Using Opinion Leadership and influencers to grow your business

By Dr. Maruf Gbadebo Salimon

IN the world of business, concepts of opinion leadership and influencers are effective marketing strategies that business owners can use to grow their businesses. Though these concepts are not new, they are however becoming more important especially in this era of social media enabled business competitive environment. Big businesses in particular have largely used social media platforms such as Instagram to increase the awareness of their brands. For instance, more than 80% of businesses, especially in developed countries are on Instagram while smart large enterprises are equally using influencers like key opinion leaders (KOL) to spread brand awareness and improve sales performance through these platforms. Despite the importance and benefits of using these concepts, the majority of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria are either not on social media or not using KOL and influencers to grow their businesses.

Why do opinion leadership/influencers matter?

Opinion leadership can be defined as the process by which one person, who is regarded as an opinion leader, informally influences a group of people, who are either opinion recipients or seekers. The opinion leader is an expert within a given product or service category. Due to his expertise and experience, he is often consulted as he equally spreads useful information about that particular product/service category. The leader who is trusted due to his knowledge of a specific product category is a powerful influencer, and a trendsetter often talks about his experiences and advises others whether or not to buy certain brands or products. For instance, he could recommend which lawyers, doctors, hair addressers, travel companies, restaurants, and so on, to patronize since he had had a relationship (s) with these service providers at one time or the other.

How can you recognize an opinion leader/influencer?

It is usually difficult to construct the profile of an opinion leader as you must be sure of the product category, he possesses expertise in, or that he is knowledgeable about. This is important as an opinion leader in one product category, maybe an opinion recipient in another situation. Nevertheless, it has been generally agreed that in the context of consumer behavior, the opinion leaders, traditionally, share some common features which include:

1.   The leaders are knowledgeable: One of the general characteristics of opinion leaders is the high degree of their knowledge about a given product category. The leaders are well-informed since they follow new products in the market as they are equally the first to try such products. And due to their knowledge, they are often regarded as a credible source of information that people rely on when they want to make a purchasing decision.

2.      The leaders are sociable, confident, and outgoing. They are very focal as they easily interact and discuss products and consumption behaviors with people in their circle of influence. In this era of social media, people listen to them when they speak or tweet and their e-word of mouth could easily go viral!

3.       The opinion leaders are avid readers of special-interest publications, say fashion, automobile, etc. as they often visit websites related to their products of interest. Reading such publications provides them with specialized knowledge used for effective recommendations to friends, neighbors, and relatives.

4.      In most cases, both opinion leaders and their recipients of information belong to similar socioeconomic and age groups.

How can SMEs explore or use KOL/influencers in this era of social media?

One of the characteristics of SMEs is the lack of an adequate budget for advertisement. For instance, to place a personally paid announcement in a nation Television for sixty seconds could cost as much as N104,000.00 (One hundred and four thousand naira only). A similar amount is obtainable in other traditional media. SMEs may not have the financial capacity to pay this cost. However, in this era of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Tweeter, YouTube, and so on, SMEs could leverage on the presence of KOL on these platforms to expand the awareness of their products and so increase sales at a very little cost. This may however require that you register the presence of your brand and build a relationship with the online influencers so that they can help amplify your message. For instance, a small restaurant at Allen Avenue or Idumota could have a new cuisine and give a social media influencer who is familiar with the restaurant a preview about the menu so that he can have something to say or write about on any of the social media platforms where he is a KOL. And when he writes or says something, the crowd follows him, thereby generating brand awareness for the restaurant.

Given the importance of these concepts, SMEs must consider some factors to when choosing the KOL. These factors include the number and quality of followers of the KOL, his expertise, the degree of his engagement, and trustworthiness. The quantity of followers is important as there are different categories of influencers. For instance, there are Nano-influencers whose followers are within 1000-10,000. We also have micro-influencers with 10,000-50,000 followers while other categories include mid-tier influencers, macro-influencers, and mega-influencers with 50,000-500,000, 500,000-1,000,000, and 1000,000+ followers respectively. Partnering with any of this category especially the ones with huge but quality followers can assist in spreading information about the SMEs brands and services through posting of text, videos, or images while their postings easily go viral and attract a lot of attention of their followers who believe and trust them. Talking about the quality of the followers implies that you also need to check the level of engagement, and to what extent the information shared by the influencers amplifies to even reach beyond his followers. This in essence indicates that the ability of the influencers to generate virality matters as it allows your company to reach a new market segment that you may otherwise not have contact with.

Since the employment of KOL and influencers either offline or online has become the order of the day, small and medium business owners need to leverage on this. This is important especially that it costs less to use while it has positive multiplier effects of moving your business to a new level.

Dr. Salimon is Senior lecturer, Department of Marketing, School of Business Management, College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia.