An influencer is someone in your niche or industry with ‘power’ over your target audience. Influencers have a long history in marketing. Primarily, influencers are used to create more awareness about a particular product. Initially, companies used compelling figures like celebrities and athletes to help sell their products through television and radio ads. The rise of social media has made other types of influencers more popular. Today, influencers fit into the following categories:
- Celebrities: Artists, athletes, and pop culture stars.
- Industry experts and thought leaders
- Micro-influencers: Individuals with an impact on social media
- Bloggers and content creators
The bulk of influencer marketing today occurs on social media. Micro-influencers and bloggers are a more cost-effective way to access instant credibility for automobiles.
Over the last decade, we have seen social media grow rapidly in importance. More than 3.4 billion people actively use social media – that’s 45% of the world’s population.
Inevitably these people look up to influencers on social media to guide them with their decision making.
Once an automobile company finds its influencers, you need to convince them to work with you. As influencer marketing grows more popular, the demand for influencers is rising. A few ways to connect with influential figures include:
- Gifting them with automobile accessories and services in exchange for a post on their social media page.
- Sponsor posts: Seek out bloggers with impact in the automobile industry and pay for them to write a blog or article relevant to your space. This is a less labour-intensive way to work with influencers.
- Guest posts: Ask people to write on your website, or request to place a piece of content on their site instead. This helps to boost brand reach.
If an automobile company is able to find the right influencer, it automatically results in a drastic increase in sales over a period of time. However, before you decide to pay or gift influencer goods and services in order to promote your automobile, you have to be on the lookout for a few things.
Check the number of followers the influencer has. The number of influencers automatically means the number of people who will see your automobile. The best thing to do is to go for an influencer with a really high number of followers so the automobile can have a wider audience.
Make sure the influencer you choose is an authority in the field of automobiles or else, you’ll waste your money and not see any significant improvement. Your influencer must be automobile savvy and held in high esteem by his/her followers.
Finally, do well to check the track record of this influencer. Find out how successful previous campaigns he/she has carried out were. With this information, you can speculate on how successful yours would be.