Are you familiar with what a brand Influencer is?  Well, before Instagram came along with its members showing off favourite products in their personal photos, YouTube was the first social media platform where brands could connect with influential people who had strong YouTube audiences following and could convince them into purchasing certain products or generating loyalty to certain brands.

Here is a perfect example of a YouTube Influencer – a web series I was a part of behind the scenes. The whole point of the show is to review a very expensive pairs of shoes. It’s a 3 1/2 minute long commercial of which has over 60,000 views. People love these kinds of “Influencer” videos. Check this out:  Just another influencer video

So what? You might ask, ‘what’s that got to do with me?’

Partnering up with influencers that are connected directly to your audience can be one of the most powerful means for marketing your service and/or product. But you still need to know how to work it. I have a couple of tips to help you get started.

Unboxing for the first time!

I have to say this…. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate together; combining video with an influencer to market your product. Brilliant! Having an influencer record a video of their first unveiling of your product includes their excitement – it includes their surprise (they often open the product for the first time on camera) – and it includes spontaneity as the influencer explores the product and its features.  And, viewers eat these kinds of videos up. Almost half of all shoppers will sit through hours of unboxing videos before buying.

YouTube found, in its research, that the general public spends as much time watching unboxing videos on their phones alone that is the equivalent to watching a standard Hollywood movie more than 20 million times. Yes! That’s what I said; these unboxing videos are getting more viewers than Hollywood movies.

Contests!

If you are able to create a give-away or contest of sort, then sponsor an episode or a few from your influencer and have him/her promote your give-away or contest.  These are not “stoppable” ads that play at the start of the YouTube video. These are where the actual influencer talks about you, your brand and your give-away right inside the video. Very Powerful.

Remember to set it all up so that the influencer’s viewers have to go to your website and submit an email address to qualify for the contest or give-away. Also, you will want to track traffic coming to your website from the influencer with a customized URL or other means to let you know where that traffic is coming from.

Could it be your own client?!

You may not even realize how close your influencer is. It could be that it’s one of your own clients and so you may want to do more than simply ask for a testimonial. You may want to partner up with them and make a mutually beneficial arrangement that also benefits your influencer/client but also gives you access to their grand audience.

A reminder again; you will want to monitor it and measure the traffic that is coming from this influencer. There are many ways to do that and you may need some support from your web developer to help you with it.

With social media and online video, there are so many creative ways to reach out to your target audience. Take existing marketing pieces and re-use them by connecting them with strategic influencers and reaching out to new audiences.