Influencer Marketing: The Future of Marketing
Social influence has monetary and marketing value thanks to influencers, a budding form of social media marketing. Influencer marketing involves endorsements from people with expert knowledge and/or social influence in their respective fields. It is most associated with Instagram, although influencers exist on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and even TikTok.
According to some estimates, Americans see between 3,000-5,000 advertisements per day. Social media users often buy products recommended by trusted influencers. Over one-third (38%) of respondents who engage with influencers trust what the influencer says about the brand more than what the brand says about itself.
But how can influencer marketing be applied to the summer camp market?
The key to successful influencer marketing is finding the right persona for your brand. Influencers don’t need to have millions of followers to be successful. Accounts with engaged followers are more valuable than bot accounts with no connection to their followers.
Getting an endorsement from a semi-social media-famous parent could be valuable for your camp. These popular parents are the ones to partner with to promote camp content. For example, Camille Styles is a successful blogger based in Austin, Texas, with 160,000 followers on Instagram who interact with her posts daily.
Styles could be a key influencer for Central Texas camps, or even camps across the country trying to break into a new geographical market. An Austin parent may be apprehensive about sending their child to camp in Pennsylvania, but might feel more comfortable if it were endorsed by Styles.
In addition to name-dropping camps for brand awareness, influencers could drive early registration with discount codes. Many brands promote products this way, and it is a great way to track the effectiveness of influencer marketing.
Here are a few examples of how this works:
This tactic could work especially well for day camps willing to incentivize early registration. Influencer parents could be compensated based on the number of people who sign up using their code or by their follower count. The return on investment for this type of marketing is easy to calculate and could be extremely lucrative. Take a look through your own Instagram followers to see if there are any families who are influencers or could become influencers.
Camps can also partner with their own campers to promote things like camp merchandise and early registration for returning campers. Campers could get discounted or free merchandise to promote to their followers.
Here are a few things to keep in mind before diving into influencer marketing:
- Do your research. Strategically partner with the right people to get your brand in front of your target audience.
- Use cross-promotion. Ask influencers to cross-promote your content across multiple social media networks to advertise to all of their followers.
- There is no “market price” for influencers. However, social reports suggest $10-$13 per 1,000 followers per post.
- There are risks. Your influencer’s mistakes become your mistakes, so make sure that you choose your partners wisely.
Influencer marketing takes the idea of celebrity endorsement and puts a modern spin on it. Testimonials are an amazing way to verify the value of your camp, but influencers can take them to a new level. Although influencers are under-utilized in summer camp marketing, if you want to take the leap, we are here to help! Reach out if you are interested in the possibilities of influencer marketing and making strategic partnerships.