In today's competitive retail landscape, many convenience retailers face the challenge of standing out and creating brand awareness. Whether you operate a single store or a small chain, leveraging independent social media influencers can be a powerful marketing strategy.
A Shift in Consumer Behavior
Consumers are more than ever before looking to social media for trends and what is new. As such, social media influencers have become powerful brand advocates.
While mega-influencers grab headlines, mid-tier influencers, those with follower counts between 75,000 to 500,000, offer unique advantages for mid to smaller-sized retailers. With focused collaboration, a local influencer can help revolutionize your marketing efforts.
Local Indie Influencer Advantage
They draw new interest to your brand through:
- Authenticity: The influencer’s loyal followers trust their recommendations. Their authenticity resonates with consumers, making them effective brand ambassadors.
- Local connection: These influencers understand the community and can create relatable content that resonates with nearby customers.
- Niche expertise: Mid-tier influencers often specialize in specific niches (e.g., fashion, food, fitness).
So, how do you find a local influencer? Short answer: Ask someone in Gen Z!
Longer answer: Do a google search with keywords like “local influencers near me,” explore local hashtags and check reviews of other local businesses—influencers who have mentioned or interacted with them could be potential collaborators.
Once you find a few good candidates, interview them. This is a partnership that impacts your brand—take that seriously. Understand their values, how they present themselves and partnerships they have in place. Get familiar with their voice and tone—make sure it aligns with your brand. Research prior posts and look at comments from the community. Agree on some critical items:
- Rules of engagement: Share what you are and are not okay with but listen to the influencer’s view of your brand and how they think they can help. Establish language and visual guidelines.
- Compensation: Should align with the influencer’s reach, engagement and the value they bring to the retailer. Get creative.
- Performance: Define your goals: awareness, foot traffic, or social media followers. Tailor the collaboration accordingly. Measure engagement, reach and website visits before, during and after the campaign.
- Timeline: A limited time offer engagement is best—six months is a good timeline to make an impact. Follow up with lessons learned for key stakeholders internally, determine what worked, then go after the next influencer to help you reach or exceed your objectives.
What will this person do?
This will depend on your comfort level and willingness to experiment. Alignment with your company brand and strategic goals are essential for success. Casey’s recent Chief Beer and Pizza Officer (@americanrolemodel) makes a clear statement on their strategic focus–beer and pizza related pairings (with a focus on having fun).
Options to explore:
- Exclusive store tour: Let the indie influencer explore the store, sample snacks and share the experience. Include your store associates–give them their time to shine!
- Giveaways: Empower the influencer to provide giveaways. Let them get creative, encourage followers to tag friends, and follow your account to win a gift basket or something the influencer creates from items in your store.
- In-store event: Allow the influencer to host an event (or series of them). This encourages on-site traffic building via social media. Get consumers to post photos of themselves with your influencer for free products which helps build your brand and product selection awareness.
FavTrip (four stores in Kansas) has done exceptionally well incorporating influencers into their marketing strategy.
FavTrip CEO Babir Sultan says, “If you see something and you say, ‘That would be really cool if they did that at my store,’ lean in and find a way.”
FavTrip has used @1ARRYK and @GasStationEncounters to help create brand awareness and engagement, increasing their followers from 20,000 to over 60,000.
Unplanned benefit? Using social media to highlight theft has decreased shoplifting from six times daily to once a week.
Remember, local influencers are not just talking to the online world; they’re chatting with your future customers right around the corner. Find your indie influencer to help generate excitement and buzz around your brand!
Kevin Farley is the chief client officer at Impact21, a W. Capra Company. Reach him at kfarley@impact21.com.
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