With paid advertising saturating the market, we thought we’d explore the idea of Influencer Marketing and whether it could be an effective tool for businesses in the kitchen and bathroom design and renovation market.
Who do we class as an “Influencer”?
An Influencer is anyone who has the ability to promote your brand in an online environment to your ideal customer. Sometimes a person is considered an Influencer because they are an expert in some way – they are an authority or hold a position of note. Or they can be an Influencer because they have a special relationship with their audience.
An Influencer will have a significant following in a niche area.
Influencer marketing started out as celebrity marketing. Of course, celebrities have been used to sell products and promote brands for years but today’s Influencer Marketing is a much more honed and specialised service. Influencers will generally be very active across a range of social media and they will provide hints, tips, ideas, solutions and sometimes advice in their specialised area.
It’s important to note that Influencer Marketing differs from Content Marketing. Content Marketing is what we’ve all been doing for years – generating content that is distributed with the goal of attracting and engaging with our ideal clients. Influencer Marketing is more focussed on how the content is distributed and how the end user engages with the content.
It’s important to note that a Brand Ambassador is different to an Influencer. A Brand Ambassador is generally used to grow brand awareness and make your brand a more desirable commodity.
How can an Influencer use their influence to help your business?
Various social media networks have been slowly introducing new algorithms and new search functionalities to make your life difficult. Because they want your advertising dollars, it’s in their interests to make it harder for organic posts to gain traction. A great example is the recent changes to Facebook News Feeds which favour updates from friends and family and actively reduce the visibility of business posts.
It’s in this niche where Influencers have proven to be effective, particularly where they have amassed audiences of like-minded people in specialised areas. Influencers are particularly successful because the core of the relationship they have with their followers is trust.
There are two methods of engaging with an Influencer. You can take an organic approach and either send them free product or provide a free service in the hope they will recount their experience to their audience. Or you can pay them for a specific, measurable marketing campaign. In general, you will get what you pay for.
When you work with an Influencer you want to be very specific about your goals and KPIs. Know exactly what you want to achieve, how, and by when. All agreements should be in writing and discussed before any campaign is commenced.
But, when it comes down to it, you should only choose an Influencer who has an audience that matches your target market.
Let’s get back to the main question – can Influencers work in the kitchen and bathroom sector?
In some ways, you’re already working with Influencers. Customers who have a positive experience with your company and recommend you to family and friends, or who share photos of their projects online are already acting as micro-influencers for your brand. So you need to strategically capitalise on this activity. Make sure all your customers follow you on your various Social Media channels; make sure they know your different handles so they can tag you if they post photos, send them “in progress” photos and suggest they post these to their social media, provide them with the professional photos of the finished project and suggest they share them… there are plenty of ways to make sure you’re benefiting from the relationship you have with your clients.
If you choose to engage an Influencer for a marketing campaign then do your homework. Research their following (you should be following them as well to see the types of posts they make), check out their engagement levels, make sure they are a “fit” with your brand, see if they are promoting any similar products or services. Before you approach them, start to engage with them on their platforms – see what sorts of responses you get.
In our industry it’s unlikely a Celebrity Influencer will be a relevant choice. Most celebrities charge extortionate amounts for Influencer Marketing and it’s unlikely anyone in the kitchen and bathroom industry would see a reasonable return on their investment.
If you choose to go down this path, we’d love to hear from you about your experiences. We feel this is an area of marketing currently unexplored by the industry but we feel there are some circumstances where it could be highly effective.
