5 Ways Influencer Marketing Can Enhance Customer Relationships

5 Ways Influencer Marketing Can Enhance Customer Relationships

Customer relations are directly tied to your business’s financial well-being. Thus, some brands choose a long way — building their reputation first. They use inbound marketing and high-quality support. However, choosing the right tool could be not that simple because some of them cost hundreds of dollars. Speaking of, compare Intercom vs Drift, for that matter: which one of them costs less? That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.    

That’s why others prefer to win customers using other people. Basically, those they have known for a long time — influencers. Sure thing, some of them also cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But it’s worth it! Cover photo by: Blake Wisz

Sounds intriguing? Find five benefits influencer marketing can bring your business:

1. Nurture your potential customers 

“Looks good, but meh” is a typical reaction of people to a brand-new product. No matter how well its marketers describe the product advantages, the majority would ignore or forget it.

But what interest the same product sparks when people hear their fav bloggers say it is good! Especially when they do it repeatedly in a series of posts, comments, stories, etc.

For instance, healthy snack brand LesserEvil often works with social media influencers to raise brand awareness among its potential customers. When the company decided to spread the word about a new product and boost sales with influencers, LesserEvil used the Popular Pays platform to find relevant content creators and assign discount tracking codes to their selected influencers so they could accurately track the success of their investment. The collaboration helped the company run 37 campaigns, one of which resulted in 733% ROI.

influencer marketing campaign example

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When it comes to conversations in comments sections, people might ignore what a brand has to say in response to their concerns about the product. The sentiment here makes sense: “the brand’s goal is money, so how can I be sure that they don’t lie.” The same comment from a blogger you trust makes a magical effect ㅡ no more doubt that it is worth buying.

Just look how Emma Hothersall nurtures her followers. She runs a blog about outfits and posts many cute Zara updates regularly. But good taste in fashion isn’t the only thing followers love her for. 

Emma answers each comment under the Zara collaboration post:

zara influencer marketing post zara influencer marketing post comments

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It can be just an emoji or a detailed answer on the dress size, material, delivery, etc. But none of Emma’s followers’ comments were left ignored.

It makes people feel cared for. They trust Emma’s choice and buy by her recommendations.

2. Provide insights on what makes your target audience buy

Let’s be clear, businesses always have problems with understanding their target audience. 

For example, here is the way Zara presents its new dresses. Just try to guess how these two fits normally:

zara website influencers

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Influencers know that problem. That’s why they use an unboxing video to present some cloth by describing how it fits and fills.

youtube fashion influencers

Zara summer clothing try-on haul from Roxxsaurus fashion blogger on YouTube

People are more willing to communicate with influencers than with brands. Followers are happy to reply to bloggers in

  • Polls,
  • Q&A stories,
  • Direct messages,
  • Comments,
  • Live streams. 

Thus, influencers get rich data on the audience’s preferences. In addition, numerous tests on different content types, tone of voice, etc., give them an explicit knowledge of how to formulate your marketing messages and demonstrate your products.

Just contact them via socials or using Gmail as a mail client to discuss these points together.

3. Increase customers’ trust and loyalty 

People don’t want to listen to someone perfect. Instead, they prefer to follow someone like them: a real person with real problems. 

Brands aren’t perfect as well. But they can’t post on Instagram something like, “What a taught week. Our suppliers delayed the delivery 🤬? It will make some customers think: if I order something from them, I’ll wait for the delivery for ages. No, thanks.

Bye-bye reputation.

For brands, influencers are a source of outbound sales. But for people, they aren’t about our money. That’s why we allow them to be imperfect. People love influencers making mistakes, having a bad day, and posting unedited photos. It works like this: if bloggers are sincere about their life, they are honest about everything else, including products they recommend. 

Look at the situation with The Lord of the Rings TV series from Amazon Prime. After the first trailer, fans got angry about the main characters’ canon break.

lord of the rings casting lotr casting fans on social media

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lotr youtube comments

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It isn’t the best start for the long-waited launch. Thus, Amazon bosses used its most potent weapon – influencers. They invited LOTR influencers to meet the TV series crew and watch the pilot episode. 

After that, influencers shared their positive feedback on the upcoming premiere:

tolkien professor tweet lotr on prime tweet

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And what a miracle, the audience’s mood has changed. Now we can see more and more positive expectations.

4. Grow customer engagement 

There is too much noise online, so people used to filter what content to read. Now try to guess who’ll get more attention: a brand they barely heard about or a fav blogger?

Influencers have a loyal audience and authority. So it is easier to reach out to your target audience and create conversations around your brand with their help. 

Here are the best content collaboration formats: 

  • Honest video product reviews by an influencer.
  • Conduct polls relevant to the product topic.
  • Let an influencer run your social media accounts.
  • Run a hashtag contest.
  • Launch a giveaway together with an influencer.
  • Offer the influencer’s followers a product discount.

The last one is precisely what Daniel Wellington, watchmaker, did. As a $15,000 startup, they focused on influencer marketing. 

They asked bloggers and their followers to post eye-catching images with brand hashtags. One of them was @meiinpsn ─ a blogger with 240,000 followers on Instagram. Her post about Daniel Wellington’s watch received 8K+ likes:

meiinpsn influencer marketing on instagram

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This strategy helped the #danielwellington hashtag get 900,000 user-generated posts on Instagram and turned it into a well-known 1.7 billion brand.

5. Influencer marketing improves your site ranking

Which means influencers mentioning your brand or product give it better positions and traffic. But, let’s dig deeper into how influencers help businesses meet two ranking factors. 

  • Backlinks from high-quality domains. Links to your product they post on their websites or socials are an excellent boost to your link profile.
  • Quantity and quality of social shares. First, due to the high-quality content, influencers’ posts get numerous reposts. Second, they engage followers to create content for your brand.

The more people know about your company, the more traffic and sales you get.

For example, Welter Heating — a heating and air conditioning brand — collaborated with local influencers. As a result, the company was mentioned in posts of the local weather newsmaker, raper, and other local stars.

welter heating influencer marketing

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When these posts went live, Welter Heating got a 609% traffic growth.

traffic growth from influencer marketing

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Your SEO manager will love such a result. However, not every influencer can bring such results. It’s important to rely on user behavior recording to analyze influencer performance and understand what opinion leaders bring more value to your brand.

Final word: How to achieve those benefits

Intrigued with the perspectives of influencer marketing? The examples mentioned above prove that it works. But only if you choose wisely. Here is a short guide to start with:

  1. Chose your goal: reach out to a new market, get more sales, increase site traffic or brand awareness, etc.
  2. Know your target audience to find a relevant influencer.
  3. Build influencer agreements according to the Federal Trade Commission requirements, like the “sponsored” marker.
  4. Evaluate how relevant influencers’ content is to your niche, how many potential customers you can reach, and how good a blogger is at engaging with its followers.
  5. Reach out to the chosen one. But first, interact with the influencer’s content. And don’t forget to personalize your message.
  6. Discuss the best content format together.
  7. Measure results with UTM links, discount codes, etc.

Use it to build long-lasting relationships with customers via influencers.

Read next: 15 Best Influencer Agencies in 2022

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