Influencer Marketing in Nigeria

Influencers and influencer marketing are an important part of the marketing mix in Nigeria, and influencer marketing in Nigeria has come a long way. Influencer marketing helps brands to reach new people and ‘influence’ them positively for the brand. But what is influencer marketing? It simply refers to the marketing activities that leverage an individual’s influence over their digital community, to create positive relationships between the brand and that individual’s community. An influencer is an individual who has grown a digital community by engaging them and sharing valuable content usually about a very specific niche.

We’ll take a look at setting up an influencer marketing campaign in Nigeria, and examine a few key steps:

1. What’s the objective, and why does influencer marketing work best?

Before we dive in, we need to check that the objective of the campaign is aligned with influencer marketing as the right tool. Influencer marketing works when a brand is focused on gaining quality leads. The expected result from an influencer marketing campaign (especially one that employs micro-influencers) is action. If the campaign objective is to improve brand awareness, an influencer marketing campaign will help to support that, but it really shines when you want to access new communities and pick up new leads.

2. What’s the niche?

The next step is to determine what niche the campaign will target. This will help you to choose which influencers serving your general target audience are a good fit.

3. Micro or Macro

The next decision you have to make on your influencer marketing campaign is whether you’d like to go micro or macro. Using macro influencers for your campaign means partnering with influencers who have a large following. On Instagram for instance, some influencers have more than 50 thousand followers on their accounts, and some have as many as 4 million followers. These are macro-influencers.

Micro-influencers however, have a much smaller community