Digital marketing has been reshaping businesses all around the world. With more than 3 billion internet users worldwide, you can only imagine the impact of digital media on prospects and customers. The Middle East is also one of the areas that buzz with many influencers and a huge room for companies to utilize them in marketing. However, there’s a constant question on how to utilize digital media to the maximum and to select just the right prospective customers for your business.

We already know that Google ads and Facebook promotions help a company reach their target audience in an accurate manner. However, another form of digital PR has been dominating the market recently. In the past, whenever someone you trust recommends a product, you subconsciously go for it. In traditional marketing, this is called 'word of mouth', and it has been replaced by influencer marketing. Let's just know some basics about who an influencer is, and why you should allocate part of your strategy to influencer marketing.

Who Is An Influencer?

Influencers are important players on social media platforms. They have many followers with which they had built a trust relationship. The vast majority of sectors have their own influencers in each region. Here, in the Middle East, individuals and business pages may influence the choices of consumers.

Why Use Influencer Marketing?

Because influencers are very trusted amongst their audience, they tend to drastically affect their audience’s choices. Influencers have a very specific audience, they have major interests. Therefore, a company should be very selective when choosing their influencers or brand ambassadors.

When an influencer mentions or recommends a product, his/her audience tends to blindly follow their choice. It’s like buying the perfume Coco Chanel wears or riding the car Schumacher rides.

Influencers psychologically impact users to believe that they have insider information about what these icons are using. This impact positions the mentioned brand at the top of their head.

How To Choose The Right Influencer For Your Business?

It is essential and hard to select the right influencer for your brand. Influencers affect the brand image and reputation. Also, if you select an influencer with the wrong exposure, you will not benefit much from the campaign. In order to get the most out of influencer marketing, you need to make sure that the influencer has access to the target audience you want to address.

Insights from your social media listening tool can be a key factor in choosing the right influencer. Crowd Analyzer, for example, gives you just the right insights regarding influencers. When you select a keyword or topic to research, you will be given the option to know the top users according to the following:

• The influencer with the largest number of activities regarding a topic or brand.
• The influencer with the highest rate of interactions.
• The influencer with the largest base of followers.

Crowd Analyzer's experts recommend that you rely on several criteria to reach the right influencer. For example, we spot the key players in an industry by selecting the user with the highest number of interactions, simple because interactions mean that users are actually engaging with this influencer, and perhaps this influencer is interacting with their customers.

What's New In 2018?

There are several ways you can maximize your brand's exposure by adding a lot of weight on influencer marketing. Here are some tips that will guide you through this:

• Select The Right Type of Influencers (Yes, there are several types)

Not everyone with a large number of followers is the right influencer for your business. We've recently launched a new report that assists our clients to accurately select the right influencer for their business. For instance, you may need someone who has a high rate or interactions about a specific field in your industry. Your objective then is to figure out who is the most influential user who promotes or talks about that specific field. Be assured that this Micro-influencer may not have many followers, but definitely the right followers who talk and discuss a product/service.

• Put Them In The Right Stage of Your Buyer's Journey

Where is your marketing falling short? Is it the promotion part or as early as the awareness stage? The good news is that influencer marketing fits on every stage or your buyer's journey, yet you have to keep in mind that it is all about the context and the content.

During the previous years, influencers have been trapped in the awareness stage; the very first stage of marketing which informs people about a product/service. Nowadays, online users and followers have been more selective and aware, and need a stronger bond of trust to purchase. Influencers' posts and content should tackle the main objective of every stage so you would want them to tell their audience how your brand would serve them in the educational stage and give special offers in the promotion stage, and so on.

• Use Influencer Marketing To Target Businesses

Yes, it is possible. Social media platforms are used by businessmen as well as everybody else. Companies do trust certain experts in their fields and accordingly make decisions. If your business is targeting businesses, you still have a chance to optimize your marketing strategy to include influencer marketing and get you contacted by prospective clients.

Crowd Analyzer is one of a few listening tools that provide you with the most accurate and comprehensive influencer reports. Click here to take a look.