If you are a small business owner that uses social media, your main objective is to build an engaged following that can be converted into actual customers. But how exactly do you make that conversion occur?
Instagram has grown to be one of the most effective ways to sell to consumers through the use of influencer marketing. One of the biggest differences between influencer marketing on Facebook versus Instagram, is that people on Instagram are more likely to follow people that they don’t know based off of their pictures. In addition to this Facebooks Edgerank, which is an algorithm with 100,000 individual weights, many of the posts that celebrities make never actually reach all of their followers.
Celebrities have hundreds of thousands to millions of followers on their Instagram account, who constantly view what is occurring within their lives. This is the reason that brands have been utilizing celebrities to get customers by paying them to post their product on their page. Also, not only will the followers of the celebrities see the post, but it also has the opportunity to be posted in other places, as the press frequently check the pages of Instagram accounts for stories.
In this article, I am going to provide you with 3 tips to help in being successful in executing influencer marketing using Instagram. Here are the 3 tips:
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Choose the Right Celebrity
Just because an individual is a celebrity, it doesn’t mean that their image is the right fit for your business’s brand. Whatever your brand stands for, the chosen celebrity has to be able to magnify that message rather than distract from it. But it must be a natural fit, so that your product does not look like a forced advertisement the celebrity is only doing to get paid.
Bellami Hair pulls this natural fit off by having beautiful celebrities act as walking billboards for their hair extensions. Kylie Jenner is their biggest ambassador, with 38 million Instagram followers. Millennial women love her look and status and want to imitate the persona that she exudes. How many women would try to pull off blue hair themselves? Not many. But when a celebrity with the status of Kylie does so and shows how she does it, interest and imitation are sure to be produced.
Bellami Hair understood how this process would work and therefore chose Kylie as a brand ambassador because she has considerable influence over their target consumer. Choose the right celebrity in order to produce a win-win situation for both the ambassador and the brand. Do your research about your target consumer and the celebrities which resonate most with them so that you can position your brand to gain the right attention.
Identify your brand identity. What do you stand for? What should people associate with your brand? Once these questions are answered, then you can select a celebrity that naturally fits within the brand you develop. As with any marketing campaign, you will want to know who your target audience is before picking a specific celebrity to promote your product.
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Show the Product in Action
In the beginning, Instagram only allowed you to post pictures. When they gave users the ability to add video, it completely changed the landscape for influencer marketing. With a single picture, it can be difficult to show a product in action, but with video, you can take people through the process in a short video. Essentially this short video, is a short commercial that feels much more authentic.
PhunkeeDuck is a great example of how this process effectively works. When you first saw celebrities such as Chris Brown standing on a cool device that transported him around, you wondered what exactly was he standing on. Then you began to see more and more celebrities riding this device and you probably began to want to purchase one for yourself. That is how effective marketing works at its best. Show user experience, such as enjoyment in order to induce a strong desire for others to purchase.
How long do you think the PhunkeeDuck was available in the marketplace before the company decided to use celebrities as brand ambassadors? The PhunkeeDuck would have never gained the attention it now has in the marketplace without showing celebrities having fun with the product. The use of celebrities as ambassadors has helped to propel the product towards the attention of the general public and now the company’s ability to sell product has become an easier task.
The press began to see the product over and over again, and eventually multiple media outlets began to write about them. The product has been covered by Forbes, Wired, MTV, and many others. This is the power of influencer marketing.
Its important to communicate to the representative of the celebrity how you would like the product to be portrayed in the video. Not only will your video serve as a commercial for them, but show them actually how the product can be used.
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Don’t Tell them The Benefits, Show Them
Affordable Look knows the importance of this strategy because it has helped them to grow their company significantly. Celebrities are always having pictures taken of them, so their appearance has to be great the majority of the time. And one feature that helps to pull off a great look is a great smile showing perfect white teeth.
Each celebrities post on Instagram of the product, shows them with white teeth and the product is being beamed upon their teeth. The perception the product shows off of this single picture, is that their teeth can be whitened instantly with just a beam from their product. This is infectious marketing because it helps to produce mimic behavior, that works towards consistently increasing brand awareness as the product grows in popularit
Conclusion
Make the results seem like something only celebrities once had access to but is now available to the general public. When people feel like they are achieving the same results of a celebrity, they believe they are getting a great deal and have no problem spending money.
Using celebrity influencers on Instagram can help to tremendously boost your small business’s brand awareness. But the strategy being utilized has to be effective in order to produce the outcomes that your business desires. What you want is more than just a picture showing your product.
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Tiffany
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Billy
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