Think Influencer Marketing: The Basics to Help you Get Started

Influencer Marketing is a Great Strategy

An influencer marketing (or influence marketing) strategy targets few key individuals or groups of individuals who have influence over your target segment. Influencer marketing is an updated approach to marketing and public relations where you target the people to whom your prospects turn for information. It may add a nice component to your marketing mix and provide amplification to your overall content marketing strategy.

Here are some quick examples:

• A popular industry blogger shares one of your blog posts or a whitepaper on his/her blog driving a huge spike of traffic to your site
• Your company is included in an analyst report such as the Gartner Magic Quadrant increasing brand awareness
• A magazine interviews a recent customer on a new implementation creating your position in the marketplace

Influencer marketing can offer the following business benefits to any expansion stage company:

1. Raise awareness of your brand within the industry
2. Increase your web traffic
3. Test your messaging and value proposition
4. Generate inbound leads
5. Build credibility

For more on the benefits of influencer marketing, click here.

Types of Influencers

Like your target market, influencers come in all shapes and sizes. Here is a list of common influencers, courtesy of Barbara French.

• Academia
• Authors and management thinkers
• Bloggers (and microbloggers)
• Business and trade journalists
• Buyers groups, purchasing lists and procurement authorities
• Commentators and other individuals
• Complementary partners
• Conferences and events
• Consumers and consumer groups
• Customer firms
• Financial analysts
• Government agencies and regulators
• Individual and niche consultants
• Industry analysts
• Industry bodies, forums and federations
• Internal influencers/employees
• Management consultancies
• Online forums
• Peers (role-based, industry-based)
• Retailers
• Specialty consultancies
• Standards bodies
• Systems Integrators
• VARs, distributors and similar channel partners
• Venture capitalists and investors

Need help on identifying the right influencers for your company? Read more here.

In my next post I will shed some light on marketing to your influencers.