Lead generation is not an easy task. Even if you have a great product, if you don’t market it well, it won’t be successful. So, what if you could actually borrow someone’s massive audience to market your own brand?
Influencer marketing is a tool to do that is relatively inexpensive and quicker. Social media influencers tend to be experts in their niche and tend to have a loyal fan base. If you can partner with them, you can reach out to their audience easily. With them promoting your brand, you are more likely to generate more leads.
If you’re not sure about how to use influencer marketing for lead generation, we’ve got some tips for you. Here are a few tactics that will help you in the process of lead generation:
1. Find The Right Influencers
The right influencers for your brand will be the ones whose values are in sync with the goals of your brand. To find the most relevant results, search influencers who work in the same niche as yours. Take some time to do research on the top influencers in your niche.
Check out the kind of content that they create and the kind of engagement that they get. If an influencer’s messages resonate with what your brand stands for, your campaign is more likely to become more successful. This is because your content will come across as authentic.
Your brand will also reach out to an audience that is genuinely interested in your cause. So, you are more likely to get high-quality leads.
Image via Instagram
If your brand promotes eco-friendly living, you should collaborate with an influencer who post similar content. BamBoo roots collaboration with Meagan Weldon is a great example of it. Both of them believe in making the Earth plastic-free.
Finding the right influencers can be a tough task. If you are not sure about how to go about it, you can use influencer marketing platforms. Grin gives you access to a pool of influencers from across the world. You can also filter your results according to reach, social platforms, or engagement rate.
2. Guest Blogging
If you are partnering with an influencer who has their own blog, you should leverage it for lead generation. Check out the type of content that is posted on the influencer’s blog. You should create content that is relevant to their blog as well as your brand. Also add a link to your website in the post.
You can tap into your influencer’s audience to generate more leads with it. Overall, it can boost your traffic and even drive up sales. If you are collaborating with an influencers whose blog has a high domain authority, you can get quality backlinks too. This will help you with SEO and even improve your search rankings.
Getting featured on an influencer’s website is a quick way to boost engagement and traffic. Beauty influencer Jaclyn Hill showcases all the brands that she shops from on her website. She even gives links to their website so it can help with lead generation.
Image via Jaclyn Hill
3. Ask For Testimonials
An influencer’s relationship with their followers is based on trust. If an influencer vouches for a product, their followers believe them. So, endorsements by influencers can really help to create a buzz about your brand.
But if you want to enhance lead generation, make sure you are featuring their testimonials on your website. So even after your influencer marketing campaign has ended, you can showcase the endorsement given by the influencer.
To grab your audience’s attention of your audience, make sure you are featuring their testimonials on the homepage of your website. Some websites even have a separate testimonial page. But if you want to maximise its reach, you should make sure it’s placed on the homepage. Marucci Sports’ homepage has testimonials right on the homepage where they can be easily seen.
Image via Marucci
You can also use their testimonials when you are sending out emails. The most important thing in email marketing is to grab the attention of the viewer. Influencers are popular, so you can count on them to pique people’s curiosity. Alternatively, you can also use their testimonials to create your own advertisements.
4. Social Media Takeover
If you are not sure how to create interesting content for your followers on social media, take a step back. Let the influencers take the reins from you. Influencers are constantly creating content, so they know how to get creative with content generation.
With a social media takeover, you can entrust them with the responsibility of creating content for you. Let them get directly in touch with your followers. Also, it is a good idea to get the influencers to publicize the social media takeover on their own handle.
This type of cross-promotion will give you access to your influencer’s followers too. If their followers are redirected to your link, you will get more leads. Make sure that a link to your website is mentioned in all posts.
You can also do multiple social media takeovers with different influencers. Along with diversity of audience, your content will also stay fresh.Maserati is one such brand that partners with influencers from different niches regularly. In the past, they have worked with ballerinas, rugby players, celebrities, architects, and singers.
By partnering with different personalities, they wanted to showcase Maserati’s relevance in different niches.
Image via Maserati
However, the only reason a lot of businesses keep away from social media hangovers is privacy concern. They don’t want to give away control of their social media handles to influencers. But there is a way to work around it.
You don’t necessarily have to give up complete control. You can ask influencers to send you all the content and you can post it. Whether it is articles, videos or pictures, you can take a look at them before posting. This way, influencers will be your content creators but not the ones uploading it.
If you’re planning to go an Instagram or Facebook Live with an influencer, then this can’t work. In that case, you will need to completely hand them access to your social media accounts. But if you’re comfortable with that, then it is a great strategy for lead generation. Overall, it is also helps to build long-term relationships with influencers.
5. Share Content Created By Influencers
The best way to leverage influencer marketing and generate more leads is to share influencer-generated content. Influencers will share the content that they create for your brand on their social media accounts. But that’s not enough.
You should put in effort to enhance lead generation too. Make sure that influencer-generated content is shared on all your social media platforms. Use it for email marketing as well. It can help to generate audience’s interest and to grab their attention.
Also, it acts a social proof that your brand is being endorsed by experts in your niche. This can directly affect lead generation and sales. According to a study, 56% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product after they see a positive image of it. It also showed that 49% people said they were more likely to purchase a product if is endorsed by a real person.
Glossier always makes it a point to showcase their collaborations with influencers. It builds credibility for your brand and also to generate leads.
Image via Instagram
If a post featuring an influencer is received well, do not be afraid to repost it. Give it a few days gap, and post it again, so that it reaches a wider audience. It will also help people in associating particular influencers with your brand.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing can enhance lead generation if you strategize well. Results for lead generation from influencer marketing are relatively quicker. Overall, it is also a less expensive tool.
If you want to enhance your lead generation, read the above article to know how influencer marketing can help you. It’s not very difficult, but requires some understanding of how influencer marketing works.
In which other ways can influencer marketing help in lead generation? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.