Influencer marketing is all the rage in today’s business landscape. Not only is an influencer marketing strategy relatively easy to implement, but the benefits are clear and proven. For starters, here are a few influencer marketing statistics to prove its effectiveness:
- According to one study, 99.3% of influencers use Instagram to execute their influencer marketing strategies
- Eighty-four percent of micro-influencers charge less than $250 per post, making it a very budget-friendly strategy to focus on
- According to a Nielsen study, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their online peers, even if they don’t know the person directly
- The average return on investment (ROI) for marketers who used influencer marketing was $7.65 per dollar spent
- Of the ten most popular YouTube channels, eight of them are hosted by influencers
Snapchat is designed to be fun and engaging for their users, which makes it a perfect platform for communicating with your market through an influencer strategy. Over the past few years, more and more brands—as well as influencers—have turned to Snapchat to get creative with their content.
Here’s how you can get started with influencer marketing for Snapchat.
Get Your Site Ready
Before you launch your influencer marketing strategy, be sure that your website is equipped to handle an influx of site visitors. You may unknowingly be using a shared hosting provider, and should consider switching to a virtual private server.
According to Dreamhost, “if your website’s audience is consistently growing, you’ll want to consider upgrading. You don’t want to run the risk of your website running slowly or, even worse, your server crashing because it can’t handle the traffic. Once you’ve completed all your website housekeeping, it’s time to move on to the next steps.
Choose the Right Influencer
Choosing the right influencer is one of the most important aspects of your influencer marketing campaign. After all, this is the person who will be representing your brand. Without the right influencer, you can consider it a wasted investment.
The key is to thoroughly find the influencers who are most aligned with your brand. By examining each of their social profiles—not just Snapchat—you can better understand their messaging and overall social personality. Fortunately, there are a few tools you can use to identify some key influencers, which takes away from the need to search manually. These tools include BuzzStream, BuzzSumo, Grin.co, NinjaOutreach, and Klear.
While each of these platforms are different and have varying capabilities, you should try each to see what works best for you. However, for the most part, you’re able to search for different influencers by industry, and filter by follower count, reach, and other metrics.
Once you’ve compiled a list of viable candidates, begin researching each of their social profiles. Pay special attention to the different ways they engage with their audiences. Are they just posting photos or commenting back? Are they telling interesting stories on Snapchat, or merely posting photos of themselves? These are all things you should consider.
To help you better understand what it takes to run a successful Snapchat account, take a look at these successful Snapchat influencers.
Let the Influencer Take Over
You may have heard of the “celebrity takeover”—a marketing method used by bigger budget companies to build a buzz around their brands. With influencer marketing, it works the same way. Once you’ve chosen the right influencer, you allow them to be your brand for a day. The neat thing about takeover is that the influencer promotes it on their own; this way, they can get their own audience to come over and tune into your Snapchat profile. Because of this, it’s a great way to grow your Snapchat audience without having to spend a fortune on Snapchat ads.
Furthermore, one of the biggest reasons takeover are so popular is because they’re raw and authentic; the influencer who conducts the takeover helps viewers realize how they themselves can connect with the brand, and they achieve this by giving it a voice.
Guide Your Influencer
Your influencer comes armed with an audience, but you have to put in some legwork, too. By guiding your influencer, you can ensure their messaging stays consistent with your vision. For instance, you might send them to a live event, like a conference in your industry. Or, you might help them better understand your product or service, allowing them to review it effectively.
Be sure that when you guide them, you don’t rule them. This means that you should refrain from giving them a script, and allow them the freedom to express their creativity and originality.
For example, they might encourage your visitors to enter a contest. Contests are a great way for you encourage your viewers to not just view your stories, but to get involved, and influencers are great at doing just that.
