How they get influencers, bloggers and online personalities to be brand ambassadors<\/strong><\/h3>\nHiSmile has amassed a thriving social media following across multiple platforms that exceeds 650,000 fans.<\/p>\n
Mirkovic and Tomic say they\u2019ve achieved this by approaching online personalities directly.<\/p>\n
For example, HiSmile\u2019s YouTube page only has two videos, which have been seen about 300 times each. But videos featuring HiSmile kits have been viewed more than 200,000 times.<\/p>\n
Most of this marketing has come free, they say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sent well over half of our stock to influencers and bloggers just so they could get their hands on it,\u201d says Tomic.<\/p>\n
HiSmile first reached out to a wide range of social media influencers, big and small, including anyone from yogis and fitness junkies through to beauty bloggers.<\/p>\n
Now that the brand is starting to focus on its key market, they\u2019re sticking to the latter, Mirkovic and Tomic say.<\/p>\n
While bigger bloggers will want to negotiate payment rates, \u201cthe majority are honest,\u201d says Tomic.<\/p>\n
To fellow small business owners wanting to drive brand awareness through social media, Mirkovic and Tomic highly recommend reaching out to a wide range of influencers at the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend products to bloggers, don\u2019t hold back,\u201d says Mirkovic.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend your product to as many people as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of this, Tomic says its important not to get too fixated on a single social media strategy or platform that\u2019s working.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe aware of your followers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee where your brand aligns with the target market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite their brand\u2019s success on platforms like Instagram, Mirkovic and Tomic remain on their toes and ready to follow the market wherever its attention goes.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryday we get better at moving on from being stuck in our ways and not just putting all the dollars on Instagram,\u201d says Tomic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, the market is always right.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was first published on SmartCompany.<\/em><\/p>\nFollow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, <\/em>LinkedIn <\/em>and <\/em>SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast entrepreneurs Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic were barely teenagers when they started watching what the world\u2019s leading brands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}