AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT & DISCOVERABILITY

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1 AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT & DISCOVERABILITY Bringing SEO & Influencer Marketing Together Data-Driven Insights, Monitoring and Reporting for SEO + Influencers + Content

2 Audience Development & Discoverability: Bringing SEO & Influencer Marketing Together The game of marketing is continuously evolving. As consumers change their behavior online, marketers must also adapt their strategies to keep up. We are seeing one such change now with the growth and development of Influencer Marketing. Going back a few years, it was easy to design your content for best practices of on-site SEO and get discovered. Today, the off-site distribution of your content plays a much bigger role in being found by your target market. Unfortunately, content distribution is still one of the most significantly missed opportunities in content marketing and digital marketing execution. Marketing is about constantly developing your audience and getting in front of them when they are in the buying process. Brands have turned more and more to social for content and message distribution as your entire addressable market is represented online. But first, you have to identify your audience and find the best ways to engage with them. The challenge of content distribution is precisely one of the problems that influencer marketing solves. Finding an influencer who has access to your target audience is an effective, clever and costeffective way to develop your audience. Influencer marketing is the tactic of working with key and strategic advocates as a way to reach a specific target market with your brand s message. It is the partnership of people on social media who are considered to be credible, authentic, engaged and have a significant audience. Influencer marketing is an incredibly fast growing tactic, with reports such as one published by Forbes showing an up to 37% higher retention rate in customers gained. 2.

3 For brands, diving into influencer marketing without a strategy or proper insight into engagement and conversion data can leave you without a clear picture of a program s success or lack thereof. How can you expect to maximize your return and streamline your online efforts if there is no insight of what s working and what s not? Analytics on how your influencers are working and if they are driving the right traffic back to your site is critical. In This Guide, You Will Learn: 1 Why Influencer Marketing Should Be in Your Marketing Mix 4 Channel of Distribution 4 The Power of Word-of-Mouth 5 The Off-Site Challenge of Influencer Marketing 6 Cost Effective 6 2 The Link Between SEO Data and Influencers 7 3 Discoverability and Audience Development 9 Designing an Influencer Marketing Campaign 9 for Audience Development 4 Influencer Analytics and Reporting 11 Analytics Matter for Both Brands and Influencers 12 5 Getting Started Checklist 13 6 Summary 14 3.

4 1. Why Influencer Marketing Should Be in Your Marketing Mix Channel of Distribution Simply creating great content is not enough. Content needs to be amplified beyond just the audience of the organization. Currently, marketers are not spending enough time or budget distributing content. Of those surveyed, approximately 87% of businesses spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on distribution. (gshift) A content strategy without a distribution strategy is #FAIL. ~ Krista LaRiviere, Co-Founder & CEO, gshift TWEET THIS 4.

5 Including influencer marketing in your marketing mix enables you to reach a new audience through established and trusted thought leaders. It helps amplify your message beyond what you would be capable of achieving with your social platforms, and to the right audience. The Power of Word-of-Mouth 1 in 3 people come to a brand through a recommendation and customers who were referred to the brand have a 37% higher retention rate (Deloitte) than those who were not referred. What we can gather from this insight is not only is word of mouth attracting a significant amount of buyers, but these buyers are better customers. Influencer marketing is a form of word of mouth marketing, and one of the reasons it works so well is because of the trust formed between the influencer and their followers. Brands content is viewed as biased, so consumers will go online and check reviews before making any purchasing decisions. Influencers are seen as an unbiased source of information and have gathered a loyal following since they are transparent, personable, authentic and provide valuable content to their audience. 5.

6 The Off-Site Challenge of Influencer Marketing While many organizations are starting to understand the need for distribution and influence, they lack visibility into the metrics required to properly evaluate their off-site content and influencer performance. The off-site and on-site customer journey is no longer a straight line. Rather, potential customers will engage through several off-site channels, in whatever order suits them best and will go in and out of an organization s sales funnel before choosing to self-identify, make contact and convert. Consumers lead the charge in how they decide to engage with brands and their content. Instead of trying to push your message through television ads or using social media as an advertising platform, leverage the trust influencers have with their followers and provide their audience with content they are genuinely interested in and will want to engage with. Cost Effective As with most marketing initiatives, sales and ROI are a main focus for brands investing in influencer marketing. With the size of potential audience and the impact some influencers have, this ROI has quickly become the channel with the highest return on investment. According to Tomoson, businesses make $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing. Given this data, is is not surprising influencer marketing has become a critical component of a brand s digital marketing mix, with 60% of brands planning on increasing their influencer marketing budgets (Adweek). Between the potential financial return and audience, data marketers can gain with detailed engagement reports; there are minimal dollars wasted using influencer marketing. Businesses make $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing. Data: Tomoson 6.

7 2. The Link Between SEO Data and Influencers The use of nfluencers is an extension of your digital marketing plan. You need to put the same level of strategizing and planning into influencer marketing as you would for any other tactic in your mix. Before seeking out influencers, understand the keywords and key messages you want to use for the campaign. This data will be critical in identifying the right individuals to help promote and build on your content. Don t be afraid of using long tail keywords when searching for influencers. The key to influencer marketing is to be as precise as possible with your selection. Unlike traditional SEO, which often casts a wider net, using the right influencers can get you in front of a very specific segment of your audience. 7.

8 Influencers are also adapting and have become savvy to optimizing their content for specific topics and keywords. This is beneficial for two reasons. Firstly, it can help make it even easier to identify influencers who are truly aligned with your content. Secondly, it means their content is likely to perform even stronger in search and social. To ensure your influencers are optimizing their content to align with yours, arm them with the assets and data they need to be successful for your brand. Are you considering adding Influencer Marketing to your mix? Download our influencer marketing toolkit to ensure your brand ambassadors have everything they need. gshift.it/41viy06 At the end of the day, all digital marketing is about SEO. This includes influencer marketing. A fact shared by marketing expert Lee Odden at Content Marketing World 2015: 8.

9 3. Discoverability and Audience Development Name any digital marketing tactic (i.e., marketing, SEO, retargeting, PPC, etc.). Two main outcomes the marketer is attempting to achieve are: 1) developing and finding the audience the entire target market is out there in social. How do you find the people who have the attention of your audience; and 2) lead generation and sales. When optimized properly, an influencer marketing campaign can have a great impact on discoverability, specifically within your target audience. Influencer content can rank for keywords within your strategy and improve authority in a more organic and genuine way. Designing an Influencer Marketing Campaign for Audience Development One of the most important aspects to remember when running an influencer marketing campaign is you need to take an audience-centric approach. Focus on the audience before thinking about the type of influencer you want to partner with. Start by clearly defining your audience and identifying what and who makes them tick. Ask yourself some of these questions: What do they care about? Where do they hang out online? Vine? Reddit? Snapchat? Who do they listen to? What is their buying journey (how do they discover, evaluate, decide and purchase?) 9.

10 Focusing on the makeup of your audience will help you create a search strategy when it comes to finding the ideal influencer. The beauty of influencer marketing is you have the opportunity to reach exactly who you are trying to target you don t have to worry about wasted marketing dollars if you choose the right influencers with the right audiences. You need to understand your audience before picking your influencers, which goes beyond just their demographics. Each person has his or her lifestyle and personality that demographics don t portray. Taking an audience-centric approach to influencer marketing requires you to get a grasp on what your audience is interested in. Using social listening or audience intelligence platforms will help you understand your target audiences interests. For example, if you are a marketer for a video gaming console interested in an influencer marketing campaign, your initial thought might be to reach out to fellow video game influencers on YouTube. This could work, but you have other options you should explore. If you do some research, you might discover that your target audience is also interested in sports and indie music. This is a key insight to keep in mind when searching for influencers as you explore the leaders in these categories. Working from the starting point of your audience to your influencer will increase the effectiveness of your influencer campaign by targeting your marketing efforts to those who are genuinely interested in hearing about your brand and content. A common misconception is that a brand needs influencers who represent the category the brand is in. Successful influencer marketing campaigns take an audience-centric approach to identifying influencers. TWEET THIS 10.

11 4. Influencer Analytics and Reporting Diving into influencer marketing without a strategy can leave you without a clear picture of a program s success or lack thereof. This can also affect your brand and damage it beyond repair. When a consumer is driven from the influencer to your site (via content) and has a negative experience due to your lack of planning, the odds of them interacting with your again are slim. It would have been better and more effective for you to have left them alone. Read more: gshift.it/dd-blog Influencer analytics goes well beyond page views or social likes and shares. In order together meaningful data from an influencer Campaign, look at click engagement on links within the post, as well as from social posts when the content was promoted. Set up and track conversion paths, to measure a customer s journey from the piece of influencer content to your website. This level of deeper influencer analytics provides proper insight into offsite engagement and conversion data. Using smart URLs can provide very detailed metrics on influencer campaign performance broken down by each influencer, channel, content type, campaign and more. [Learn More: Mastering Smart URLs: A Content Marketer s Guide to Tracking Off-Site Content] GET THE GUIDE 11.

12 Analytics Matter for Both Brands and Influencers. Influencer Analytics reports should be considered vital information for the organizations. Without this insight, there is no real gage on the possible return on investment and no understanding of how the campaign worked. These reports also for influencers who want to showcase their authority for future projects. As influencer marketing grows in popularity, the competitive landscape for the influencers themselves has grown. It is no longer about the size of your audience; influencers now need to prove the level of engagement can they provide. 12.

13 5. Getting Started Checklist Set your goals Outline what you hope to achieve with influencer marketing, such as brand awareness, lead generation, sales, etc. Set realistic numbers to these goals and assign a timeline. Set your budget. This will impact your content strategy and influencer selection. Identify your audience Set parameters for your target audience including active social platforms, geography, reach, interests, etc. Know your keywords List out 3-5 main keywords for the campaign. List out 5-7 long-tail variations on the main keyword phrases. Map out your content campaign Determine how long your campaign will run. How many influencers will be included? What type of content and messaging will be included? Write a campaign brief summarizing your target audience and content strategy. Find influencers who have an audience that matches your target market Identify appropriate influencers based on content strategy and target audience. Build a relationship with each influencer by engaging with them. Get on their radar. Ideally, this takes place well before a campaign even starts so the relationship can naturally grow, and then continue once a campaign is over. Interact with & set up influencers with content plan and analytics Reach out to each influencer with personalized s. Provide them with high-level details on the campaign. What s in it for their audience? What s in it for the influencer? Negotiate with influencers on compensation and deliverables. Provide an influencer brief for each influencer that outlines the agreed upon deliverables, time lines, compensation, key messaging and assets. 13.

14 6. Summary Influencer marketing follows the same line of thinking as every other aspect of marketing; it s about the long-term discoverability of your brand s content by the target audience in search and social. The challenge facing organizations today is ensuring their content continues to be discovered throughout the new customer buying cycle and across any device. People want a relationship with your brand. They want to inform themselves and are choosing to do so off of your site. Working with influencers helps you get in front of and continue to develop your target audience in a way that feels more natural and organic to you and your customers. Please share this guide with your networks: Share on LinkedIn Tweet this Guide Share on Facebook About gshift gshift s industry leading Web Presence Analytics Software Platform helps Brand and Agency teams efficiently understand and improve on the impact and engagement of a organization s content across its web presence. gshift s software infrastructure has been collecting and storing web presence data since More than 10,000 brands in 24 countries benefit from gshift s insight data and software, as they optimize their time to improve the discoverability and the sharing of their content. gshift placed 29th on the PROFIT HOT 50. For more information, please contact us at or sales@gshiftlabs.com gshiftlabs.com sales@gshiftlabs.com :: :: facebook.com/gshiftlabs 14.