Influencer Marketing

As promised, I would like to talk about influencer marketing and especially its application to the Internet.  Influencer marketing is a type of marketing in which the marketing efforts are focused on identifying key players that have influence over potential customers. Eventually the idea is to turn influencers into advocates so that they increase brand awareness of your product/company amongst your target customers.

Marketers have long been using influencer marketing techniques but influencer marketing has become even more effective and efficient since the introduction of social media.

Why more effective? Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, foursquare and social bookmaking sites like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit have made it easier than ever for marketers to identify influencers. Additionally, there are many services on the internet such as Klout.com that help marketers identify/measure person’s overall online influence based on user’s social media activities such as number of Facebook friends, Twitter followers or activity levels on these platforms.

Why more efficient? Reaching out to key players through social media is more cost effective than conducting in-depth interviews, surveys or focus groups with tens or hundreds of people.

Finally, I would like to share a new website called Influenster. Influenster, in its own words, defines itself as a “Community of trendsetters invited to share their lifestyles and show their influence to qualify for personalized product shipments, special rewards and exclusive deals from the brands they love”. This sounds like a win-win situation both for consumers and the brands. Influenster also seems to successfully employ gaming dynamics through their badge page.

Check out Influenster at http://www.influenster.com/

Best

Em

Why Internet Marketing?

Hi there,

With the introduction of web 2.0, marketers are equipped with plentiful tools to execute effective digital marketing campaigns.

We know that brands are shifting their focus and more importantly their marketing dollars from traditional media to internet marketing! There are several reasons for the shift, here is a few I can think of; Internet marketing is cheaper compared to traditional marketing vehicles, brands can get in touch with a big range of audience for a small portion of traditional advertising budgets. The internet itself also allows consumers to interact with one another in the purchasing process, making the experience more attractive to both consumers and marketers.

In addition to all the points above, marketers can better track their campaigns, utilize many Internet metrics (e.g. click through rate, cost per impressions, response per impressions etc) and decide whether the campaign is efficient and effective and make necessary changes on the fly. This would not be possible with traditional media where brand managers buy their TV, radio, print space a year or so in advance and stick to it.

More to come on internet advertising, specifically influencer internet marketing!

Cheers,

Em

My new blog on social media - up and running!

Hi all,

I have been thinking about starting a blog on social media for a while now but never had the time to do so. Now that I took the first step this seems to be pretty exciting!

Just to quickly talk about the purpose of my blog; as a social media enthusiast I am planning to share my opinion as well as interesting news and articles on social media. Additionally, as a full time marketing consultant I would like to write about my ideas on measurability and accountability of social media initiatives in terms of advertising/marketing point of view.

Looking forward to your comments so feel free to jump in and let me know your thoughts!

Cheers,

Em