“Influencer marketing” essentially consists of piggybacking off of people who have a firmly established social reach on one or more platforms. As it is a largely supplementary strategy for web marketing companies, it seems to be given less focus than traditional means of marketing and social media outreach. But as a supplementary tactic, it is increasingly popular and effective, and it is poised for more growth.
Influencer marketing is the focus of this article at Digiday, which provides a series of charts to clarify what web marketing companies seek to accomplish by purchasing influence from social media stars, as well as what platforms and payment arrangements they’re using to do so.
The article’s data mostly involved large companies that are paying tens of thousands of dollars to capitalize on massive, nationwide influence. But the same strategies can be used on a local level by a web marketing firm in Los Angeles or other localities. Such firms can take advantage of social media users who wield influence in relatively small, niche markets. And this can have a tremendous effect on your target demographics, especially when influencers are chosen according to the thorough research that ought to be performed by your local web marketing firm.
The value of that research increases dramatically when it points the way toward influencers with whom relationships have already been established. This is another advantage of relying on professional assistance in your marketing strategies, social media outreach, and so on. A Los Angeles web marketing firm is likely to have established contacts with influencers on various platforms and in various niches. In some cases, the work of that web marketing firm may have actually helped those influencers to achieve their social media status.
Thus, a Los Angeles web marketing firm will be better able to approach key influencers than you would on your own. It may also have established practices for compensating them for mentioning a client site, or linking to it. Although never central to a web marketing plan, this type of influence is something else that you can discuss with your web marketing company, to gain a fuller understanding of what they can do for you, that you can’t do for yourself.
