5 Examples of Influencer Marketing on the Internet and Social Media Today

Influencer marketing is a common term that we now hear on a daily basis. The way influencer marketing commonly works is brands will reach out to authorities within their space and approach them with a new opportunity or product/service to promote. This is referenced as ‘influencer marketing’ simply because the person being approached and possibly reviewing or mentioning a product, is an ‘influencer’ in their space.

A good example of this would be any of the YouTube users with millions of follower, independent fashion bloggers who gain the attention of big media brands, and anyone else how might be an expert and have a following within their space.

There are many ways to gain attention with influencer marketing, and I’ve listed a few ideas and methods for you below.

1. Affiliate Marketing and Discount Codes

If your main objective is to specifically increase sales, then your campaign should incentivize both the influencer as well as the consumer. Push the customer to buy with an effective call-to-action followed by a special discount code which is too hard to resist. Including an affiliate link to allow brands to point sales straight to their movement and send commissions got from sales according to the agreement can actually get the influencer behind your service/product. This is commonly seen when bloggers or marketing influencers are pushing web hosting or a software product. It’s not uncommon for an affiliate network to create custom landing pages with the site owners face, name and testimonial on the sales page.

This is also seen in the world of celebrity endorsements as well — just no so much with the affiliate or coupon code aspect. In the case of The General, they went out and grabbed Shaq as a celebrity spokesperson for the brand. While there isn’t a specific affiliate code or discount in place, the option is there to “Start a Quote”, which costs nothing for the end user.

Simply having the association and trust from a big name player like Shaq can do wonders for a brand, along with any affiliate marketing promotions (if they had one)

2. Ambassador Roles

Same as celebrity endorsements, loyal and trustworthy ambassador positions have the perspective to change the image of a brand. If you’ve tried influencer marketing before and found a specific influencer who actually reverberates with your target market and brand, why not keep them in a continuing campaign and check if the impetus puts up from the original commitment.

With that being said, ambassador and celebrity roles are quickly becoming a topic of discussion as big money continues to flow into this space. Jezebel has a great article on this topic, while also providing various examples of how top brands and celebrities are making the influencer connection.

3. Giveaways and Competitions

Contests and giveaways have been one of the best means for marketing and lead generation since the beginning of time. Now, thanks to the power of the internet and being able to track everything down to the click, giveaways and competitions are a marketers dream come true.

Finding and teaming up with a social media influencers using an influencer marketing platform is extremely successful in improving your brand exposure, awareness, and reaching potential customers and new followers. A struggle gets everyone engaged, and involved quite frequently, people purchase things anyway, though they don’t succeed for fear of losing!

There is also a whole marketing out there for the buying and selling of accounts across various social platforms as well. The demand for this is often associated with the ability to spend money versus time to build up a following from scratch.

Even with Instagram being a photo-base social platform, it’s yet another opportunity to create something fun and exciting for your audience to contribute to. Bloglovin has a great article on the many different ways to use influencer marketing on Instagram, while also showcase how brands like Natasha’s Kitchen has found success with simple giveaways for kitchen appliances and food. How could your brand or business be doing the same?

4. Endorsed Social Media Mentions

The majority of influencers are very confident with their social network platforms and only talks about venues, products, and brands that they actually love or have a job association with. However, the majority of mentioned products or endorsements out there are usually backed by big money or free products.

We can even take a look at this tweet from Khloe Kardashian from a few years back and see that she was simply paid or compensated to make this update (Ad). Apparently, it didn’t go that well, as Old Navy was then sued for using a Kim K. look alike in one of their ads for the brand.

5. PR Stunt

PR stunts can be quite a dangerous practice because there is no assurance your activation will produce coverage and get the targeted objectives (like email sign ups, brand exposure, etc.) you may have expected. In order for a PR stunt to work… you need good PR coverage. It is important that you properly investigate your customers and look for the right influencers who are best suitable for your campaign and brand message. This will allow you to comprise them in the activation of PR and boost your approach.

Even if a PR stunt or ad campaign does get you the attention you wanted, it might reverse on you and turn into a bit media disaster instead. Take a look at these big name brands that launched ‘creative’ ad campaigns that turned into the some of the worst branding disasters in 2015.

Is Influencer Marketing Right for Your Brand?

At the end of the day, we all want to have celebrity endorsements and a spokesperson with a massive online following — but at what cost? It’s going to take a lot of time, money and research to make sure your next influencer marketing campaign goes off with not only a hitch but also that it pulls a nice ROI in the process. With the rise of social media and new influencers being created every day, influencer marketing is here to stay — it’s just a matter of figuring out how you want to take advantage of it.

If you’d like to learn more about influencer marketing and follow some of the best branding experts and entrepreneurs who specialize in this area, I highly recommend you take a look at my post on Influencer Marketing Days. I recently had the opportunity to speak at the event, while also sharing my expertise on the power of content creation and influencer marketing today.