What are influencers?
Influencers are people—the engaging advocates, ambassadors, and brand fans—with significant social media followings that partner with advertisers and app developers to promote their products or services to a captive and loyal audience. Influencers cover a wide range of topics and connect with their audience on a personal level, so they can be a powerful asset for brands looking to expand their reach. They are the champion for your brand and are at the forefront of driving your brand’s mobile growth.
When it comes to growing any brand, influencers are one of the most effective ways to optimize user acquisition and obtain higher return on investment (ROI). Specifically, consider figuring out who your influencers are and either rewarding or targeting them with special offers for your mobile app.
Types of Brand Influencers and Their Motivations
- Industry Influencers: These are individuals with social reach and status, are well regarded by their peers and can help spread your brand. They are not necessarily familiar with your brand, and different standards determine these individuals’ influence. Whether it’s web-only or celebrity status, influencers can range from celebrities and semi-celebrities to individuals with a wide social media or blog following to micro-influencers, and their reach can cross multiple platforms and they increasingly require a paid arrangement to do business. When picking the right influencers, you should look for influencers by keywords they use, social performance of their posts, and audience demographics of their followers.
- Brand Advocates: They are the super users and brand fans that actually can drive organic (or paid, depending on your budget and strategy) awareness and new user acquisition for your brand. They are most likely users of your product, but in some cases, they can be brand fans without actually having used your product. They are brand loyalists who engage with the brand because they truly love it and will usually take action if asked. They may or may not have a sphere of influence themselves.
- Fans: Fans are similar to brand advocates, but they are less likely to take action if asked. If properly engaged and nurtured, fans can turn into brand advocates. The best way to find fans is to look at your most engaged users. These could be users that use your app every day, but also users that share your mobile app with their friends. You can use in-app analytics platforms like Mixpanel or Localytics to track the engagement of these users and set up automated nurture campaigns or send them in-app messaging to further engage them with your brand.
How to Reward Influencers the Right Way
When it comes to rewarding influencers, depending on what type of brand influencer they are, they usually look for different incentives—the higher the engagement with the brand, and the higher the loyalty to your brand, the less likely a financial motivation will have a notable impact. Ideally, while in the early days of growing your app and brand, you might need to pay money to get big industry influencers or affiliates to promote you. As you grow, you should focus on turning these users into fans and advocates, through brand engagement and building loyalty.