How can your brand target new audiences and build trust and likability? One of the best ways is with social media influencers! Bob Tripathi talks with Juanika Dildy of Ladyprenuers on how to start conversations and engage mass audiences with influencer marketing.

Bob : All right. This is Bob at Digital Sparx Marketing and as you guys know I like to talk to industry leaders, people who have been there, done that in the trenches. And today I have a very special good one — Juanika Dildy. Is that the right?

Juanika : No no you’re fine. I’m used to having a name this gets butchered often. Yes but Juanika is perfect.

Influencer Marketing

Bob : So this is great because one of the things I want to talk to you about, and this is what you do, is influencer marketing. So can you tell us the state of influencer marketing? Because to me, it looks like everyone and their dog is an influencer. What’s your thoughts on it?

Juanika : I love Influencer marketing because it gives you a position to put yourself in front of people that you wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise; you didn’t necessarily have those people that had the feeling from your target audience. So what I mean by that is a lot of times when you want customers to do business with you, first, they must feel like they like you. They must feel like they know you, and then they must feel like they can trust you. So you’re not gonna get that entryway into a brand new cold customer. You’re not going to get that entryway into your cold market. So what an influence marketer will do is automatically bridges that gap.

Bob : They have a following that follows them on a regular basis. They feel like they know them. They feel like they like them. They feel like they can trust them. So, it gives you leverage.

Importance of Influencer Marketing

How important is influencer marketing? Should companies, or only the larger companies able to take advantage of influencers or can even small mid-sized companies can do it?

Juanika : Everyone from the individual entrepreneur to the massive company should take advantage of Influence marketing. The reason for that is because it’s the only way that you’re going to get in front of an audience that you wouldn’t necessarily know about. So for instance, if you were an entrepreneur and you had a specific following but your audience is interested in anything other than you, you wouldn’t necessarily reach that audience because they’re not automatically following you. But if you reach out to an influencer that has the attention of that audience, you can automatically pull them in.

How To Know Your Niche Influencers

Bob : So how do you go about looking for the wide influencers who match your company your brand your philosophy its principles? How do you go about?

Juanika :The key is really knowing your audience. If you know what your audience is interested in. If you know what your audience looks for on social media if you know what your audience does in their free time if you know more about the family life of your audience the demographics of your audience you can look up those things. I use the ads manager on Facebook. There is the audience insight tool that’s in there that will tell you anything that you need to know about your target audience. If you have a little bit of information about them it will automatically make the connections for you. So you can see their interests and based on their interest you can position yourself in front of influencers in industries outside of the one that you’re dealing with yourself.

So one of the things I’ve noticed is with influencer marketing is there is too much communication and some influencers give too many messages.

How To Connect With Your Influencers

Bob : What is the right amount of communication to select influencers and then keep them retain with your brand?

Juanika : So what you want to do is you want to also study your influencers just as much as you study your target audience. The reason for that is you want to see how much engagement they have with the target audience and then you can see how much they post on a regular basis. You want to make sure that you have the right percentage of your information on their polls so that they don’t you don’t want to seem cells.

You want to invite people and use your product or service you don’t want to push your product or service. So one thing that you can ask your influencer is what’s the hot button right for your target audience? What are the main needs of your target audience? What does your target audience complain about the most? What are they interested in you the most for you? And if you get that answer you can position your content to make sure that you’re giving the audience what they need. And if you give the audience the right type of content you don’t constantly have to bombard them through the influencer.

Budget Allocation for Influencer Marketing

Bob : So now here’s one question How much in terms of budget you should allocate to in terms of marketing? Because we all know the budget for acquisition right now. This is how much you should spend on paid search. But how about influencer marketing–what’s the right budget? If there is one?

Juanika : So it’s actually based on the influencer a lot of times. If you’re a small business or even a large business you may be more beneficial reaching out to a micro-influencer because it feels like there’s more of a trust factor with those individuals. So that target audience may actually be more attracted to someone that feels like they look like them and they are a little bit more interactive with them. And that way your budget can be as small as you need it to be. Micro-influencers may charge you ten dollars a day to run an ad on their page. They may charge you $27a day to run an ad on their page. I know that there are influences out there that will run an ad for a day that have 150,000 followers that will want to ad for a day for $200 bucks right. Right. So whatever it is that you feel like you need to get in front of the audience. Measure your audience size measure the level of engagement that influencer has with your audience and then kind of gauge what it’s worth from there.

Bob : So what is the ethical part of this? The reason is, I have a 9- year-old daughter and she watches YouTube influencers. She sees all kinds of girls from all of these clothing companies and there is no word that discloses what she’s doing.

Bob : Yeah, but actually kids are 9 years of age and 8 or so influence the ones that go beyond.

Juanika : I would say that you have to decide from a personal standpoint what your ethical boundaries are and then figure out from there. Who’s the type of person that you want to work with? Okay, you don’t want to be on a page in general that automatically pushes a bunch of ads out to people because then you’ll see just as salesy as everyone else right?

So you want to find that that influencer that has the interaction with people that is going deep into their comments and they’re responding to people, they’re answering their direct messages, they’re having conversations with people. Pay attention to the live feeds. Because when people are getting your live feeds, they have the opportunity to speak to you. They type a message and they expect you to respond. So I would do some research on the influencer first to make sure that they’re actually responding and interacting with their audience versus just being pushy. Seldom do they have to put a link somewhere that this is a sponsor.

Bob : But it’s they should. It’s actually, legally they should.

Juanika : A lot of times they don’t normally because if you do something that’s going to be replayed over and over and over again like a YouTube video, you should put it in the comments somewhere. But it’s the difference between a sponsored ad and a shout out. If you’re just shouting somebody out and you’re saying, ‘hey I think that this is great you should you know take a look at this.’ That’s something that you’re not necessarily getting paid for. So if you’re being paid to sponsor an ad, ethically you should definitely let people know

Tools to Find Influencers

Bob : Any tools you recommend for people to go about finding influencers?

Juanika : So I use the ads manager because I want to do my own research on an influencer to make sure that they fit my audience and that they are ethically the type of person that I would want to work with. There are a number of tools out there that I think are great but I don’t think they give you the right amount of research than the person that you want because the biggest thing you can do to be successful is to make sure that you have your target correct. So if you work with an influencer that isn’t ethically representing your target correctly, you’re wasting money. Yes.

Metrics To Measure Influencer Marketing

Bob : And one final question and I’ll let you go. But what are some of the metrics you should measure with influencer marketing?

Juanika : You definitely want to measure the level of engagement and there’s a quantity that we use. And it’s actually a range that you can use. It’s called the average rate of engagement. Okay. From what is the number of likes plus the number of comments divided by the number of followers that you have. All right.

So the number of likes plus the number of comments, number of comments divided by the number of followers.

Yes. And the reason why that’s important is that you can have a lot of likes. You can have a lot of comments, or you can have a lot of followers. But if your followers aren’t liking and commenting, then it means absolutely nothing because the engagement isn’t there.

Bob : You also want to measure your customer experience. If you’re working with influencers and they’re not returning actual stories. People want to feel some level of authenticity when they’re dealing with products and services. So if they’re not returning real stories that say, ‘hey this is my experience with the product or service or I felt this way when I use the product or service,’ then you don’t have the testimonials that you need to continue to push your business forward. So I would definitely measure the level of customer satisfaction and the customer experience.

This is great. So I want to know how can my people reach you.

Juanika : So you guys can email me at e Ladypreneur.com. You can also follow me on all social media channels on Instagram at Ladyprenuer and on everything else I am Lady from Newark. Feel free to reach out. If you have any questions definite let me know. I’ll be happy to get back in contact with you guys.

Bob : Thank you so much for your time. It’s great. Yeah definitely. Thank you for joining.

Thank you. We learned quite a bit, but thank you for joining. Thank you.