The Benefits of Influencer Whitelisting for Brands and Influencers
by Makenna Johnson •
It’s no big secret that business owners are seeking out agencies and firms who specialize in digital marketing campaigns. In fact, you’ve probably been involved in these discussions a few times yourself!
But if your business (or brand) is already paying a digital marketing firm to manage your paid marketing campaigns – such as your paid social ad campaigns on networks like Instagram and Facebook – then leveraging social media influencer whitelisting is something you should pay extra close attention to.
Why?
Because if you’re not leveraging Influencer Whitelisting yet, then you could be missing out a whole array of added benefits across the board.
Simply put: without understanding how social media Influencer Whitelisting can give you a significant boost in your marketing results, your digital marketing campaigns may be failing to reach their full potential. Below, we’ll be explaining the benefits of influencer marketing services, how it can help your business grow, and attract your target audience.
Related: Why Influencer Marketing is an Invaluable Tool for Emerging Brands
What is “Influencer Whitelisting?”
When it comes to modern-day advertising and branding, Influencer Whitelisting essentially means running a paid social advertisement through an influencer’s account. Another way to explain this is that – instead of running an ad through the actual brand’s account – you are instead sponsoring an influencer’s post by using ad spend to promote their post(s) over a certain time period in order to reach your target audience.
Does that make sense?
Perhaps, a better question we could ask ourselves would be this: how could an influencer campaign tbe used to our advantage, especially when it comes to creating more “win-win” results for both the brand and the influencer… and of course, also boosting our ROI at the end of the day?
We’re going to cover exactly that in this article.
In fact, our main goal now is to help you see the bigger, clearer picture on Influencer Whitelisting for both the Brands and Influencers – and to help you understand what you can expect when using this influencer marketing strategy.
Influencer Marketing: A New “Trend?”
Influencer marketing is now a core part of the business to consumer media mix. In fact, the only thing that separates this strategy from the standard, fully scalable marketing media is whether or not it’s worth taking the time to gain a deep understanding – and comfort – with this whole process!
The good news is that for influencers and brands who do stay ahead of the curve, leveraging Influencer Whitelisting can be a smart way to reach the next wave of effective influencer marketing results – especially when it comes to growing your outreach in the short term, and long term.
While Influencer whitelisting doesn’t always guarantee a win-win situation for both the brand and the influencer though…
However, this strategy will almost always expose the Influencer’s account to an entirely new audience, which would increase their post engagements, and at the same time could allow the brand to expand their audience outreach as well to reach their target audience.
Why Should I Consider Influencer Whitelisting In The First Place?
First off, influencer whitelisting tends to make digital marketing campaigns a lot more beneficial and less time consuming for both the brand, and the influencer alike. First, though, you should always intend to aim for a “two-way street,” win-win scenario of benefits when adding this approach to your marketing strategy.
Here’s an example to illustrate…
Let’s pretend you work for a brand or business that is preparing to run a digital marketing campaign to help you gain new leads, new followers, and/or more revenue. When it comes to your actual brand, using Whitelisting social media can help your brand tap into a newer, wider organic audience throughout your campaign… and often, this broader organic audience will already think and behave similarly to your existing customer base. This means you can get a bigger outreach with your campaign, which can also mean an increase in following. In turn, this can mean bigger revenue and sales growth as well. (Of course, this also leads to a bump in your overall brand exposure, which would lead to more follower growth in the longer term!)
On the flip side, the niche influencer you partner with will also benefit from your brand’s digital marketing efforts. This is because the influencer you work with can gain exposure to a whole new audience, through your brand, who hasn’t previously interacted with that influencer’s social media channels yet. And as you already know, this helps the influencer quickly grow their fan base – and even experience exponential growth with their user engagement.
Of course, analyzing your marketing campaign results and raw data plays a big role in maximizing the benefits of Influencer Whitelisting. Plus, proper preparation and market research up front is pretty much mandatory as well… that’s why having a highly-qualified marketer on board is a wise idea! In fact, an experienced and trained marketer who can successfully analyze your data trends can help you pinpoint what types of audience targeting to do, what strategy yields the best results for both the brand and the influencer, what appeals and sales angles work best, etc. Afterwards, you can gain invaluable understandings for how to these new insights when moving forward.
At the end of the day though, your budget will almost always have a direct impact when it comes to maximizing your ROI across the board. Ideally, the initial aim with Influencer Whitelisting should be to have both the brand and the influencer expand their audience outreach – and exposure – as a result from the campaign, especially since those new followers, the increased exposure, as well as the increased engagement can be leveraged in your favor long term.
As mentioned though: pre-planning, market research, and setting a realistic budget ahead of time is always a great idea here.
Diving Deeper: How The Brand Will Benefit
If your exclusive brand is open to expanding into various types of marketing, it’s always good to consider upfront whether a new strategy will be worth your effort, money, and time. Having said that, it’s completely understandable why businesses are skeptical of leveraging this new, creative trend known as Influencer Whitelisting…
On the other hand, Influencer Whitelisting shouldn’t be ruled out until you fully understand the scope benefits as well.
The following are some benefits of influencer Whitelisting for Brands:
Shows More Authority, Builds Trust
When someone Influential shares branded content, this quickly adds credibility to the company mentioned.
How?
Since the company gets an authoritative Influencer to acknowledge, recognize, and mention its exclusive brand significantly, this indicates to the audience that the mentioned company (brand) is a trustworthy entity – and maybe even reputable industry leader.
This works because authority and recognition is very powerful in niche marketing, especially when the “voice” of an influential authority in your industry shares your branded content.
Can Turn The Brand to a “Hot Topic”
Influencers are usually a driving force behind new products, brands, and even campaign ideas.
This can be seen everywhere through the centuries – not just from Social Media Advertising – but also from Radio and TV Commercials to clothing designs, to luxury cars, and more.
So by aligning your own brand with a trendsetting influencer, you will be able to leverage their authority to directly show that your company is a truly innovative leader.
Connects The Brand With Newer Audiences
When it comes to setting trends and generating interest, it’s no big secret that an Influential figure can almost instantly boost a brands credibility – and thus, generate more interest in the brand’s products and services – which leads to an increase in revenue and sales.
And when this authority figure features or mentions a brand in any given online platform, they allow the brand (or company) to “connect” with an even wider targeted audience.
Of course, partnering with the right influencer is a crucial step to more effectively getting your brand’s products and services in front of a new audience(s) which you have not been able to connect to and reach yet.
As mentioned earlier, when Influencer Whitelisting is done strategically, then the brand can tap into a wider like-minded consumer audience – an audience already sharing similar interests as the brands’ existing customer and fan base – while also increasing the Influencer’s audience outreach and user engagement at the same time.
Access A Bigger Market
Influencer Whitelisting can help your brand gain quick access to a bigger market… from there, you’ll have new chances at generating interest in your products and services, even if these same audiences never noticed your brand or paid attention to it before.
Unlimited Sharing Potential
Influencer Whitelisting can lead to higher ROI because – instead of using other expensive advertising tactics which have a limit to their reach – your content and advertising can more easily be shared, assuming the ad messaging and marketing content directly appeals to the audience(s).
Plus, the shareable content promoted by an authoritative Influencer can instantly attract new attention to your product and service offerings and grow your brand awareness over and over again.
Related: How to Find Influencers
Understanding How The Influencer Will Benefit
More Exposure And Awareness Gained
One of the most significant advantages of Influencer to the Influencers and content creators is that it gives them much more exposure to audiences who haven’t yet interacted with their social media channels before. With the right targeting, this can quickly generate a much larger following for the Influencer, which also leads to greater brand awareness and audience engagement for the Influencer.
Generate More Growth
With the help of Influencer Whitelisting, influencers can gain a great bump of growth in their following, their incoming traffic, and in their overall credibility.
Influencers Can Share Their Message Farther and Wider
Another benefit is that it can be much easier for the influencer to reach farther audiences with their message compared to traditional marketing, and communicate with other people they otherwise could not have reached.
A Lasting Business Relationship
Influencers and content creators themselves benefit from influencer whitelisting when they can find their ultimate brand soul mate. And a good working relationship paves the way to creating strong and lasting professional relationships with the brand they can truly trust.
Related: How to Choose the Right Influencer Agency
Putting It All Together
Influencer whitelisting is ultimately beneficial for both brands and influencers, especially if they have been looking to gain faster traction on their marketing and build brand awareness. And now that you have a clearer understanding of how this can potentially accelerate your marketing, branding, and sales efforts, you have the depth of understanding you’d need to consider implementing your first campaign.
Of course, when choosing the right influencer to work with on your joint advertising efforts, it’s crucial that you pick the best-fit Influencers for your brand. Picking the right Influencer for your company and brand can ultimately make or break your influencer marketing campaigns.When taking a look at the commercial visibility of potential Influencers to work with, a solid look into their online networking channels says a lot! Their engagements are directly measured in comments, shares, saves, and likes from their followers and fans – and sometimes, it might be a smarter business decision to select a ‘smaller scale’ influencer as their following may substantially be more dedicated, more responsive, and may interact with the Influencers’ posts more overall.
When you’ve discovered a handful influencers you are interested in, you will still need to carefully evaluate whether or not they are the right fit for your influencer campaign and your company’s brand. When you’re ready to begin, follow the social media pages of those Influencers you are interested in for at least a week to get a better idea of what they are posting about, and how their audience responds and interacts.
And of course, it doesn’t hurt to get extra professional opinions before moving forward.