The term influencer usually brings an image of recognized YouTube or Instagram faces promoting different brands and products. This concept has seen tremendous adaptation because these popular names and their social media handles have a steady influence on their target markets and do wonders for the brand they choose to represent. Influencer marketing for startups is a relatively new idea, but it sure has a lot to offer. Here are my top 5 reasons as to why startups should adopt influencer marketing:
- To overcome the immunity that customers have developed for traditional marketing channels
- It costs lesser than other promotional strategies
- Extremely easy-to-implement
- It builds trust for your brand with its word-of-mouth ability
- The authenticity of your influencers will help customers engage with your brand better
Now that you have seen the prime advantages of influencer marketing, you need to know how to go about it. The first step, without any doubt, is to find the right influencers. The influencers you shortlist for your brand representation should be reliable, relevant, and authentic. Their work will only get you engagement and audience visits if they have a genuine following and guarantee relevancy to the messaging of your brand. So, take your time and check their work and their followers to know if they serve your communication as well.
Influencer Marketing Strategies for Startups with No Budget
Since, as a startup, you don’t already have a robust virtual presence or following, influencer marketing allows you to use someone else’s popularity for your gain. It, thus, becomes non-negotiable to workaround strategies that require a minimal budget to suit your needs. Below is a list of the top five influencer marketing strategies for your startup:
- Guest Post for Influencers –
Posting as a guest on the influencer’s social media channels is the safest way to get noticed by relevant influencers and their audiences. Wondering why influencers allow guest posting? Well, it is because this writing benefits them as well as you in terms of fresh content and better reach, respectively. And once you build a rapport with the influencer, you can start posting regularly to drive traffic to your website and build brand awareness. - Offer Free Products or Services –
Treating your influencers well is all about offering them gifts and brand offerings. Since you don’t have a budget to pay them, try looking for influencers who are keen on working for freebies. In fact, some influencers expect you to share free trials of your product or service for them to post and share their experience with their audience. - Group roundup posts –
Here, you ask a few selected influencers to post on your site to gain more reach for themselves. Group roundup posts or interviews work opposite to guest posting. It’s a win-win for both sides because it enables brand credibility while offering a wider audience for the guests. The trick to making it attractive for the influencers is to mention celebrities who might be attending and promising to invest in paid promotions. - Affiliate Marketing – The combination of influencer marketing with affiliate marketing is still debatable. That is because some influencers are keen on it while some shy away. But given its track record, affiliate marketing works pretty well. The key is to research and look for influencers concerned with products/services similar to yours.
- Offer Them Your Feedback –
This last strategy will help you build a relationship with the influencer of your choice. Everyone is looking for genuine people to work with. So, when you take your time to share your feedback with them, it shows them that you care about their work as well. It is a free tactic and works all the time with as little as a quick response on their work to let them know you are noticing.
And there you have it, my top recommendations to establish influencer marketing for your startup. Pro-tip: To save more, try looking for micro-influencers for your startup. Collaborating with micro-influencers fetches the same benefits with no budget requirement. There is no denying that influencer marketing is an effectively powerful strategy and, as seen, is going to remain relevant for a long time. It is time for you to adapt it as soon as possible for your startup to gain maximum exposure and engagement.
Author Bio:
Isha Tandon works as a Digital Content Strategist for Orientbell Limited, a leading tile manufacturer in India. Isha’s knack for understanding audiences helps her create value-driven content for her readers that not only educates and informs but is engaging and interesting to read as well. She creates lifestyle pieces that focus on interior design products, trends and processes. She loves to travel to historic places with rich architecture.
