15 Secrets To Driving Epic Traffic To Your Website With Influencer Marketing

A couple of months back we spoke about increasing page views once visitors are on your website, but we didn’t speak about how you get them there in the first place.

So today, we wanted to share our secrets to driving some epic traffic to your website via influencer marketing. Although we’re not talking about increasing clicks, we’re talking about traffic from users that actually converts.

Here are 15 actionable things you can do to drive consistent traffic to your website with influencer marketing.

1. Content is key

Influencers are content creators first and foremost. That is their “thing” and the good ones can do it time and time again to consistently produce high-quality, engaging content that their audience devours. So, the first step to drive traffic from your influencer marketing campaigns is to help influencers in creating fabulous content. Support them and provide the resources they need to communicate your message, whether that’s loaning clothes, hosting them overnight, providing imagery and a press release, sourcing props or brainstorming content direction.

Content is key to receive any traction from influencer marketing, so be helpful and supportive throughout the entire end-to-end process. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so never underestimate the power of good imagery and engaging content.

2. Provide an incentive for new visitors

Whether you’re a new business, an industry leader or someone in the middle of the pack who is struggling to stand out in a crowded marketplace, driving traffic and conversions from an influencer campaign is an important KPI. So, how do you make it happen? Provide an incentive that not only drives them to your site, but also pushes them through your sales funnel.

Increasing awareness is all good and well, but you want people to act directly after they have been exposed to your brand. So, provide an incentive that new visitors and customers cannot ignore. Whether that is free shipping, a 2-for-the-price-of-1 promotion, a discount code or a gift voucher. Whatever you decide, it has to be an incentive that knocks their socks off. To incorporate this into your influencer marketing campaigns, just create a unique offering and ask your influencers to feature it on their platforms to encourage their audience to check it out and make a purchase with the incentivised offering.

3. Affiliate marketing

Providing an incentive for new customers is all good and well, however providing an incentive for the influencer… now that can produce a grand ROI when it comes to driving traffic that converts. Affiliate marketing is a collaborative arrangement between a business and an influencer, where both benefit new sales generated from the partnership. The business obviously makes a sale and a new customer (who they can then convert into a lifelong customer), and the influencer receives a commission of compensation for the lead.

If you want to learn more about influencer marketing, check out our recent blog post: Making Money Effortlessly With Affiliate Marketing Why does it work? When an influencer generally loves a brand and is receiving a commision on their work, they are much more likely to feature and promote the brand naturally across their platforms and for a prolonged period of time. So it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

4. Be an influencer

Yep, you heard me correctly...YOU can be an influencer too! Not sure where I am getting at with this one? Well, let me explain. While you are using influencer marketing to reach out to your target audience, you can also become an influencer of sorts yourself and drive traffic that way too. Whether it’s guest blogging and being interviewed as an industry authority or speaking at events and working with the media, take advantage of opportunities where you are the influencer in front of a captive and engaged crowd. You’ll receive some grand exposure and great networking opportunities from your efforts, and you’ll drive lots qualified traffic to your website too if you do it regularly.

5. Collaboration is key

In influencer marketing, money is not the only currency. That doesn’t mean we are encouraging you to take advantage of influencers and their power and allocate no coin to your influencer marketing campaign budget, however keep in mind that there are other ways to collaborate. Partnerships have to be mutually beneficial (there is simply no other way), so strike up a deal that benefits both parties evenly from the get go. Money is not the only currency, although that doesn’t mean you should take advantage of an influencer. Working arrangements have to be mutually beneficial,  meaning both parties involved need to receive benefit from the collaboration that is even. One can’t receive more than the other.

6. Influencer marketing meets content marketing

Drive traffic with an influencer marketing campaign that distributes your owned content, so all of the traffic and engagement lands on your page directly. Create a suite of content marketing assets and publish them on your own site, then work with influencers to distribute. You will increase the reach of and engagement with your content.

7. It will flop without a call to action

Without a strong, efficient call-to-action your influencer marketing campaign will flop. Like we’ve said before, awareness and exposure is good, but it doesn’t always drive traffic (and you definitely can’t rely on it!). So, include a strong call-to-action as your driving force to spur consumers to act as soon as your brand has been mentioned by an influencer. If you need some tips on writing an effective call-to-action, check out this post

8. Pick your influencers carefully

Not all influencers are equal, so it is important to pick your influencers carefully if you want your campaigns to drive traffic and ultimately establish leads and conversions. If an influencer is not the right fit, it will not only damage your reputation and confuse your message, but it will also result in a negative experience with influencer marketing (and a bad ROI). If you want to find influencers who are the perfect fit for your business, evaluate their metrics and available data and understand who their audience is first and foremost.

9. Analyse, pivot and optimize

Don’t sit back and wait for a disaster to happen. Instead, be proactive and closely monitor your influencer marketing campaigns to ensure they are hitting your desired KPI’s and making an impact on your business. If they’re not, it’s not the end of the road! Analyse and uncover what went wrong, brainstorm ways you can move forward and pivot (change the call-to-action, add a discount code, switch platforms) and then, once you’ve found traction, make the most of the opportunity through optimization. You won’t get it right the first time, every time, so test what converts best and trial a number of different types of influencer marketing campaigns to evaluate where you receive the most traffic and the best results.

10. Boost their content

Speaking of optimization, consider boosting influencer content with a paid strategy to increase exposure and reach. It could be a paid Facebook boost or an Outbrain campaign, whatever works best for your industry and the influencer content. Especially if it is already doing well organically, a paid boost can have a big impact on the results from the collaboration.

11. Shout it from the rooftops

When an influencer shares content about you and your business, shout it out from the rooftops to drive more traffic from your influencer marketing activities. Social media content has a limited lifespan, meaning it disappears within a day or two, if not a couple of hours, so retweet and share influencer content to give it a longer lifespan amongst your established community. It’s not a crime to boast about an influencer marketing win, so don’t be afraid to share their content with your audience (with permission of course, more information on regramming here. Consistent traffic is all about remaining front of mind.

12. Is there potential for SEO benefit?

If an influencer, or anyone actually, writes a great article about you and publishes it online, don’t be afraid to ask for a link that points back to your site. Not only will it directly drive traffic, but it will also support your search engine rank and provide SEO benefit. Can you make the most of your opportunities so that you benefit in more ways than one? Probably!

13. Create long-term relationships

So you’ve completed an influencer campaign from end-to-end and saw received some good traction, whether that was growth in followers, increased traffic, new signups or sales. Now what? Do it again! If you found traction with an influencer and their audience, keep the relationship going and engage them again and again. Find new ways to work together and be creative, it doesn’t always have to be a social shout-out. Long term influencer relationships are highly beneficial for everyone involved, and they can lead to some fantastic opportunities and results, so don’t treat each collaboration as a one-off partnership.

14. Turn influencers into raving fans

It goes without saying that you should do everything in your power to turn influencers into raving fans. Not only will it build your relationship with them instantly if they generally love the product/service, but you’ll also benefit from their natural love of the brand and endorsement online or via word of mouth. When you have some influencers who are raving fans, your momentum will start to build and you’ll be connecting with new people and opportunities in no time!

15. It’s a process, not an overnight success

Don’t forget, influencer marketing is not an overnight success. In fact, it can be a slow process before you start seeing big results, so don’t be disheartened if you’re aren’t seeing traction in the first couple of months. You really need to stick at it for 3-6 months to build momentum amongst your target market and test what strategies convert the best. Once you find your winning formula things will start to move at a faster pace, so hang in there and don’t give up too soon. If you need advice on your influencer marketing strategy or want us to handle the end-to-end process for you, get in touch And once you know, focus on that platform and forget the other! If you’re getting traction on Twitter, forget Instagram influencers. If Youtube is your jam, put all of your efforts and resources into that.