You might be wondering what impact COVID-19 might be having on influencer marketing. After all, you can't fly freely around the world to take pictures of product in exotic locations. But, as you know, travel influencers only represent a small portion of the influencer marketing pie. Here is my advice for businesses trying to navigate the current uncertainty to figure out what role, if any, influencer marketing should have in your marketing strategy. 

Once again, today's episode, like Episode 161 before it, is based off of a webinar I provided for the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland about marketing in the age of coronavirus.

Key Highlights

[01:00] Free FreshBooks Conference

[05:30] My Take On COVID19 Effect On Influencer Marketing

[06:53] Why Influencer Marketing Is Important In Businesses

[07:22] The ROI For Influencer Marketing

[08:27] Where Media Gets Wrong

[10:18] Why I Doubled Down On Content and Relationship

[11:20] Another Aspect Of Influencer Relationships

[13:39] Influencers As Focus Group

[14:34] Where To Find Influencer

[16:30] Why You Need To Hire People With Brand Affinity

[20:52] Summary

Notable Quotes

• I think that Coronavirus in some ways is only accelerated more and more people, you know, publishing and consuming more and more content on social media. And the heart of why influencer marketing is important for businesses is all about inciting word of mouth.
• If you want people to talk about you on social media, and ad is not going to cut it. You really need to incite that word of mouth. And the best way to do that is with other people.
• Spend that time to foster relationships, because some influencers are also losing money losing business, and you might find that it might be a lot more effective when they're getting fewer and fewer people, contacting them that you will really stick out. And you'll have a chance to build that relationship.
• So if you're afraid to do advertisements, if you're afraid of saying anything in social media, because of what's going on, that's where you can leverage influencers, who can talk for you through their content.
• Using tools to find people that are talking about your brand, your customers, your email database, your followers, you know, now's the time to append the data with social media profiles, go digging through and try to find people that are already know like and trust you that are already in your sphere of influence

Links mentioned in the show:

• Freshbooks #IMakeaLiving Micro-Conference
• Jon Rettinger's YouTube Channel

Episodes mentioned in or related to this one:

• 161: The Hidden Power of Email Marketing to Scale Your Digital Influence
• 15

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