Influencer marketing is a powerful marketing tactic that puts a megaphone on an influential person’s recommendations. More than 5 billion people across the globe use the internet and of those, 4.70 billion are active on social media. It makes sense that consumers are turning to social media to find recommendations on the best products and services to buy.
While social media is a key part of an influencer marketing campaign, it’s not the only way an influencer can promote a business’s products or services. Influencers can reach beyond social media especially if they are local because the influencer is in the same community as the consumers — they shop at the same mall and their family and friends live here too, bringing extra relatability and trust to their brand.
Let’s discuss a few ideas that extend influencer marketing beyond social media.
Live Events
Local influencers can attend your live event, whether it’s a conference, festival or product launch in your store. In addition to promoting the event ahead of time, the influencer’s attendance can also draw a crowd of people who want to meet them. This gives you the benefit of social media promotion by the influencer as well as a memorable offline experience that leaves a lasting impact on consumers.
If you are selling tickets to your event, you can give the influencer an offer code or other ways for their audience to access a discount or extra VIP package. Not only does this help get the word out about your event, but you can also use this to track and measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign.
Radio Endorsements And Commercials
There’s a lot of power in your influencer’s social media audience because you’re reaching a targeted audience of people who respect and/or admire the influencer. But broad marketing tactics like radio campaigns are also beneficial, especially for branding. Partnering with a radio host for an influencer marketing campaign gives you the best of both worlds.
Like influencers who only post on social media, radio hosts form a relationship and bond with their listeners. While they’re reaching a broad audience, they also have a following of superfans who love to tune in to their favorite hosts.
Your business can partner with a radio host to be the voice of your brand on your radio commercials. They can also endorse your product or services on their radio show and on radio commercials.
At Federated Media, many of our radio hosts also have dedicated social media audiences — including people who listen to their on-air shows and people who only engage with the hosts online. When our radio hosts partner with brands for an influencer marketing campaign, businesses enjoy the benefit of posts shared with their targeted social media audience and on-air endorsements that reach their broad radio audience.
Warren Kluck of The Jason Lee and Kluck Show, which airs mornings on 98.9 The Bear in Fort Wayne and 103.9 The Bear in South Bend, recently partnered with McDaniel’s Harley Davidson in South Bend for an influencer marketing campaign. Since The JLNK Show has more than 14,000 Facebook followers and 3,000 Instagram followers, the McDaniel’s team wanted to engage with those followers in addition to radio listeners.
Kluck promotes McDaniel’s Harley Davidson’s Bike Night events, merchandise offerings, and open job postings through on-air endorsements, radio commercials, and videos and photos posted to social media. The campaign began at the beginning of motorcycle season.
More than 1,000 people attended the first Bike Night event at McDaniel’s and they even sold multiple motorcycles that night, as well as clothing and other Harley Davidson merchandise. That’s in addition to the people who have heard the ads and seen the social media posts and stopped into the store during regular business hours.
Podcasts
Radio creates the theater of the mind — and so do podcasts.
If a social media influencer also hosts a podcast, consider expanding your campaign to include ads on their podcast. This is another platform where they can have an audience of dedicated fans. Listeners have to subscribe or otherwise seek out the content intentionally, so podcast listeners are superfans.
Similar to a radio campaign, an influencer marketing campaign that includes a podcast can mention your business’s products or services in the middle of a show. Effective podcast ads are baked into the show and are ad-libbed by the podcast host, which makes listeners more interested in the show. Like with radio commercials or event marketing, the podcast ads can play off of the social media posts in the campaign.
As you can see, there are a lot of opportunities to expand your influencer marketing campaigns beyond social media. While you may end up with some crossover audience when you expand to platforms like radio and podcasts, that’s OK — repeat messaging is powerful. And it’s worth it to reach even MORE people with your message.
If you want to explore an integrated influencer marketing campaign with personalities that are enthusiastic supporters of local businesses, Federated Media has a diverse group of social media influencers who can incorporate events, radio, and podcasts into the campaign as well. Contact us to get started!