Here’s the story of how we grew our website from 2,000 to 10,000 unique visitors/month in one year. We also doubled our amount of sales enquiries over the same period. Read on to find out how we did it and what we learned.
The amount of content available to somebody looking to find a few tips on influencer marketing is enormous. This is great but all this content is theoretical. Case studies of influencer marketing campaigns for big brands can be helpful but 99% of marketers can’t relate to it.
We’re here to provide great actionable tips backed by our own data and show you how you can achieve increased traffic and ROI. Read on to find out how we grew our traffic organically using a few simple techniques.
Identify the influencers key to your business
Easier said than done. This is still the biggest challenge for most of our clients. Identifying the right people for your business is crucial in order to achieve success.
Focus on the influencer persona and their affinities. Make sure you align your end goals with your influencers’ focus. In our case we built most relationships with marketing and social media professionals.
We’ve done this exercise quite a few times in the past, check out this blog to find influencer lists on IoT, M2M, Content Marketing, Wearable tech and many more!
Building relationships and listen
This is not sponsored content, you’re here to build a valuable and long-lasting relationship. Influencers are often experts on subjects close to your business, be sure to listen to what they have to tell you.
Marketing has changed and the time that you could get thousands of pageviews in a blink has passed. Influencer marketing is most effective in the long run. We have been engaging with most of “our” influencers for over two years now.
Get a strategy in place as soon as possible. You can harvest an influencer’s opinion on your latest piece on Twitter for example. This allows you to establish an initial link on which you can build. Be creative!
But what about content marketing?
If you want to engage with influencers you’ll need some exceptional content. Having a content strategy is essential if you want to grow with influencer marketing.
You should already know what resonates most with your target audience. Optimise and A/B test your content across your channels and define best practice.
We blog every week. Solve the problems that your target audience faces and they will come and more importantly share.
This influencer is ignoring me
That’s alright, this will happen. You now have a list of people that you would want to engage with. At this stage you want to define a clear outreach strategy. Think about:
- Channels? If you’re a SaaS provider you shouldn’t spend your days building that viral snapchat campaign.
- Frequency of communication? Certain influencers are open to more or less messages. Test and track your every move.
- End goals? Brand awareness, sales and ROI all need different approaches.
Plan your engagement ahead of time. This will take time and will define the success of your efforts.
Don’t focus too much on the big fish. A million followers is impressive but your end goals is what you should focus on. Dream big but start small.
Measure everything
It’s 2015 and marketing analytics are on the rise. Influencer marketing is marketing so make sure you measure everything you can measure. Getting data on your outreach is the best way to optimise and refine your strategy. Look for increased shares, impressions and increase in share of voice for example. This will help you measure the effectiveness of your activities and gives you the opportunity to tailor your outreach at every step.
The growth
We started 2014 with clear ideas (influencer marketing) in mind on how to grow organic traffic and our business. In January 2014 we registered 5,016 pageviews. In April 2014 we were able to double that number and in January 2015 we hit over 20,000 pageviews.
Influencer marketing played the biggest role in our traffic increase. We consistently built relationships with key thought leaders on Twitter throughout the year. Towards the end of year we ran a smart campaign on wearable tech right before Christmas identifying the hottest influencers, products and brands on social media. We then focused on trending topics like big data and social selling. There was a clear need defining what brands were most engaging and active in these online discussions, the communities loved it and it helped them map their own online discussions. All 3 campaigns got shared over 7,000 times in total and generated over 7,000 pageviews in January alone. Influencer marketing in action, at scale. N.B. our marketing team is composed of two marketers so don’t worry about getting started when you’re the only marketer!
We were lucky we could count on some influencers (and brands!) spreading the word:
Top 100 Influencers & Brands in 2015 via @Onalytica http://t.co/v3pnwY8iDn #SocialSelling
— Marsha Collier (@MarshaCollier) February 3, 2015
The 2015 #WearableTech landscape, including #DigitalHealth http://t.co/p0NkEq22ta pic.twitter.com/o1GQCxXLMt @Intel #Wearables #MakeItWearable — Paul Sonnier (@Paul_Sonnier) February 25, 2015
We’re excited to be in the top 5 brands for #bigdata on twitter! Full list of brands + individuals: http://t.co/sVzuKp8lSF via @Onalytica
— Cloudera (@cloudera) January 22, 2015
You get the idea, this is what you want to achieve. Build the relationship and then start engaging regularly with your influencers. Before you know it they will look forward to your content and will be happy to share it!
The future and what we’ve learned
We recently changed our website and succeeded in increasing the number of sales enquiries by another 100%. We wanted to maintain simplicity with our new website and provide bold and clear messaging. We also invested a lot of time and effort in an education section. It was crucial for us to answer the questions people could have around our offering. Influencer marketing is still a new discipline to most marketers and it is important to address those needs.
While we were driving plenty of traffic before, the key was to convert this traffic into demo requests for our software. Our new website is more promising in traffic conversion and we’re already seeing improvements with the minimal amount of data we have collected so far.
Influencer marketing is becoming mainstream throughout 2015 and more brands and agencies are aware that it needs to be part of the marketing mix. The benefits are clear:
– More cost-effective than paid advertising
– Generates more word-of-mouth than paid advertising
– Leads to more credible brand recommendations
In 2015, it makes sense for any business to invest in influencer marketing. You can get started on a tiny budget and see the results within 3 months. Once you have applied the basic influencer marketing framework for your business you can start optimising every stage of it. If done correctly, influencer marketing can yield huge results and propel your business forward in a noisy digital and connected world.
We know that we’re just getting started and are extremely excited to see the results of our efforts in the coming years. Next to that, we also eat our own dog food. We have built the perfect tool to manage and scale your influencer marketing, join the likes of Microsoft, Sony and many more and start influencing your market today.
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