Traditionally, an influencer is someone who has many followers on Instagram and other social media but nowadays, influencing has evolved into a legitimate marketing strategy. In this Expert Insight Interview, Magda Houalla discusses influencer marketing. Magda Houalla is a Director of the marketing strategy at AspireIQ and a community intelligence marketing leader.
The interview discusses:
- Developing the influencer program
- Brand Ambassadors
- Maintaining the influencer program
Develop the Program
Influencers have become valuable to organizations because their stories influence people to take actions such as to become a new customer or to stay loyal to the brand. To develop an influencer program for the organization, it starts with establishing goals. Brand awareness can mean different things for different brands. When the organization identifies its goals, it becomes easier to target the people who can contribute to achieving those goals. For example, by establishing cooperation with a social media influencer, that influencer creates high-quality content that your organization has the right to use for marketing purposes.
Furthermore, customers react positively to providing them an experience of belonging to the community. Lululemon company creates an authentic sense of belonging to its community for its customers by organizing in-store yoga classes as well as yoga retreats for more influential members of their community. The point is to provide value for the people beyond the product you offer so that they stay motivated to become a member and grow together with your organization.
Brand Ambassador
The difference between influencers and brand ambassadors is that influencers can work with many different brands while ambassadors usually have an exclusive, long-term contract with one brand. That way company can notice and lock in the talented ambassador early if he or she shows the potential to grow. It is also beneficial if the ambassador is already familiar, or even better, a fan of the product. That way, an ambassador would be able to tell the stories better and more enthusiastically.
Maintain the Program
In B2B, an influencer is a subject matter expert who has the credibility to validate the story of your business. In the sales business, Dreamforce has a significant influence, for example. It depends on the industry, but the majority of business influencers are on the LinkedIn platform. Regardless of the brand’s industry, each influencing program needs auditing and being kept up to date because new cutting-edge platforms show up all the time. And lastly, the influencing program needs to have a healthy process of finding new people because sometimes it requires bringing new influence.
Do you have any influencer that you follow daily on social media? In today’s Expert Insight Interview, we welcome Magda Houalla to discuss the trend of influencer marketing.
Has following any influencer on social media ever made you decide to become a customer of a product he or she promoted? Our today’s guest in Expert Insight Interview is Magda Houalla, and she discusses influencer marketing as a strategy.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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