Influencer Marketing and SEO: How They Can Transform Your Business

We talk a lot about how social media is just one step in your customer’s journey, it’s also just one part of your marketing strategy. And as effective as organic social media content can be for brand awareness and building an engaged brand community, we want to chat about two other digital marketing strategies that play in perfectly with an intentional social media strategy - SEO & Influencer Marketing.

We got to interview the marketing manager for Ana Luisa Jewelry - Alexander Langhede Andersen - about their incredible success using both SEO and Influencer Marketing and how they play a role in their overall customer journey.

Influencer Marketing & SEO are amazing top funnel channels for us. We find a lot of new prospects that we later convert on other channels. The customer journey very often starts with a touch point in one of our YouTube influencer videos or our detailed SEO articles. - Alexander

SEO

Search Engine Optimization - deep breath, this is not as overwhelming/scary as it sounds. And although it does take focused effort, implementing SEO on and off your website has some major benefits. Trying to figure out where to start or what to do first? We feel ya. As for strategy and order, this is what Alex had to say about their strategy.

During 2020, we made off-page SEO a priority and started working more actively with PR and media mentions. At that point in time, we had seen large growth just from a strong on-page SEO optimization but our off-page efforts definitely pushed us to the next level. That’s the step-by-step process I would recommend: Start with on-page optimization and do it well as this is the foundation for SEO. After you have seen success, you move your focus to off-page optimization. - Alexander

Feeling like your on-page optimization efforts have been neglected? This article Five Ways to Improve Your Site’s Ranking gives a great breakdown on what SEO is and how to improve it on your site.

As far as off page SEO, knowing who your target audience is - their likes, their pain points, what they read, what they watch, and how you can show up in those media platforms is huge.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is expected to be about a 14 BILLION dollar industry this year - so ya, it’s a big deal. Not only does influencer marketing have massive reach, conversions can be insanely high if the influencer has the right target audience and has high engagement.

The better match between the influencer’s audience and our target audience, the better performance. This can however be hard to know for sure before executing the campaign. As we become more experienced with identifying influencers we wish to work with, we’re making better and better judgements. - Alexander

We know that there can be a lot of questions when it comes to influencer marketing, it can be expensive and you want to make sure you’re making the most out of this money. So we asked Alexander all the questions you might be wondering so if you’re ready to tackle influencer marketing, you can do it with a bit more confidence.

What should we use - paid collaboration or a trade for product? We do a mix of both depending on the influencer’s reach and engagement. Products are always a part of the collaboration as we want the influencer to try on and show our beautiful jewelry in the videos and posts. We also strongly prefer to collaborate with influencers that are in our target audience themselves so they are actually passionate about our jewelry. We always try to be fair when it comes to compensation as we always value the creative work of our influencers.

Do you feel like micro influencers or macro influencers are more effective to work with? Both can work very well. More than the influencer’s reach, the performance will depend strongly on the engagement and the audience. The better match between the influencer’s audience and our target audience, the better performance. This can however be hard to know for sure before executing the campaign. As we become more experienced with identifying influencers we wish to work with, we’re making better and better judgements

What kind of content should we ask them to create? Authentic UGC (user generated content)-style videos typically work well as the influencer leads the viewer into her/his world and talks about the product from a customer perspective. The influencer will mention all the USPs that the customers also care about. It’s a very authentic storytelling that’s hard to achieve in a traditional brand commercial.

Okayyyy, so now what?

Digital marketing is a broad term - social media, paid ads, influencer marketing, SEO, email marketing - it can feel a bit overwhelming. So how do you break it down into a manageable yet effective strategy?

Map out your marketing funnel.

What is at the top of your marketing funnel? How are you getting new eyes on your brand? How can you increase brand awareness and reach?

  • Influencer Marketing

  • SEO

  • Reels on Instagram

  • Collaborations on Instagram

  • Paid ads

Now how are you going to move these new brand-aware potential customers through a profitable purchase ladder?

  • Killer website

  • Re-targeting ads

  • Social media posts and stories

  • A strong email marketing sequence

Then how are you going to turn this customer into a repeat customer that wants to share your product/service?

  • Referral program (make your customers your very own micro-influencers)

  • Great customer experience - this is KEY

  • Intentional email campaigns

People are shopping online “like never before" - So how is your business taking advantage of this? Get more eyes on your brand and see how your marketing budget would be best spent. Contact us to see how we can help!

Brooke Apffel