How One Company Got Started with Influencer Marketing

Editor’s note: This post is a part of a series that was created to help you define and build the practice of influencer marketing into your company. This series will walk you through the process, necessary roles, and best practices to get started with influencer marketing quickly and effectively.

You can also download a the complete series in the form of our free eBook, The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Problem

Exinda was an expansion-stage company with a great product offering and very little brand awareness in its target market. Exinda CEO Michael Sharma said it was a little like trying to shout from the mountaintop without a voice.

Solution

OpenView proposed an influencer marketing program. Rather than blow its budget on a massive advertising or PR campaign that might not affect its target markets anyway, Exinda would go for the word-of-mouth approach and try to develop relationships with key influencers in its target markets. OpenView and Exinda worked together to increase the company’s brand awareness within the market by identifying the target influencers and then contacted each influencer to begin building relationships.

Results

Exinda is getting more traffic to its website. There are also more keywords driving traffic to the site from search engines. The result has been more inbound leads that are more likely to turn into sales.

“The influencer marketing program was very highly targeted in the education sector and the results speak for themselves,” says Kevin Suitor, Exinda’s VP of marketing. “We can track the results and we’ve seen a measurable increase in sales in this sector, and I think we’ll continue to see that.”

VP of Products Ed Ryan says: “We were a somewhat anonymous brand a year ago and in a short time our brand awareness — especially in some key segments we wanted to target — has increased significantly.”

Next week, I’ll define the practice of influencer marketing.