Influencer marketing is not a new thing- it’s just being accessed differently now! A decade ago, marketing campaigns meant hiring a celebrity spokesperson to go on television and the radio to promote products. Now, anyone who a smartphone has the potential to be an “influencer” on one of many social media platforms. And that’s the beauty of it! There are influencers in almost every niche… you just have to find the ones that suit your business.
By far, the most useful for the wedding industry is Instagram. Instagram has over 500 million active monthly users, and yet less than half (48.8%) of all brands are on Instagram (this number is set to rise by the end of 2017).
So not only should you already be on Instagram, you should also be connecting with influencers, networking with fellow wedding suppliers and communicating with customers. Do all of this, and potential customers are likely to notice!
So, how do you find influencers? Easy. You can go about this a few different ways:
1. Tribe:
Tribe is a platform for both brands and influencers. You can post a campaign, and wait for the content to pour in! You can see the price, the influencers profile and the content that they’ve made for you. And from there, you can deny or approve or suggest changes to the content.
It’s easy and that way, you won’t end up with any content you dislike. It’s free to join, but Tribe takes a cut per post that you approve.
2. Social rank:
Social rank will help you to identify the followers you currently have and their stats, which makes it really simple to identify who is both a fan of yours and influential- these are the accounts you should either target for cross-promotion or paid posts. Or even send them some free stuff- because people love free stuff! If you run a wedding cake business for example, why not send them a box of sweet treats?! This kind of promotion is common in other industries, so take what you can apply to your business and try something a little outside of the box.
3. It’s not what you know…
It’s who you know! Are you friends with anyone who has a large social media following? Did you meet an awesome celebrant at the last Easy Weddings Industry event? Then use them! Ask them to plug you on their Instagram and do the same for them. If you get together a team (or pro-network) of vendors that you love working with, you can promote each other that way. And on the plus side, when a couple books with you, you can direct them to your pro-network on your Easy Weddings storefront and then the featured suppliers can do the same for you!
The best advice I can give vendors who choose to pay for influencers is to have a goal in mind when you begin and do your best to gather data that shows how the post impacted that. If your goal is to gain followers, get more enquiries or to get your name out there, then you should be checking your data before and after each paid-for post. Then you will know if it’s worth the investment.
