Firstly, let’s talk about what an Instagram influencer is! An Instagram influencer is someone who’s built a reputation around a certain niche on Instagram. Instagram Influencers work hard to build an engaging profile that attracts a large audience, so their content gets viewed.
Being an influencer refers to a job that has been created as a result of social media but everyone who takes a picture of your food and posts it is technically influencing their audience to go view your restaurant.
What are food influencers
Snapping a picture of your food before you eat has always been a trend, but now snapping a picture of your food and using it for marketing purposes is a way of making money.
Why should you work with influencers?
As a restaurant you should be utilizing social media by forming partnerships with influencers, who can then share their experiences of your food with their followers.
Benefits forming partnerships with food influencers:
- Build on brand awareness
Influences have the power to create a lot of awareness for your brand, they’ll encourage their followers to try your food and follow your profile. The more people see your content, the more chance you have of getting loyal customers.
- Target audience
Its important that you partner with influencers who can relate to your brand, otherwise your content will be shown to an audience who might not be interested. To find the right influencer for you, you need to think about who your target audience is and which influencer has this audience.
- Increases social credibility
Having a lot of influencers come to your restaurant and post about your food will only build up your reputation. We are living in an age where reviews and recommendations are everything for a food business, so having a popular influencer who already has a loyal audience to recommend your food is ideal.
- Help to drive sales
As with any marketing strategy, the goal is to achieve a return on investment and the same applies with influencers. Working with influencers on Instagram or any other social platform, can be very cost efficient and will end up costing less then running ads.
Finding the right influencer for you
An important part of finding an influencer is knowing Your target audience. After you know your audience, you know what type of influencer audience you’re wanting.
Analysing social media is an effective way to find the right influencer for you. You can check their followers, content and relevant hashtags that you use. After you’ve found the right influencer for you, you can send them a message and start to negotiate.
The right influencer for you is the person who is authentic and gives you the best bang for your buck. Finding an influencer who is cost effective is important but you want to find someone who is affective with their audience and will promote to their trusting followers.
What is influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is an endorsement deal a brand has with another person, instead of paying a platform for distribution you have the opportunity to pay an influencer. You get all the influencers trusting followers to view your page without paying a large amount.
How to create an influencer marketing strategy?
When you start to plan your marketing strategy you have to think about who you’d like your target audience to be and where their attention is.
Firstly, there are several different types of influencers:
Nano – small influencers, who have under 10,000 fans/friends. They will usually be alright to collaborate on a gifted basis rather than paid basis;
Micro – Micro influencers have a more dedicated fan base and you will probably need a separate marketing budget to work with them;
Macro – Macro influencers have a huge audience up to 1million fans. Generally, you won’t be working with such influencers unless you are representing big chain of nationwide restaurants.
When you’re planning your strategies, you need to prioritize influencers that have an engaged community and are in your price range. Choose influencers that you trust and want to be a working relationship with.
When you’ve found your influencer, you must think about what you want them to do.
Things to think about:
- Your strategy should include ways to capture underpriced attention by using influencers and emerging platforms
- Based on your business you could be spending 30 to 40% of your budget on influencers and promoting
- The right influencer will be authentic and give you the best creative and meaningful distribution of your restaurant to a relevant audience
- Quality of the content you receive from the influencer
Budget
Influencer rates vary widely but you should always try and conserve your budget as much as possible. You can start by reaching out to local influencers or influencers you already know to promote your restaurant.
There’s no magic algorithm that will help you work out a budget. Every influencer will charge something different and it’s up to you to negotiate with them and find the right price for you. Some might not charge extra fee, and will be willing to try your food in the exchange for a post/review.
Final Thoughts
Finding the right influencer for you is the most important part of your brand awareness. You want an influencer who has a trusting audience that will come visit your restaurant and share what their influencer has shared.
Your end goal with using influencer marketing is to build on your brand awareness, find your target audience, drive your sales and increase your social credibility.
