Top-5 Influencer Marketing Alternatives to Promote Your Brand

Just over a few years, influencer marketing turned from a barely significant phenomenon to a powerful industry. The industry that’s expected to be worth $15 billion by next year. This, however, doesn’t mean that you should put all your eggs in a single basket. This is not the only way to promote your brand. There are powerful influencer marketing alternatives out there that you should know about.

Advantages and disadvantages of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing seems to be popular with the majority of brands, big and small. And it’s no wonder. When done right, this method of marketing can bring spectacular results. There are a few main advantages to influencer marketing:

1. People tend to trust the opinions and recommendations of bloggers and influencers. In fact, they trust them much more than direct advertising.
2. Influencer marketing provides direct access to your target audience.
3. It’s versatile. There are multiple ways to make influencer marketing work. The format of brand/influencer partnerships depends on your marketing campaign objectives, the type of products/services you offer, specific characteristics of your target audience, and many other factors.

However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. When there are lots of variables your marketing campaign depends on, it’s hard to predict its results with 100% certainty. So there’s a flip side to this coin:

1. Obviously, the main factor that makes it work is influencers. It’s them who make your marketing successful. Or not. Over 60% of marketers admit that finding the right influencers for their marketing campaigns is a challenge. Don’t get me wrong; it’s very easy to find a bunch of bloggers and contact them. What’s difficult is to make sure that their target audience is similar to yours. And it’s even harder to make sure that this audience is interested in what you have to offer.
2. Again, there is no way to predict the outcome with absolute certainty. Sure, you can minimize the risks using analytics tools like the ones trendHERO offers before and during your marketing campaign. However, there will always be factors you will have no control over.
3. Whatever formats of influencer marketing you use, chances are their audience has seen it before. Finding a unique way to reach your potential customers is nearly impossible.

5 Alternatives to influencer marketing

1. Targeted ads

Targeted advertising allows marketing your products and services to your potential customers aka your target audience. Across different social platforms, there are a few types of targeted advertising you can use:

• Classic banner ads on Facebook. This type of advertising can be used to increase traffic to your website or advertise an FB group. There is, however, a serious downside to it: only desktop users can see them.
• Sponsored posts on Facebook. These are paid posts marked as Sponsored that will pop up on users’ feeds. Usually, this is a good way to enhance your audience. A quality photo combined with a motivational caption usually catches the eye.
• Carousel ads. This is a great way of marketing for online stores and marketplaces that works both on Facebook and Instagram. Besides, it’s much more effective than regular advertising.
• Collection ads on Instagram and FB. More often than not, people prefer to have a look at your products rather than read about how good they are. This is what Collections are for: they allow opening an available catalog of your products with some info on them.
• Ads in Instagram Stories. These are fullscreen ads that pop up in between the Stories you watch. Brands can use various filters and effects to create marketing campaigns that look just like regular Stories.
• Video ads on the main feed and on Explore page (Instagram). These are up to 60 seconds long and are a great way to introduce your products to potential customers. Remember that videos are still a very popular content format that gets a lot of attention.

2. Personal communication

It might sound too simple to be true but personal interactions are actually insanely effective when it comes to winning over your potential customers. Use DMs, Facebook Messenger, and other personal channels to answer your subscribers’ questions and concerns. Show them you are genuinely interested. This kind of personal communication boosts your potential customers’ trust in your brand.

Just make sure you don’t use to spam them with special offers. It’s very likely they won’t appreciate unsolicited messages.

3. Viral content

Memes, comics, short funny videos, and GIFs. We all know how entertaining this kind of content can be and how much attention it attracts. Don’t underrate the power of viral content; it can turn a lot of eyeballs your way.

The problem with this type of content is that you never know what will go viral and what won’t. But the idea is to bring more variety into your content and sometimes blend in entertaining pieces that will make people smile and sparkle their interest.

4. Contests & giveaways

The effectiveness of this method of brand promotion is somewhat controversial. On the one hand, contests, giveaways, challenges, flashmobs, and the like are known for attracting a lot of attention. On the other hand, it’s a sure way to attract freeloaders who are more interested in the prizes and not your brand or your products. Most of the people attracted by this method will likely unsubscribe after the event is over. But some of them might stay if they like what they see. It would be a good idea not to overuse this method. Run a contest or a giveaway once in a while but don’t make them too frequent.

5. Quality content

High-quality content isn’t just professionally made photos and videos in 4K. It’s the type of content that appeals to your target audience. Something that matches their interests and desires. This is how you invite them and give them the reason to stay with you.

Naturally, creating this kind of content is impossible without analyzing your audience. Use trendHERO’s Analytics tool to learn more about your audience and its interests and to monitor how these interests change over time. Build your content strategy based on the information you get. Remember that when it comes to content, quality should always be preferred over quantity.

Conclusion

Of course, this is not to say that there are just five alternatives to influencer marketing. Social media keeps evolving and changing and chances are they’ll present new ones. Besides, you can always invent your own: the ones that work for your brand and your products specifically.

What’s more, it wasn’t my intent to say that you shouldn’t use influencer marketing to promote your brand. It might have its flaws and drawbacks but it’s still very effective. In fact, it would make sense to use all methods available combined or just choose a few that suit you the best.

But whatever methods and tricks you use to promote your brand, remember that every single one requires knowing your audience and what they need. Without this in-depth knowledge of what your potential customer wants, no promotion will ever be effective and your marketing budget will go down the drain.