Companies in financial technology, or fintech, are constantly seeking new strategies to deepen their engagement with consumers. Among the most promising of these is influencer marketing, an innovative frontier that combines digital technology and human connection.

Influencer marketing relies on popular figures – influencers – who command a substantial online following and have a considerable reach. These individuals, well-versed in the complexities of fintech, can effectively articulate the value of products and services to their followers.

To that end, this article provides a comprehensive guide on leveraging influencer marketing to revolutionize your strategies as a fintech brand. 

First, it’ll share tips that may help you get the best of influencer marketing.

How To Make Influencer Marketing Work For You

To make influencer marketing work for you, consider the following best practices:

1. Define Your Objectives

Before embarking on the influencer marketing journey, it’s crucial to establish clear campaign objectives. 

Are you aiming to boost brand awareness, drive fintech app downloads, or increase user engagement? 

Identifying these goals upfront can provide a roadmap for your campaign, ensuring all efforts align with your desired outcomes. 

2. Choose The Right Influencers

The next crucial step is selecting the influencers who’ll help you meet these objectives. This involves more than just picking influencers with large followings. It’s about finding individuals whose audience, values, and content match your brand.  

Enlisting fintech marketing specialists at this stage can help you identify the best influencers to suit your business needs.

3. Craft A Proposal For The Influencer

Once you’ve identified potential influencers, the next step is to create a proposal that’s both attractive to the influencer and beneficial to your brand. 

This could involve exclusive access to your services, financial compensation, or opportunities for the influencer to grow their own brand. 

Ensuring the partnership is mutually beneficial can increase the chances of influencers accepting your proposal and the subsequent campaign being successful.

4. Establishing Key Success Indicators

Before launching the campaign, define the metrics that will gauge its success. Some indicators may include: 

• The number of new customers acquired
• The increase in social media engagement
• The improvement in brand perception.  

These metrics will allow you to track progress and make necessary adjustments during the campaign, maximizing its effectiveness. 

5. Launching The Campaign

Finally, with all the groundwork in place, it’s time to execute the campaign. This involves the influencer promoting your brand or product to their audience in an engaging, authentic manner.

By following these steps, you can harness the power of influencer marketing and propel your fintech brand to new heights.

Selecting The Right Influencers For Your Fintech Brand

Choosing the right influencers for your brand is crucial. Here are key factors to consider: 

1. Expertise and credibility – The influencer should deeply understand fintech and maintain a reputation for trustworthy content. 
2. Alignment with brand values – The influencer’s values should align with your brand’s. For example, if your brand promotes sustainability, an influencer who advocates for environmental consciousness aligns well.
3. Engagement rates – An influencer with a smaller but highly engaged audience could benefit more than one with a large, less active following. 
4. Audience relevance – The influencer’s audience should match your target demographic. Also, ensure that your product or service is relevant to the influencer’s followers for meaningful engagement. 
5. Content quality – The influencer should produce high-quality content that resonates with their followers. The better the content, the more likely it is to be shared, increasing your brand’s visibility and reach. 

Considering these factors when selecting influencers can ensure that you settle for those that’ll be most effective in your marketing campaign.

Influencer Marketing Best Practices

Implementing these best practices can enhance the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaign:

1. Ensure that promotional content doesn’t compromise the authenticity and rapport the influencer has built with their audience. Consider developing content that blends organically with the influencer’s style and voice.
2. Ensuring clarity between your team and influencers on the content can prevent misinformation. This way, you can maintain audience trust.
3. Any negative action or controversy involving the influencer can reflect poorly on your brand. To mitigate such risks, thoroughly vet the influencers you work with. Also, develop a crisis management strategy to respond appropriately to potential reputational challenges.

It’s important to remember these best practices to ensure a successful influencer marketing campaign.  

Conclusion

Taking up influencer marketing can propel your fintech brand to new heights. However, successfully executing it requires expertise. 

Partnering with marketing professionals well-versed in influencer marketing can maximize your campaign’s success. 

Harness their knowledge to optimize your influencer marketing strategies and revolutionize your brand’s engagement today.

The post Influencer Marketing: A New Frontier For Fintech Brands appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

8 Factors Creating Pressure on Growth

1.     Innovative Business Models

A new revenue model that defines how a company creates and capitalizes economic value.

2.     Customer Value Chain Compression

Customer value chain compression because of advanced technologies, internet platforms, and other direct-to-consumer models that enables reduction in friction and the number of steps in customer journeys.

3.     Transformative Mega Trends

Global forces that define the future world with their far-reaching impact on business.

4.     Internal Challenges

The internal organizational behaviors that prevent a company from making required changes.

5.     Competitive Intensity

A new wave of competition from start-ups and digital business models that challenge the standing conventions of the past.

6.     Geopolitical Chaos

Chaos and disorder arising from political discord, natural calamities, pandemics, and social unrest that impact global trade, collaboration, and business security.

7.     Disruptive Technologies

New, disruptive technologies that are displacing the old, and significantly altering the way consumers, industries, or businesses operate.

8.     Industry Convergence

Collaboration between previously disparate industries to deliver on whitespace cross industry growth opportunities.

How to Use Influencer Marketing to Overcome These Challenges

The adoption of influencer marketing has matured in consumer-facing industries, but many B2B companies are still exploring the benefits of influencer marketing in increasing consumer engagement and building a robust brand identity.

The influencer marketing life cycle is identification, engagement, then action. Identification is identifying the right influencer to achieve the necessary engagement and business outcome. Engagement is the type of influencer program, such as timeline, events, and content creation. Action is the quantitative indicators, such as leads, and qualitative indicators, such as brand association.

Some companies that use Influencer Marketing include Dell, American Express, and Nike. A few ways Dell uses influencers are on their podcast, blog posts, and even attending their events. American Express is a huge fan of influencers by using them on social media and allows their influencer to share their story, such as “My Travel Style” on YouTube. Nike has been using influencer marketing for many years to, even before influencer marketing became huge. Nike’s main influencer marketing is their signed deals with athletes.

To have a successful influencer marketing campaign, you must follow these 3 steps:

1. Know your purpose

Get a clear outline on what you are trying to achieve in this campaign. Are you trying to sell your product or gain followers? Decide on the goals and what available resources you have.

2. Focus on Fit

Influencer marketing is successful when you focus on how an influencer fits with your brand than their follower count.

3. Measure Results

No matter what marketing campaign you do, you always want to measure the results afterwards.

How to measure B2B Influencer Marketing

Setting goals is one of the most important parts of any marketing campaign. Here are some goals to look at in an influencer campaign:

1. Increase Brand Awareness
2. Reach New Target Audiences
3. Increase Sales
4. Manage Brand Reputation

To measure this campaign, look at:

1. Clicks
2. Impressions
3. Conversions
4. Sales

How to Find B2B Influencers

Many platforms (Heepsy, The Room, and Fourstarzz Media) can help you set up and manage your campaigns with branded content. You should ensure that your platform can help you find genuine influencers and not people who’ve inflated their follower count with fake followers or bots. You should always conduct your own research on an influencer before beginning a partnership though.

Influencer Marketing ROI compared to Other Marketing Channels

Instagram is known for its influencers. Your posts can deliver big results on Instagram. Here are some Instagram business stats:

1. 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business
2. The average Instagram business account grows its followers by 1.69% each month.
3. 1 in 2 people have used Instagram to discover a new business
4. 44% of people use Instagram to shop

Influencer Marketing Trends for 2022

Are you ready to grow your business this year? Start creating video content. Make sure your content has value behind it. Find new social platforms and creator tools. Focus on micro and nano influencers. Just get creative!

Additional Influencer Marketing Resources:

Everything You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing (Influencer Marketing Hub)

Influencer Marketing Guide: How to Work With Influencers (Hootsuite)

4 Ways an Influencer Marketing Agency Can Grow Your Brand (MMP)

The post B2B Influencer Marketing Tips appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

You probably know about influencers and how businesses leverage them to promote branded products and services. It’s called influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing has become one of the best ways to raise awareness among your target audience and grow your brand. Almost 90% of marketers said that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or even better than other digital marketing channels.

That said, finding influencers for your business and then managing an influencer marketing strategy can be a lot of work, particularly for smaller businesses or companies with smaller, inexperienced teams.

If you don’t know where to start or find yourself scrambling to keep up with your influencer marketing strategy, you can partner with the industry experts.

How Can An Influencer Marketing Agency Help Your Brand Grow?

1. Saves Time And Money

Consultus Digital, an expert influencer marketing agency Toronto has, says that influencer marketing can take up a significant amount of time for inexperienced or small businesses.

In general, influencer marketing usually involves:

• Developing goals and influencer marketing strategies
• Searching, reaching out, and vetting influencers
• Negotiating contracts, payments, and legal matters
• Coordinating and reviewing content
• Briefing influencers
• Measuring content success
• Content distribution strategies to maximize investments

If you have the time and resources to build your influencer marketing team, scale your influencer strategy internally. Unfortunately, most companies, particularly startups and small businesses, don’t have that option.

Partnering with an expert agency means you outsource these time-consuming processes. This is a more time- and cost-effective option to develop and execute your influencer marketing strategy to boost your brand presence.

In addition, working with an influencer marketing agency frees up resources and time, allowing you and your employees to work on other important tasks for your business growth.

2. Leverage On Expertise And Established Relationships

An influencer marketing agency is just that— an agency specialized in influencer marketing. They eat, sleep and breathe influencer marketing 24/7.

So, working with an influencer marketing agency allows you to tap into their expertise in this industry. They understand how influencer marketing works. Agencies have the knowledge and experience on what makes influencer marketing campaigns successful in most niches. They are also updated on the latest trends in influencer marketing, allowing them to plan an effective campaign.

Also, you can take advantage of the agency’s established relationships in the influencer marketing space. Most agencies work with thousands of influencers every year and have an idea of which influencers have followers that best match your brand’s target market.

So, if you’re looking for the best fashionista micro-influencer in Toronto to showcase your custom-made dresses, an agency in the area probably already worked with some of them in the past. They would have a good idea of who to call.

3. Planning And Executing Creative Brand Content

In an influencer marketing campaign, the real work starts after establishing the partnership.

As with any marketing agency, an influencer marketing company includes talented creatives in its team. They help chosen influencers to plan and create eye-catching content, often at a higher standard than those produced in-house.

In addition, they will be at the forefront of managing your influencer marketing campaign from scheduling content rollout to campaign briefs. They’ll create, review, and communicate the strategies that will be used in a campaign, as well as advise on optimization strategies.

4. Measure And Optimize Campaigns

Perhaps the most important aspect for brands is measuring the right metrics and the success of the campaign. Deliverables planned, created, and posted on the influencers’ social media accounts should be managed and monitored closely.

When working with multiple influencers, you need to measure which influencers bring you the best results— the ones with the greatest impact in terms of sales numbers, engagement rates, and website hits.

Working with an influencer marketing agency allows you to track and access custom reporting. Knowledgeable agencies can embed influencer marketing campaigns with the most important markers for you to accurately track management.

Plus, agencies are more adept at properly extrapolating and interpreting valuable insights from the campaign metrics to further increase your marketing campaign ROI.

Take Away

What was once regarded by some as a fad has now taken the digital marketing industry by storm. Influencer marketing is modern-day’s word-of-mouth advertising that you should include in your digital marketing strategies.

That said, if you need help, relying on an experienced influencer marketing provider is your best option. They can help take the nitty-gritty of influencer marketing off your plate and implement best practices, ensuring that your business enjoys the benefits of influencer marketing and ultimately grow your brand and online presence.

The post 4 Ways An Influencer Marketing Agency Can Grow Your Brand appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

TikTok Stats

• 800 million monthly active users worldwide
• 69% of users in the US are between the ages of 12-24; 39% of users are 25-34
• Due to the pandemic, in April 2020, 11 million millennials joined TikTok
• Top Brand Categories
  • Fashion & Retail
  • Beauty & Health/Wellness
  • Food & Beverage
  • Sporting & Entertainment Industry
• Top Emerging Brand Categories
  • Home Décor, Gardening, DIY
  • Fitness
  • Services (financial, automotive, etc.)
  • #BeanTikTok (the humorous side of TikTok)

New to TikTok

1. New Advertising Opportunities
2. TikTok for Business
3. Advertisers can target specific audiences

Why is TikTok so Popular?

Birthplace for Viral Content

TikTok offers high potential for rapidly spreading viral videos and maximum brand exposure.

Content is Highly Engaging

Did you know that our attention span is 8 seconds? Therefore, with a continuous feed of 15-second, platform-curated content, TikTok makes creating, editing, and consuming short-form video extremely easy and addictive.

Feed Leverages AI Algorithm

TikTok’s AI optimizes based off of what you have engaged with.

How Does TikTok Work?

Creators gain serious traction by posting a funny, impressive, or creative vide that is often most successful when associated with a trending hashtag, challenge, or sound.

The Algorithm

1. The User

Your account settings and interactions play a huge role on how you will show up on someone’s for you page (fyp).

2. The Video

Try to use a trending hashtag or sound. Be creative when creating your video and text description.

3. No for you page (fyp) will look the same.

Tips

1. Sound should not be an afterthought.

How can the sound set your brand?

2. Build a movement

Build your brand experience, while being up to date with the trends.

3. Innovate

Don’t be afraid to be a trendsetter by creating new challenges or new sounds.

Influencer Marketing on TikTok

Sprout Social describes influencer marketing as a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche.

Influencers are slowly showing up on TikTok because there are more opportunities for these brands and influencers.

Influencer Quality Content

• Empowers creative freedom and fun
• Feels authentic and native to TikTok
• Celebrates imperfection and relatability
• Is somewhat raw and not overly-produced
• Pushes imagination and innovation

Defining Your Brand Voice

Create Your Brand Page

Do you have a page on TikTok? If not, create an account before collaborating with influencers on TikTok. Make sure to link your website and social media accounts to your TikTok account.

Custom Sounds

TikTok is all about sound and how content is created from those sounds. Brands who embrace participating in these custom sounds and create their own will benefit from the sound discovery.

Music Listening

When brands work with verified creators, they will have the option to use Promo+ Playlist. Promo+ Playlist is great for brand safety.

Influencer Partnership

Once your account is live, grow your brand’s presence by partnering with collaborators. Find creators that align with your brand’s values.

Community Engagement

It is important for brands to authentically show up on TikTok. To grow engagement, participate in trends, comment on videos, and follow consumers and creators alike.

Examples of Successful Brands

Dunkin

Dunkin collaborated with Charli D’Armelio, a popular creator on TikTok. They created a drink called The Charli, and Dunkin even did a giveaway for her fans by using #CharliXDunkinContest.

Chipotle

Chipotle started with challenges that was created by an employee. If you used the #lidflipchallenge, you received free delivery. There was more than 110,000 videos submitted, and the rest is history for Chipotle on this growing app.

Mucinex

Mucinex started a hashtag and dance challenge that promoted their new cough medicine. This hashtag (#TooSickToBeSick) has nearly 600M views.

TikTok Do’s

• Create your brief for TikTok specifically.
• Create challenges or campaign concerts that are simple and leave a lot of room for creativity.
• Base campaigns off culturally-relevant topics.
• Do work with creators that match your brand’s voice, tone, and values.
• Have fun.

TikTok Don’ts

• Don’t stifle creative freedom.
• Don’t focus on sales or conversion with an organic campaign and partnerships.
• Don’t be too rigid with planning.
• Don’t think of TikTok as a one-off tactic.

How to be a Trendsetter

1. Establish Goals

Align the brand’s goal with their presence on TikTok.

2. Set a Budget

Establish the budget for influencer incentives based on size and scale of the desired campaign.

3. Select Influencers

Find influencers by searching relevant hashtags that align with your brand’s values.

4. Create Content

Activate influencers to create content assets within the timeline and marketing objectives.

5. Brand Videos

Transfer the rights-approved IGC over to the brand to post on their own TikTok accounts.

6. Measure Results

Measure IGC and performance from influencers participating in the campaign. Some other things to measure are awareness, engagement, and content creation.

Additional TikTok Resources

Is TikTok the Next Social Media Marketing Killer App? (MMP)

Everything Brands Need to Know About TikTok in 2020 (HubSpot)

A Look Into Being A Sucessful TikTok Producer (Forbes)

The post TikTok Marketing 101 appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

As the rise of influencer marketing continues, more businesses are trying to include it in their marketing campaigns. According to a 2019 survey by The Influencer Marketing Hub, 63 percent of brands plan to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2020. In addition to its ability to tap into consumer trust quickly, the ROI of influencer marketing can be rewarding and cost-effective – only 25 percent of brands that invest in influencer marketing fail to generate any revenue. In fact, 88 percent of marketers agree that it can be equal or better paying than the other marketing channels. However, to maximize the benefits of including influencer marketing in your marketing campaign, it needs to be the right fit.

Set Your Influencer Marketing Budget, But Don’t Make It Your Entire Marketing Budget

While many businesses are amping up their spending on influencer marketing, it should only be one part of your marketing strategy. Past data by BI Intelligence has shown that the returns on influencer marketing can supersede the rewards of branded content by over 203 percent. However, businesses should also balance their budget allocation across the board to get the maximum rewards. This means keeping space in your budget for print marketing and other advertising channels like email marketing.

Estimates from Altimeterfound that approximately 25 percent of a business’s digital marketing should be allocated to influencer marketing. To find the perfect budget allocation, businesses should incorporate Customer Acquisition Costs and Customer Lifetime Value. You also need to be careful to continue the cost-effective  advantages of using experts in your advertising to improve your visibility and reach. To  make influencer marketing as cost-effective as possible, you can include the use of micro-influencers and user-generated content in your influencer marketing tactics.

Choose The Right Influencer With The Right Engagement Rate And Audience

The 3 Rs of influence marketing (relevance, reach and relationship) should be a fundamental base when including influencer marketing in your digital marketing campaign. Choosing the right influencer for your campaign is not just about choosing someone with the highest engagement rate, but also the most relevant audience for your product. This requires market research to identify the niches you should be targeting and the influencers that are speaking about your product, your competitors, and even trends associated with your product.

Identifying trending influencer hashtags can help with visibility and relevance. Also, when considering influencers for your brand, look beyond their followers, and instead consider smaller influencers like nano influencers, who not only have higher engagement rates, but portray realistic images. It has been seen repeatedly: customers want brands to get real – in their advertising, customer relations, and many other aspects of their operations.

Align Your Marketing Goals And Metrics With The Payoffs Of Including Influencers In Your Marketing Strategy

To successfully integrate influencer marketing into your marketing strategy, it also needs to work well with your established marketing goals. Therefore, if one of those goals includes increasing social media engagement of the brand or brand awareness in the younger demographics, then influencer marketing may be a great fit. Also, if you are looking to boost your website traffic, influencer marketing could be an important part of that. However, businesses must keep in mind that other business functions still have a crucial role to play in converting that traffic into increased sales and achieved goals. For instance, if  your website design cannot handle increased traffic or your webpage speed is slow, website visitors are likely to leave without purchasing anything.

While influencer marketing continues to be a profitable marketing channel for businesses of any size, it should not stand alone. Making sure it supports your wider marketing goals is important if you want to truly enjoy the perks that come with this social media marketing trend.

The post 3 Tips To Make Influencer Marketing Work In Your Digital Marketing Campaign appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

What is TikTok?

TikTok has been around since 2016. It is a free social media app that allows users to make and share 15 second or shorter videos.

How is TikTok Different?

Twitter got popular by following people and being followed by others. It grew from there. Once Twitter became public, it made recommendations, which resulted in reordering users’ feeds based on what it thought the users wanted to see. Unfortunately, Instagram has started to do the same thing as Twitter, which is causing unhappy users.

TikTok was built this way in the beginning, which allows user to open the app to a “For You” page. TikTok allows users to jump from different audiences, different trends, and create something fun with their friends. The content may be meaningless, but some of it actually becomes popular. TikTok is just doing what people have been wanting for years.

How to Market on TikTok

First, marketers have to confirm that their demographic is on TikTok since it is mostly millennials and younger.

Social report states that TikTok has over 500 million users – larger than both Twitter and Pinterest! Having a large user base is huge for marketing. TikTok is the perfect platform for influencer marketing. All marketers have to worry about is trusting and paying these influencers to show your product on the app.

If marketers are ready to take a risk, then you can start creating your own content. Remember, this will take a lot of time and resources to make the most creative video because the goal is to make your company’s video to go viral.

Downside

There are no ads on TikTok yet. The app is still in the testing stage.

Also, it is not an app for B2B right now, but who knows what 2020 will bring to this app?

Did You Know?

Business Insider has released that Google is considering an acquisition of a TikTok-like app that allows users to make and share a 30-second video.

Still not interested in TikTok? It might be worth your time to consider how TikTok can be a component of your marketing, especially if your brand can leverage video, influencer marketing, or targets millennials.

For More Additional Digital Marketing Resources:

What is TikTok?

Influencer Marketing on the Rise

4 Trends Effecting Digital Marketing Now

3 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign

The post Is TikTok the Next Social Media Marketing Killer App? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Whether you look at Tina Fey endorsing American Express or Mariah Carey signing a sponsored post with Airbnb, they’ve all contributed to raising the stakes for influencer marketing.

And then, thanks to the internet for enabling even normal people with the right knowledge and social media engagement to affect buying decisions of millions of people.

The way this idea works and has worked for businesses worldwide has resulted in 55% B2B business owners believing that their influencer marketing campaigns helped them better their B2B lead generation rates.

Stats like these motivate businesses to start investing in influencer marketing. But, right before they actually go for it, it’s better to acquire the right kind of knowledge.

These influencer marketing tips will guarantee you success with your influencer campaigns.

1. Invite Influencers to Your Events

One great way of spreading the word out loud about your brand is by organizing exhibitions and conferences.

Businesses spending 1.7x of the average event marketing budget were most successful in 2018. Plus, 41% of marketers consider events as the single-most effective marketing channel over digital advertising, email marketing, and content marketing.

So, when events can work for them, why can’t they work for you?

Understand this. Organize a grand event. Invite all your B2B prospects and relevant influencers.

The next thing you’d need to do is make sure that the event is spot on so, the influencers actually want to talk about it on their media channels.

To start with, focus on aesthetics. Most of the influencers in 2019 use qualified super aesthetic content to engage with their audience and earn more followers. For this reason, they’d never share pictures from an event that isn’t Instagrammable.

Secondly, focus on adding value through your event. Talk about the questions that trouble most businesses in your clientele or B2B audience. Anything less than that can make your audience feel like you wasted their time. Never let that happen.

Thirdly, encourage your influencers to share live stories from your event. It’s a fact now. Live videos perform better than recorded videos.

Also, don’t forget to create and use the right hashtags for your event.

2. Make use of Influencer Testimonials

Studies show that testimonials can boost brand revenues by up to 62%; from every customer and every visit.

This clearly proves that if you haven’t already, this is the time you start acquiring and using testimonials.

So, first of all, find the right influencers creating content relevant to your industry. Secondly, offer them to use your products/services for free and then ask for feedback.

This way, you will have honest feedback from a professional in your industry.

Plus, if they like your product/service, you can ask them for the favor of recording or writing a testimonial for your website.

Similarly, you can also ask your actual customers to provide their testimonials.

3. Conduct Interviews

Being seen on an influencer’s media channels will expand your brand’s reach. However, that’s not the only way it works.

You can also invite influencers to go live with you on your media channel for an exclusive interview.

In this interview, you can best address the most popular yet least answered questions relating to your business’ industry.

Also, you can accept requests from the audience and make the interview more interactive and interesting by asking them to share some personal experiences that they had to go through while striving to thrive in this industry.

This can greatly help your B2B brand by unlocking new engagement channels for your products. And as the influencers may also share this interview their audience may become aware of your brand.

Final words

Holding great growth potential for businesses across all industries, influencer marketing can be the next big thing. This encourages businesses to invest in influencer marketing.

But then the implementation isn’t that easy and obvious. Keeping that in mind, we mentioned 3 tips to make the most out of your B2B influencer marketing campaign.

The post 3 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Word of mouth marketing has been around a long time. Yet there is value in your company giving it active consideration as it’s usually free and has real potential in terms of payout. It’s based on a pretty simple theory. Word of mouth marketing happens by creating an event or experience so memorable for a customer that they tell someone else about it.

It’s important because customers trust their friends. Nielsen data indicates that 92% of consumers believe suggestions from their friends and family more than they do advertising. Furthermore, 91 percent of all business-to-business sales are also influenced by word-of-mouth. Plus, people are four times more likely to purchase when referred by friends.

So how do you go about generating positive conversation around your company? You start by considering the differentiators your company possesses and how to position those as selling points. Hopefully, they match up and demonstrate an understanding of what is most important to your customers. So then you can build community by connecting with customers who are already aware of you. Here are six tactics to get you started:

Be relevant

You really do need to know what your customers want. You may have to do a little research to make sure what you think customers want is actually what customers want. Being on point with this will help you better relate to your audience and find those vocal and loyal followers.

Share Customer Reviews

It will also help you capitalize on achieving positive reviews that you can use to convince others with. You need to post honest, heart-felt feedback in as many places as possible as consumers are reading multiple reviews before granting their trust in a company. They are the social proof your company needs to validate the quality and performance you believe you’re delivering.

Incite Emotion

People are emotional, tap into this. Find something – your slogan or a cause your company believes in and highlight the activities your business does in support of this. Another example would be to redesign your trade show tactics around word of mouth marketing, meaning create trade show messaging and incentives that boosts your customers’ egos and brings them some joy. Look fun and sound interesting and others will be more inclined to participate and share.

Stand Out

You have to have quality products and services to start with and they shouldn’t be described like everyone else’s in the market. If you want to be remembered in the marketplace you need to trigger a memorable experience that shows how you’re not just like everyone else and how you go beyond just meeting customer expectations.

Create Amazing Experiences

There is a good deal of noise in the marketplace. So you need to generate excitement from your customers to cause a spark of interest in your company that moves you from the mundane to the memorable category. It has to be a feeling, thought or action that they haven’t gotten anywhere else, if you want them to turn to a friend and relay the experience. No one is talking about an average experience.

Encourage User-Generated Content

Oh yeah. Social media is a natural fit for word of mouth marketing. It’s a great place to create a unique hashtag so as to identify content created by customers that can be shared across platforms and on your website as well. It builds trust in the marketplace in a unique way that companies can’t duplicate on their own.

By giving word of mouth marketing time and thought, it helps your business determine what specifically you want customers to remember about you and tell others about. Focus your tactics around these goals and you’re bound to build confidence and trust in the marketplace. Modern Marketing Partners has the expertise and tools to kick start your word of mouth marketing efforts and help you increase your fan base too.

The post 6 Word of Mouth Marketing Tactics For Creating Compelling Conversation appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

According to Mavrck’s new research the 2018 Influencer Point-of-View Report, the rise of influencer content is noticeable and expected to continue. The nature of social media platforms lends itself to building these types of partnerships to increase word of mouth marketing and lower the cost per customer acquisition.

Mavrck’s research sought to get influencers’ perspectives on what motivates them and how they see the current state of the industry. Here’s the highlights of the results:

1. Who’s doing the influencing? Women. An overwhelming 95% of influencers are women and predominately, 75% are between the ages of 25-34 and about 20% are between the ages of 35-44.
2. Influencers are using the platforms you probably expect them too.

• Everyone is utilizing Instagram 100%
• Facebook Pages 78%
• YouTube 67%
• Twitter 65%
• Facebook Groups 60%
• Pinterest 38%
• Blog 16%
• Snapchat 9%
• Tumblr 4%
• LinkedIn 3%

3. Content production growth over the past several years, indicates a steady growth since 2013.

• 2013 4%
• 2014 12%
• 2015 19%
• 2016 21%
• 2017 32%

4. Expectations for producing more planned content about a brand’s products and services in the next year reveal huge growth.

• Only 4% of respondents think they’ll produce less content
• 17% expect to post about the same amount
• And almost 80% believe they’ll be providing more posts

5. Influencers are creative and passionate and 90% reported receiving free products and services from a brand and 63% reported receiving monetary compensation for their posts.
6. Concerns about the FTC endorsement guidelines are low, according to survey results. About 40% of influencers noted that marketers do not follow up with them to enforce FDC disclosures, such as using #spon or #ad in their posts.

Marketers looking at developing and moving ahead with influencer partnerships should absolutely capitalize on the information above. You need to draw from their knowledge and bring them into the conversation early from campaign research and creation through to strategy and goal formation. Utilize their understanding of your audience to foster authenticity and garner trust for your brand.

You also want to hold them accountable for the goals of your campaign. So you need to be able to effectively measure the value of your influencer’s posts. If you wan to move beyond just considering earned media value (EMV) there are a few tactics you can implement that can yield more trackable results.

Try Promotion Codes. Provide influencers with a promo code to share with their followers. Redemptions on this code can help you track how much commission to pay out to the influencer. Just keep tabs on the code to make sure it isn’t leaked onto a coupon site.

Provide Tracked Links. Followers may be more wiling to click on a link than a promotion code. Providing influencers with a direct link that customers can click through on will help you track sales and engagement.

Include a Survey. Gather post-sale information through a survey that asks how customers heard about your company. Be sure to include influencer as a form of marketing and if possible a fill-in-the-blank section to get additional feedback.

These are concrete strategies can inform companies on influencer performance. Being able to deliver ROI will help tell the story of the impact of this particular marketing effort and its impact on your overall business goals.

The post Influencer Marketing on the Rise appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Instagram is a natural fit for the Millennial lifestyle. They are the largest group of consumers who use mobile and social media. Their reliance on peers, family, friends and experts to provide trusted information is substantiated in Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer. The survey’s 2018 numbers indicate again that these are the people they most trust, whereas in general, trust among the informed public plunged for the first time by 23 points, making the U.S. market the lowest of all those surveyed.

So there is a great opportunity for companies to use influencer marketing on Instagram. If done correctly, it can have a substantial impact on brand awareness and relationship development, as well as build much-needed trust for the brand. Instagram in particular is a great platform to use to leverage influencers, as there are several on the network that have huge, fiercely loyal Millennial followers.

To get started, here are some general tactics that pertain to developing an influencer marketing campaign for most businesses trying to reach Millennials.

1. Find influencers currently on Instagram. You can begin by looking at your brand’s followers. See if anyone regularly posts positive comments about your brand and check the number of followers they have. You can also use the Instagram discover tool. Type in a hashtag relevant to your brand and see where it takes you.

There are a number of companies that will compile a list of influencers based on your needs like Iconosquare or SocialBlade. Much about the influencer’s audience demographics such as size, followers, and following ratio will be provided to help you make a good decision for your brand.

2. Narrow your list. Based on your campaign objectives and the market you operate in, you may even be looking for a specialized expert. Your Millennial audience may be better suited to a niche influencer with attentive, targeted followers.
3. Prioritize your list of influencers. This step requires a good deal of time and research. You need to carefully consider each influencer’s audience and level of engagement. You’re looking for active keywords that demonstrate intent or suggest action be taken. You’re also reviewing their content as a whole. This will help you determine the impact each influencer can have on a specific audience.

A note of caution — Beware of influencers who have gained anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 followers in a day. This could be a sign that the influencer bought followers.

4. Select your influencer(s) and develop an outreach strategy. Personalize your message and focus on the specific traits she or he represents that you believe fit with your brand. If you are working with a tight budget make sure to stand out from the requests influencers receive regularly.
5. Outline your campaign. Provide the influencer with as much information about the campaign as possible. Be prepared to change and modify campaigns to meet the persona of the influencer you’re working with. If you’re working with more than one, you want to have different content for each in case they have overlapping followers.

Instagram’s new algorithm will help keep your content showing up longer now too, which is a plus. The value of leveraging influencers on Instagram is key to a successful relationship with Millennials. The increase in brand familiarity and trusted information will be a driving force behind their decision to purchase.

The post Leveraging Millennial Engagement on Instagram with Influencer Marketing appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.