How to Use Influencers in Your Digital Marketing

Word of mouth and generating emotion are important forms of advertising for tourism businesses. Digital marketing of tourism is based on the 5 Stages of Travel and social media platforms are essential in at least 3 of these stages.

Influencers who are already social media stars, Youtubers or bloggers can help you with your promotional campaigns if their messages align with your brand values. 

Why should you use influencers? 

They already have the audience

• The most direct benefit of working with influencers is that they already have an audience who are interested in tourism and travelling
• Their audiences sees them as trustworthy voices and they can help your brand build authenticity and credibility
• They can let your consumers view travel as attainable and assist your brand to be adaptable to travel trends
• They can be a third-party endorsement and increase your brand awareness and exposure

Quality & cost-effective content creation

• Influencers create organic and cost-effective content and can be used as a part of your user generated content (UGC)
• Their high-quality content can improve search engine optimisation (SEO) to your websites, encourage the targeted audiences’ engagement, provide you with a greater reach, contribute to diversification in different communication channels, drive more bookings and help you reconnect with your current customers with a negotiable budget
• If you’re collaborating well, you can gain some long-term benefits like using the content assets in the future or working with them again, making them a part of your team as a spokesperson and a brand ambassador

How should you use influencers? 

Though there’re considerable benefits when working with influencers. You have to know how to find a suitable partner or partners to be responsible for your marketing campaigns. 

Ensure their audience matches your target market

• Select influencers who have an audience that are interested in your business and influencers who have the most affinity with your business
• Analyse their social media profiles on their number of followers, the interaction between them, and the quality of their posts
• Consider whether their communication style aligns with your brand. It’ll be double-winning if your brand matches the influencers and they can create effective content with more freedom and also live up to their followers’ expectations. 

Set agreed campaign goals with them

• What are your objectives in this partnership, what would you like to achieve and how to carry them out?
• Do you want to raise your brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate bookings, boost social media followers or more?
• Would you do it with sponsored posts, reviews, giveaways or other forms of advertising?
• On what platforms do they show their posts, how frequent and in which period?
• What are the benefits and exchanges for services you can offer, and what are their charges?
• Note that influencers with various numbers of followers charge differently. You may set your own budget and reach out to more than one potential influencers before you come up with the most suitable one.
• Try to launch win-win campaigns that can be beneficial to both parties.  

Measure the results

Make sure that your influencers are willing to report their metrics of the campaigns or let you set up a tracking code to measure the success of the campaign. Always remember to respect the influencers and be prepared to answer any questions, provide assistance, treat them as your team member and align with them to achieve some long-term benefits together.  

If you need any advice on influencer marketing campaigns, feel free to talk to us. We’re happy to help your business grow.