Influencer marketing for small business in 2024

What is influencer marketing? 

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement. You can select, empower and reward influencers for promoting your online store and products.  Influencers are a powerful addition to any small business marketing strategy.   

Influencer marketing has become a crucial element in the modern marketing mix  (Forbes) and according to data shared by Statista is estimated to be worth $24 billion.

The benefits of an influencer marketing strategy for small business 

Content creators & influencers already have established and trusting relationships with their audiences; which can help to increase your brand awareness and provide wide reach to a variety of potential new customers.  

Influencers specialise in creating content and can offer a range of original opportunities for your products or business, such as grid posts, stories and reels. There are lots of different methods of promoting through an influencer, such as; giveaways, discount codes, takeovers, gifting or sponsored ads.  Often you can work with your choice of influencer to find the right method for your online business and target audience.  

As a small business exploring influencer marketing, you have things in your favour that larger brands don’t, such as agility, speed and the ability to engage with smaller influencers with highly loyal and engaged audiences. Smaller and growing businesses can play to these strengths when working with influencers, in a way that larger brands can’t. You can create mutually beneficial relationships and grow together with nano and micro-influencers who have fewer followers, but who are extremely loyal.  

What are the different types of influencers? 

The standard terminology in influencer marketing (STIM) allows us to categorise influencers based on their follower count. These categories are as follows: 

• Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers.  
• Micro-influencers: 10,000-50,000 followers.  
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000-500,000 followers.  
• Macro-influencers: 500,000-1 million followers.  
• Mega-Influencers: 1 million+ followers (for example ‘Mrs Hinch’) 

We generally advise small businesses to focus on nano and micro-influencers as these types will most likely have the most engaged following and niche audiences, who trust their expertise, resulting in higher conversion rates to real sales. They also often have cheaper and more affordable rates to suit more modest marketing budgets.  

How do I find influencers to work with? 

Whether they are an online magazine, a lifestyle blogger, a hobbyist, Youtuber or Instagrammer, you can connect with thousands of influencers through an affiliate marketing influencer platform for small business or beginners.  

Once you’ve joined up with an affiliate marketing platform, such as Awin, influencers can all be found in an easily searchable directory using keywords and terms that fit your brand, as well as filters to make it easier to narrow down your search to find the perfect influencer.   You can then simply invite them to connect with you through your affiliate programme, and begin your relationship.  

One of the biggest benefits of connecting with influencers through an affiliate programme is that all partnerships will be vetted, and all payments are totally secure through the platform. So, you can test influencer marketing and affiliate marketing with total peace of mind.  

How to check if an influencer account is genuine? 

There are a few simple things to check if you are looking into the integrity of an influencer account. 

1. Check their follower engagement

1. Checking their clicks to comments ration; if there’s 1000s of clicks and no comments this could indicate the account has lots of fake followers
2. Reading the comments of their posts; this will show whether their followers are genuine or not. If the comments have no relevance to their posts, then this could be a sign of a fake follower

2. Check to see when they last posted and how often to see how active the influencer is

3. Check the influencer's bio (the brief description at the top of their account) and any highlighted stories to see if they are already working with competitors

4. You can also use influencer marketing and social intelligence tools to identify the effectiveness of an influencers previous campaigns as well as spotting fake accounts  

Why should you use an affiliate marketing platform to manage your influencer marketing? 

A relationship initiated on a performance payment model motivates the influencer to be accountable for driving the results that are important to you. Having your influencers on an affiliate platform creates a controlled agreement between one another to help each other succeed.  

Working through a platform like Awin is the safest way for your small business to find and pay influencers. All influencers on our platform go through compliance checks before they are approved, therefore, all publishers are authentic and compliant.  New influencers provide evidence that they are who they say they are, and that the social media account genuinely belongs to them – only 70% of those that join are accepted, due to these rigorous and important checks. 

Plus, if your influencer uses Awin affiliate links their performance can be tracked and monitored through an easy-to-use and intuitive reporting dashboard. Their payments will be managed through an automated billing system; relieving you of that burden and giving peace of mind.   

What’s more; if your e-commerce store is powered by Shopify, PrestaShop, or Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) as many small businesses are, you can integrate onto an affiliate platform like Awin in a few simple steps.  With just a few clicks you can be tracking all your influencer partnerships.  

Five top tips to making influencer marketing work for your business  

1. Initiate conversations - If you have found an influencer through your affiliate platform and you want them to join your programme, or or you want to engage with an influencer already connected with you, is important to reach out and initiate conversations to start building a relationship with them. If an influencer you want to work with isn’t yet on your affiliate platform of choice, you can invite them to sign up to become a publisher so you can still work with them, in a safe and controlled environment.  With Awin's  instagram sign-up process, influencers can sign-up in just a few simple steps. 
   
   
2. Consider gifting - If your brand is a physical product, you may have the ability to arrange gifting. This is a fantastic way for influencers to show off your products to their followers, and you can track all of the sales driven by each influencer using tracking links. You don’t have to gift products to every influencer, as this can be expensive, but it works well for those that you feel have a strong and authentic connection to your brand, and whose audience prefer to see them interacting live with a product to build trust.
   
   
3. Create discount codes - Whether it is a general promotion from your brand or a personalised discount code, this is a great way to incentivise influencers to promote your brand online. You should be able to do this through most ecommerce platforms, and it enables influencers to generate sales for you without needing tracking links. So, it’s another great way to engage with different types of influencers and cater to how their audience best engages with them.
   
   
4. Provide legitimacy - It is easier and more genuine for an influencer partner to want to promote your brand once they know all essential information first. For example, are you an ethical brand? Does your brand contribute to charity? Have you won any awards? Be sure to share key information that could help them sell you and your products. This way you will form a genuine relationship where you can grow together. If the publisher enjoys your brand and products, this comes across to their audience as authentic, and your partnership will perform better.
   
   
5. Stay nimble – Forbes has rightly highlighted the importance for being ready for change and staying alert in 2024. The online world is moving at such a fast pace with social media trends emerging constantly. Brands that can capitalise on these emerging themes will be at the forefront of timely content that resonates with their intended audience in real time. 

Final thoughts 

Influencer marketing is not just for big brands. Small businesses can benefit hugely from working with smaller nano- or micro-influencers with engaged audiences, or even larger influencers who are looking to represent legitimate and ethical growing independent brands. Don’t be scared to make connections and explore all the opportunities that influencer marketing can bring to drive online sales.   

Find influencers to work with now through Awin Access, set up specifically to connect small and growing businesses with influencers and content creators who can help promote them to vast new audiences.