list you didn’t build, that’s where you’re not going to be effective. But if you mail out information that people are interested in, that’s where it’s really effective,” Bonelli says.

Include a button on your website that allows people to sign up for your email campaigns. A free version of MailChimp can help build your email list — it allows you to send up to 12,000 emails a month to up to 2,000 subscribers. The paid version allows you to send an unlimited number of emails to an unlimited number of subscribers. The cost of the membership increases based on the number of subscribers.

10. Craft an Elevator Pitch

Before you start meeting potential customers and attending networking events, do you have your elevator pitch ready? An elevator pitch is a speech lasing 30 to 45 seconds that tells the listener who you are, what you do and how your business will be better than the competition. With some practice, it may lead to a potential customer. Learn more on how to develop a great elevator pitch.

11. Become a ‘Thought Leader” in Your Field

A woman listens as a man asks a question. — Randall listens as Jason Hendricks asks a question during an Operation Startup workshop where Randall led a workshop on how to grow one’s company social media presence at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center on in Ybor City, Florida on March 15, 2019. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder

When your business is off the ground, think about establishing yourself as a thought leader. A “thought leader” is a marketing term for a recognized authority in a field who is sought after as an expert.

Every business owner is a thought leader without knowing it yet; there is a reason you started your business, so let people know what you know. For example, if you’re a photographer, write blogs offering tips and tricks on how to take better iPhone photos or suggest “three things to look for in a wedding photographer.”

Randall used this strategy in the early days of social media marketing. “When I gave my thoughts, tips and everything else away and became a thought leader within the social media space, I gained a lot more clients,” she says.

Early on when people are not yet visiting your site, consider becoming a guest contributor on another established website in your field so you can promote your knowledge on the subject and point people in the direction of your website to learn more.

Another way to become a recognized expert is by meeting your target audience. Meetup.com is a great way to find local groups who are interested in topics related to your business. For example, if you run a knitting or sewing store, you might look to see whether any knitting or sewing events are happening in your area and offer to give a free demonstration.

12. Get Involved With Your Chamber of Commerce

Not all marketing is done online. Getting involved with your local Chamber of Commerce will enable you to meet fellow business owners during in-person networking events and other chamber functions. Over time, you’ll expand your professional network and be able to utilize their resources.

Rubin says his Chamber helped his company get featured on a local news segment. Once you start to support other businesses, they’ll do the same when you have a big event or project.

“All it takes is your time and your energy,” he says.

13. Find a Business Mentor and Continue Learning

As a new small business owner or entrepreneur, it’s never a bad thing to seek guidance from people who have been in your shoes. There are both local and national nonprofits devoted to helping business owners.

Score offers their mentoring service free of charge. Rubin, a Score volunteer, says if you want to know more about marketing, Score can connect you with retired marketing executives or other knowledgeable people who can help you grow your business.

“I’ll scream their praises from every rooftop because everyone always thinks that you have to pay for this kind of business support, and it’s out there for free,” he says.

As you progress and figure out what marketing material connects with your audience, don’t stop learning new things. Small business marketing is a topic that is difficult to master because strategies that work now will change and marketing fads come and go.

Luckily, there are a lot of free blog posts, courses and resources out there to teach business owners about SEO, social media marketing, internet advertising and more.

You can sign up for a massive open online course (MOOCs), keep up with the SEO sites listed above or follow marketing professionals you admire on LinkedIn or other social media.

“There’s so much information out there now that if business owners spend an hour a night just searching the web and teaching themselves how to do small business marketing, they’ll be successful at it,” Bonelli says.

Feature Image Credit: Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies, helps other businesses grow their social media presence. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder

By Matt Reinstetle

Matt Reinstetle is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

Sourced from The Penny Hoarder

In News

Influencer Marketing Tips Going Into 2019

December 7, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from onalytica

Recently we hosted our fourth Influencer Marketing Huddle event, gathering senior marketing and PR professionals from B2C, B2B and Not-for-profit brands to bounce ideas and experiences off each other, listen to brand & influencer panels, presentations & case studies and participate in practical workshop sessions where they can effectively create their strategies and outline next practical steps. Attendees left the room with an abundance of excitement, feeling inspired and full of knowledge and ideas.

Of course, nothing beats being in the room in and amongst the atmosphere, but Onalytica are all about educating and helping the industry to not just do influencer marketing, but to do it well. So as we begin to round up 2018 and start planning for 2019, we want to let you in to a few of the top tips shared with the group from the influencer marketing experts, brand experiences and the influencers themselves, around influencer best practice. From identifying influencers and engaging with them, through to measuring the success of the program.

1. Have a clear direction

Our first presentation of the day was from Teri Donovan, EMEAR Audience Expert & Head of Campaigns at Cisco, who shared a case study on how Cisco created their influencer marketing program. She kicked off her presentation with a personal story about her and her husband spontaneously buying a boat. They didn’t know where they wanted to go, or how to do it, but they did it. When they set off on their first journey, they had no real plan or strategy in place, so consequently came across lots of hurdles, such as running out of food and having to trek for miles to find a pub to eat.

This is a great analogy of how lots of brands first approach influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a huge buzzword at the moment, so lots of brands are starting to do it, simply because they think they should. But they’re starting it blindly without a real plan, strategy or set of objectives in place. So consequently, they hit hurdles and do not reap the full potential.

2. Dream big, start small, learn fast

Again from Teri, she recommended to dream big, start small and learn fast. Create long term objectives and give yourself a vision to work towards – be optimistic, but also be realistic about what you can achieve and in what time frame. In addition to your long term vision, set short term goals to give you focus and get you started. Learn what’s working and what’s not working quickly and use this to accelerate your program growth to hit your long term goals.

Petya, Global Influencer Marketing Manager at NetApp drove this point home in the context of building a business case internally, too: “start small, get the results and then present that as a business case. If you get results, nobody will tell you no”.

3. Writing down your influencer strategy increases your chances of success

Tim Williams, CEO at Onalytica highlighted that simply writing down your strategy will significantly increase your chances of success. Writing it down makes you more accountable, focused and gives you something to reference regularly when measuring program success. This is something that is so simple, yet neglected by most. So make this something you do before entering 2019!

4. Tap into your goldmine of internal influencers

We were very lucky to be joined by Sarah Goodall, employee advocacy expert and Founder of Tribal Impact, who presented our co-authored Employee Advocacy 2.0 Guide.

When we talk about influencer marketing, we immediately think of influencers with big audiences that are external to our brand, when in reality, we are all influencers. Brands have a whole network of influencers right at their fingertips: their employees. Your employees know your brand inside and out and have networks that trust and value their opinion. Shift your focus on helping your employees become influencers and subject matter experts by giving them quality content to share with their audiences, and training them and giving them the tools to create their own content.

5. Integrate influencers into your whole marketing mix

Owain Williams, Founder of Make it Manna highlighted that influencer marketing is often looked at as a totally new and different marketing division. While it is important to have individuals and teams leading on influencer marketing, it is most successful when integrated across all other areas of marketing. Why re-invent the wheel when you can integrate influencers into existing stuff that’s already going on across the business?

For example, communicate and work with your content marketing team to co-create content with influencers, your events marketing team to invite relevant influencers to events and your product team on new product releases.

6. Be transparent with your influencers about your business outcomes

Olly Lynch, Director of Digital Marketing at Travelport, expressed that he wouldn’t invest in any other type of marketing without a breakdown of the numbers & what can be achieved and influencer marketing should be no different. However, when asking the influencer panel if they had ever been set KPIs or objectives by brands, they said they hadn’t, but, they strongly believe that they can indeed help brands achieve business outcomes and so would be willing to have open discussions about this.

While influencer marketing is all about building relationships, brands shouldn’t be afraid to have open and transparent conversations with influencers about their business outcomes. Influencers that can actualyl help you drive these outcomes will be open to discussing and bringing ideas to the table as to how they can help you achieve this. After all, being an influencer is a business – they get it!

7. Do you want top of funnel awareness, or to drive outcomes?

Influencer Marketing and Influencer Advertising tend to be interchanged as terms, despite them being inherently different. Influencer Marketing is all about organically building partnerships with influencers that are aligned with your brand to gain your target audience’s trust, while influencer advertising tends to revolve around paying influencers to bring awareness to your products through their audiences. Both influencer marketing and influencer advertising are effective and have a place in their own right.

If you’re looking to drive top of funnel awareness then influencer advertising can be a great way to get quick wins. If you’re looking to drive consideration and action then organically working with subject matter experts to win your audience’s trust is more appropriate.

8. Marketers are undervaluing early or exclusive access to products and research

Alistair Wheate, Head of Product and Dominik Nosalik, Director of Client Services presented Onalytica’s recent research study into the alignment between influencer and brand partnerships, where we surveyed 267 influencers and 233 brand marketers. What was really interesting, was that 15% of influencers surveyed stated that their main outcome when working with brands is to gain industry insights, while only 2% of brands stated that their main outcome from working with influencers is to carry out research and drive innovation. This highlights a huge untapped for both brands and influencers to collaborate on industry research.

Reiterating this point further, 34% of influencers stated that early or exclusive access to research and products was attractive to them when working with a brand, while only 18% of brands offer this to their influencers.

9. Marketers are overvaluing free tickets to events

On the flip side of marketers undervaluing early or exclusive access to products and research, they’re overvaluing free tickets to events. What this ultimately says, is that influencers feel that they have more value to give brands, than they can gain from attending these events.

Now this doesn’t mean that brands should stop giving influencers free tickets to events, but brands must rethink their complete offer around events to provide maximum value to influencers. Influencer budgets can in many cases be difficult to work with so free tickets to events are an attractive offer for brands, but instead of just offering free tickets, explore if you’re able to offer VIP access and tours, introduce them to another influencers of interest, or include them in a panel/give them a speaking slot – use the event as a facilitator to help them achieve the outcomes that are important to them. If attending the event will help them gain industry insights, expand their network or help them be more influential in a certain topic, they’ll go for it.

10. Don’t underestimate the time needed to build genuine relationships, but also the value

Marie Faulkner, Senior Social Media Manager from Marie Curie emphasised that the biggest learning curve for their team has been learning that the time and effort needed to build genuine relationships and partnerships with influencers is time consuming, but the value that can be gained from doing so is unparalleled. As Theodore Roosevelt so famously put it: “nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty”.

11. We’re in a trust economy

Throughout Sarah Goodall’s presentation, she really focused on in the concept that we’re in an economy of trust. What this ultimately means, is that as marketers, we’re constantly competing to earn our target audience’s trust. Consumers are trusting brands less and people more, and so in order for us to gain their trust we need to leverage people more – be it our internal influencers (employees) and external influencers.

12. Influencers want to work with brands that they align themselves with

The key takeaway message from our influencer panel was that it is important for them to stay true to their personal brand values and beliefs when choosing which brands to work with. Jane Frankland, Managing Director of Cyber Security Capital said: “I only align with brands who believe the same thing as me…I want to understand the mission statement before I want to work with that brand”.

13. It is possible to reach your C-Suite through influencer marketing

There’s a common misconception that influencer marketing isn’t suitable if you’re intending to reach C-Level professionals, as they’re not often on social media. While the latter part of this is often true, the C-Suite have internal influencers within their organisation that heavily impact their decisions. These mid-level managers are on social media and reading and engaging with influencer content that is floating around their network, and then sharing this through ‘dark social’ (Whatsapp, email, direct messenger and face-to-face) with the C-Suite.

14. Listen to the influencer community to feed your content strategy

When it comes to integrating content marketing with influencer marketing, it is usually approached in a way that involves influencers in the latter stages to amplify content, by collaborating on content or getting influencers to share the content. Brands should look to the influencers much earlier than this, by listening to the influencer community and paying attention to what they’re talking about and the kind of content they’re sharing, to feed into their content strategy and content creation. Collaborating on content and amplifying your content through influencers will be much easier to do if you’re creating content that interests and is aligned with the influencers in the first place.

15. Influencer fraud is a good thing for the industry

Now when Scott Guthrie, Strategic Advisor at CampaignDeus first started talking about influencer fraud being a good thing, there were lots of shocked faces across the room. But the more he elaborated, the more those shocked faces turned into nodding heads: “Influencer marketing should get back to its roots, focusing on advocacy and authenticity. Fraud issues are forcing marketers to focus away from vanity metrics, which is a good thing”.

Onalytica’s Employee Advocacy 2.0 guide and research study into influencer and brand partnerships were huge talking points throughout our event. If you would like to receive a copies, get in touch here.