Most of us may have heard about influencer marketing, but might not know what it is. What influencer marketing is? Influencer marketing involves marketing products and services to those who have a sway over the things other people buy. In simple form, it is a strategy that businesses use to promote their products and services by partnering with popular social media users. It is said that businesses are making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Sounds pretty interesting, right? So why not experimenting with the wonder of influencer marketing for Sri Lankan businesses, if you have not already tried it yet?
Influencers have built relationships, trust, and credibility with their fans. People trust their content and recommendations. Therefore brands can easily build their brand online for a fairly low cost and raise awareness among their target audience by utilizing the influencers.
It is said that “61% of marketers consider finding relevant influencers for a campaign is difficult’ Your choice of the influencer changes with what industry you are currently in. So basically every industry can,t optimize the same set of influencers. Therefore choosing the right influencer that is relevant to your industry is crucial. Because you’ll deliver the message to the wrong audience or else your target audience will get a different message if so your whole campaign will be a waste of investment!! So for a successful influencer campaign, select what category of influencers matches best for your business. You can refer to their profiles to get a better idea of their fan base and then pick out the best influencer.
Since one strategy won’t fit all types of businesses, We will be discussing different influencer strategies for some chosen industries.
1. Fashion and beauty industry
The above statement indicates that most of the brands go with successful collaborations with influencers to boost up their sales. But just doing an influencer marketing campaign for the sake of doing one won’t be impactful.
Fashion and beauty influencers can make your audience believe in you, by using their credibility. “Seeing is believing’. We all normally tend to believe in something that we see. When your target audience sees, influencers create content using your products and showcase the results in real-time through video, photos, or via live streaming they tend to believe. Fashion and beauty influencers can convey the message of the uniqueness of your products, demonstrating how to use them and encourage the audience to try out.
Just think when we regularly see an influencer or bunch of influencers recommending a product, we get an urge of checking it out right? Even we will feel like visiting there. It is because influencer marketing has created a bond and trust between us and the brand. Audiences are constantly looking for more authentic content, therefore influencers’ recommendations on beauty products will also create transparency and credibility.
When it comes to female beauty products and fashion products there are so many products in Sri Lanka as well as in the global market. So your consumers have a hard time coming to a decision. In situations like this, the role of influencer marketing will play a major role in convincing your customers to buy your products.
2. Cafes and restaurants
“I had a burger from a shop in my neighborhood’ it was awesome”
With the power of word of mouth, earlier this was how most of us got to know about cool places to eat. The word of mouth still exists but in a completely different form. Social media conversations now have taken the role of traditional word of mouth.
Most of us scroll down on social media especially on Instagram and do good research before picking up a cafe or a restaurant to hang out. We usually check the photos, comments, reviews, and then come to the final decision of choosing the best restaurant to have a visit. To make that decision influencers will play a huge role in any brand. Because when we scroll down on the feed we may notice some well-known people have already visited that place and have given good reviews and recommendations.
Cafes and restaurant brands can collaborate with food influencers who are commonly known as foodies, to get the attention of their target audience. These brands can invite influencers to their place to have a visit and have a meal. So that you can deliver the full experience you’re planning to deliver to a potential customer of yours. Based on that experience the influencers will share images of your mouth-watering delicious meals or they may even give a review on the cool atmosphere at your place. Whatever they felt awesome at your place, they will post on their social media. So the audience who sees will get fascinated and there will be a high probability of them visiting to try out your place.
3. Tech industry
If your business is into technology-related products, you can go for partnerships with influencers who have an in-depth and industry-specific knowledge of particular technology niches. These influencers are commonly known as “techies”. Your target audience will get more interested when an expert demonstrates and reviews your products. So that the audience will gain the fullest knowledge they need to gain. The pace of new innovative products makes many brands struggle to keep up with the industry.
Having a unique product and creating a large reach with promotions can be very difficult. At this point, the role of tech influencers will give you an extra chance of winning this huge competition. They will help you to reach your audiences of the tech industry, while also spreading awareness. Get some techies to demonstrate your products and educate your audience. It will be more engaging and effective rather than just a sales representative presenting it.
4. Travel industry
The travel industry is one of those niches that are heavily positively affected by influencer marketing. So These influencers will share information while they travel, about the location, the interesting stuff to do there, and many more. Their reviews on a destination or a travel service that will have certain credibility with their followers’ community, even more, reliable and interesting than the conventional advertising campaign from destination or travel agency. So that the audience will get interested plus they will gain trust and when it comes to the next vacation they will be much eager to travel to a recommended destination by an influencer. Also, they will be even interested in checking out the hotels and restaurants visited by those influencers.
Travel style varies from people to people, some are interested in inbound traveling while some are interested in outbound. So using travel influencers in marketing will meet the diverse needs of everyone. Different types of travel influencers with different travel styles will reach different groups of the audience and thus will create different effects in the travel industry therefore choose influencers wisely concerning your travel niche.
Travel brands can sponsor influencers to travel to a specific destination. They can even give accommodations in hotels and restaurants at those locations. So as I mentioned before, we believe in what we see so when the influencers explain and show the excitement of different locations the potential audience will get that inner feeling of “ I should visit that place soon”. So that’s the power of influencers!!
See the wonder what an influencer can do! Just a snap or a quick video and we fall for it. Influencer marketing is one of the biggest trends in digital marketing and it will grow more in the future, So never be too late to start, today will be the best day to start Influencer marketing for Sri Lankan businesses.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Domedia newsletter. And if you got interested in influencer marketing why not try it out for your own business. Don’t hesitate to get our support and guidance on this. visit our new website dofluence.com, especially for influencer marketing for Sri Lankan businesses.
