Grow your Membership Business with Influencer Marketing
August 7, 2020 9 min read
You are set in your online membership business, but want to grow it further in 2024? It can be tough for the marketing team to keep up with the trends and newer marketing strategies. However, you can select a few strategies and focus on them exponentially. One such marketing technique is Influencer Marketing.
This has been the buzz word since the 2010s, however it has existed since a long time.
Do you remember the word-of-mouth marketing or doorstep marketing from earlier? A sales person used to demonstrate the product or service and influence people for a purchase. Well, now this has gone online with Influencer Marketing on various online platforms. Let us understand this glamorising world of Influencer Marketing and how you as a subscription business can leverage it.
Who is an Influencer and What they do?
Just as the word entails, an influencer is someone who influences other people in different segments of life. They usually have a global yet niche audience who blindly trust them for their suggestions and choices. These influencers are market leaders in video creation, audio creation, blog writing, TV commercials, serials, or movies!
During the Barbenheimer debate, all the brands were showcasing their products in all pink or all black avatar. It was the movies and the star’s influence over the market. Similarly, we see many instances wherein a fashion statement, a service, or a product is brought to the centre of the market by celeb influencers. Look at the Taylor craze, she’s definitely influencing a separate audience to do what she does. Imagine embedding your product in one of Taylor’s songs!
I know I know, as a growing membership business, you won’t have such funds. However, there are many other pocket friendly ways to market your website. We shall go through that as well.
In a broader sense, an influencer strategy is not just about getting multiple followers and making money out of that. Instead, an influencer helps in building a brand that the followers would trust and rely on. Only the right influencers can bring you such an organic, trusted following and members.
How Influencers Can Help Your Business
Before jumping on to the bandwagon of marketing through influencers, let us look at certain points as to how it can help your subscription business.1. Increase Brand Awareness:
An influencer has a large audience, and a dedicated one at that. Your brand will be introduced to a new market of audience and thus, expand your reach.2. Boost Credibility and Trust:
When a genuine influencer endorses your brand, their followers are automatically going to trust you for your services. With a loyal following of the influencer, you get yourself a loyal audience as well with this marketing.3. Increased Engagement:
Influencers have a loyal following because they create relatable content and put up ideas that resonate with them. This increases engagement rate for you. Relatable is equivalent to engaging more members.4. Targeted Marketing:
When you do proper research and find an influencer that resonates with your target audience and niche, you are mixing up influencer marketing with targeted marketing. Thus, you receive queries and follows from truly interested people only, saving you a lot of time.5. Generate Content:
Reuse the high quality content created by influencers to show it across your social platforms for continued trust. Lay down a good relationship with them for a sustained benefit of their trusted community.
How to Pinpoint the Right Kind of Influencer?
This kind of marketing is trending. Around 25% of marketers use influencer marketing and around 69% of people say that they trust the products and services recommended by them. However, it is important for you to find the right influencer to leverage the benefits. How can you look out for them?
LinkedIn: If your product is aimed at professionals, go towards LinkedIn. LinkedIn search is very powerful and you can even specify location and niche. Based on that, you would find users who promote other services and have a loyal following.
Google Search: Start searching for related terms and keywords of your industry and find potential influencers. Look through the type of content they post and the interactions they receive.
Social Media Platforms: Take help of specific hashtags and phrases to discover a plethora of influencers who are already talking about a niche related to you. Look at their following, posting schedule, comments, and shares to understand how tall they stand.
Influencer Marketplaces: There are various platforms like AspireIQ, Influencity, and Upfluence that can help you search for influencers and connect with them.
Things to Keep in Mind While Choosing an Influencer
- Influencers who are truly in the biz, care little about the number of followers and focus on quality content. Thus, do not get blinded by the number of followers and study their content and interaction while choosing.
- Look at their posting schedule to understand how consistent they are in providing valuable content. Further, see if their page is full of ads or they create any organic content. If they are an ad specific influencer, see that they are not supporting your competitor.
- Do not just directly approach them with your offer. You might get lost in the multiple offers that they might be receiving. Build a rapport with them, engage with them, show them the power of your membership site.
- When you’re proposing an offer, show how your membership site can help them and their followers. What kind of value proposition you bring to the table and what positive change you aim at. The influencers are interested in providing value to their audience, thus, you must show it to them with your membership site.
- Discuss the rates and influencer’s deliverables beforehand. What are they going to charge you, is it going to be a barter, or are you providing some offers for their followers, or are they going to be your affiliate in the long run. If you are deciding on a specific rate, decide how many pieces of content they would deliver. It can range from 24 hour stories, to video of different durations, a blog post, an article, and so on.
The influencer’s are also of various types. Based on their following and status, they are bifurcated in these following categories.
Types of Influencers to Promote Memberships
Blog Influencers
Influencer’s do not just mean video content. Blogs are an equal part of it. They have a loyal readership and can effectively promote your membership business. You can opt for guest posting to tap into their audience. Look at the platform of Smart Blogger. They have a huge community of aspiring writers and bloggers. Are you selling courses for writing professionals? Then they’re your influencer.Micro Influencers
Micro Influencers have their defined niche and have a highly engaged community of followers. Their followers would range between 10K to 100K. Or even Nano Influencers whose follower count ranges from 1-10K. They are your best bet for a budget-friendly yet highly effective marketing strategy.
Look at Allison Graham, whose Instagram handle is shedoeshim. She is a pioneer in influencing Gay people to live their life to the fullest. If you are dealing with a membership community of sharing men’s fashion news or an LGBTQ+ support group, they would be your best bet for influencer marketing.Celebrity Influencers
Celebrity or Mega Influencers have more than 1 Million followers and are shining on screen and off screen. A collaboration with them is going to target a huge army of loyal followers and provide vast exposure to your brands. However, there’s one issue, their following is so vast that even their non-hardcore fans sometimes come across their content and neglect it. There’s no surety of hitting an exact audience or target group. Further it’s gonna cost you a fortune baby.
If you’re running a membership site for football enthusiasts for sharing latest updates, gameplay, online games, and a community of crazy footballers, you can target Ronaldo, Messi, or Mbappe to be your influencer. Too fancy, I know!Social Media Influencers
There are influencers who are famous over a specific platform. For instance, a YouTube influencer, an Instagram influencer, or someone who is famous over X for their witty tweets. Ian Moyse is a Twitter Influencer who talks about SaaS, Cloud, Sales, Marketing. Is your service related to any of it? He’s your answer to market your site further.
Things to Consider for Strategizing Influencer Marketing
Define Your Company’s Goals
You must have a clear goal of what you want to achieve through influencer marketing. This can range from increasing Brand Awareness, Driving Website Traffic, Conversions, Increase in Members. Keep measurable goals to track the campaign success.Identify Your Campaign Audience
Your target audience must be at the centre of your plan. Based on that you would approach a specific influencer. They must align with your membership offering so that you reach a desired demography.Track Campaign Growth
It is important to monitor and measure your campaign’s success using various tools.
- Engagement: Track likes, shares, comments, mentions, and direct messages.
- Traffic and Sales: Monitor clicks, conversions, membership queries, and follower growth.
- Tools: Utilise tools like Buzzstream, BuzzSumo, and Google Analytics to track and analyse your campaign’s performance.
Examples of Amazing Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Remember the campaigns of Barbie-The Movie in 2023. Many influencers globally including Dua Lipa posted their own personal versions of “This Barbie is….”. This campaign brought out about 1.5 million posts on the #BarbieTheMovie and #BarbieMovie on Instagram alone.
Gymshark is another such example wherein a wide range of fitness influencers and enthusiasts promote their products, ethos, and lifestyle.
Have you seen Canva Ads from an influencer? A designing product offering a freemium model. They identified YouTubers and Content Creators who were posting guides on using Canva, tutorials, courses. They even got to know that Guy Kawasaki’s page featured designs made using Canva. What was next, he is now Canva’s Brand Evangelist.
Key Takeaways
This is an incredibly effective way to reach a wider audience. It aids in business growth and boosts brand awareness. Consider this strategy to boost your membership website and have a face for your site. This would build trust in your members. It’s like your very own Phoebe Buffay creating catchy songs for your brand – unique, memorable, and highly engaging.
More articles:
6 Marketing Strategies to Skyrocket your Membership site in 2024
Brian Denim
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