If you are self-employed, a start-up, or a young entrepreneur you most likely admire the role Influencers play to improve brand awareness, visibility, and sales.
You get enchanted by what McBrown does for Hisense, M.anifest for Absa, and Delay for the LPG campaign. To a large extent, you would give almost all your investment to have these influencers talk about your products and services.
You are just imagining Diana Hamilton performing your single, Steve Harvey donning your outfit, or a President referencing you in a speech.
For whichever business you do, having an influencer will certainly optimize your brand. The challenge for young businesses is certainly not the question of do I need a Shatta or Kwame Sefa Kayi or Kobby Kyei to give me a mention. The most important question becomes how can I access or afford them.
Just by way of suggestion, will you like to know that per the current scale of your business you can get an equally good influencer to work with?
A local Influencer!
The concept of a local Influencer describes someone within your sphere of contact who has a sort of loyalist, following or fanbase.
Your Pastor is an influencer. You listen to him or her. The congregation does what he or she says.
If you author a book or release a single or an album and your Pastor recommends it to your Church, how do you think the patronage will be?
A local Influencer often has an audience that is usually engaged. The following a local Influencer enjoys interaction with their influencer. The relationship is not a long-distance one.
Your music director, muezzin, assemblyman, school prefect, SU president, and SRC executives; are strategic influencers whose word-of-mouth endorsement can increase the sales of your products and services astronomically.
The challenge is, you think only of celebrities when you are thinking of an influencer. There are some persons who are not necessarily celebs but are strategic Influencers.
A celebrity is easily an influencer, but an influencer is not necessarily a celebrity.
What are some important considerations to make when engaging a local influencer?
Among some key reasons perhaps the core revolves around your intended goal or deliverables for your products or services. What are your key performance indicators and how can this person help you to drive them with their influence?
Let’s discuss some critical success factors an influencer brings to a small business.
- Save money; Nailed it right? Lol. No long talk. Going for a celebrity or huge influencer will break the bank that is why you have opted for a local one. As a young business, you get to save and channel money into other areas by opting for a local influencer.
- Engage your following: Often local influencers can do target content as their audience is usually easily defined. The engagement is high because they easily make time to respond to questions and comments either online or in-person. On social media particularly the algorithm has a unique way of favoring posts with more interactions.
- Results-driven campaigns: It is possible to assume that a huge influencer or celebrity can easily drive a campaign, but if you look at it, change in most societies have started with a critical mass audience.
Consider the Kumerica campaign.
Picture boarding house students making a pleasant demand for a change in menu at their dining hall, through their SRC
Think of how people with less than 5000 or 10,000 followers on social media can make hashtags catch fire that the nation has to come to a standstill.
So, it’s a Christmas Bonanza. Start a conversation with a local influencer to optimize the sales of your products and services.
