How to Win Friends Who Influence People: SAP Ariba's Amisha Gandhi on Marketing Smarts [Podcast] - MarketingHub - Trending news, tools and tips for marketers

These brands are finding that "micro-influencers" drive more action among their target audiences than celebrities are, and micro-influencers have a higher level of engagement with their followers. Their campaigns are 6.7 times more efficient per engagement than influencers with larger followings. An interest in influencer marketing is a start, but you won't get far unless you find the right influencers to partner with, according to Amisha Gandhi, vice-president of influencer marketing at supply chain software company SAP Ariba. I invited her to Marketing Smarts to talk about how influencers can engage a brand's audience more effectively than traditional celebrities, creating deeper customer connections. "Then you start thinking about other pieces of the customer journey where you could bring the practice of influencer marketing and the different communities of influencers in. Find out who their audience is. They're really good about sharing, but you also have to highlight what you're trying to do and what's in it for them." Figure out what you're trying to accomplish, then reach out to relevant influencers for their feedback (24:50): "The first thing you want to do with your influencer marketing program is really start the right relationships for your brand or your company or your product line, topic area, whatever. You can also follow Amisha on Twitter: @AmishaGandhi. Whether you want to connect with your prospects, customers or employees, GoToWebinar has the tools and analytics you need.

“Influencer marketing” remains all the rage, but the brands achieving real bottom-line results are those that put in the effort to identify the people their customers trust. These brands are finding that “micro-influencers” drive more action among their target audiences than celebrities are, and micro-influencers have a higher level of engagement with their followers.

According to HelloSociety, micro-influencer marketing campaigns are more cost-effective than campaigns relying on influencers who have larger followings:

Micro-influencer engagement rates are 60% higher than traditional influencers’.
Their campaigns are 6.7 times more efficient per engagement than influencers with larger followings.
Micro-influencers drive 22.2 times more weekly conversations than the average consumer.

Brands in search of influencers, then, would do well to consider micro-influencers, even though they might have fewer followers.

An interest in influencer marketing is a start, but you won’t get far unless you find the right influencers to partner with, according to Amisha Gandhi, vice-president of influencer marketing at supply chain software company SAP Ariba. Amisha encourages her team to look deeper than follower counts.

“Popularity and influence are not the same thing,” Amisha emphasizes. I invited her to Marketing Smarts to talk about how influencers can engage a brand’s audience more effectively than traditional celebrities, creating deeper customer connections.

Here are just a few highlights from our conversation:

Influencer marketing works for B2B brands, too (07:00): “When you think about B2C, like the Dove Real Women campaign, they brought in some real women who were influencers. That’s really easy to understand, because there can be an immediate buy. Whereas in the B2B world, the customer journey is much longer. So when you think about influencer marketing, you think about the awareness stage, which could be events and blogs and other things with influencers where you get social media impressions and some coverage.

“Then you start thinking about other pieces of the customer journey where you could bring the practice of influencer marketing and the different communities of influencers in. For lead gen, you could do activities and create something really high-value with influencers that people are willing to give some information for.

“A lot of [influencers] have their own newsletters and their own communities where…

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