One of the hottest buzzwords in marketing this year is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing uses key people in thought leadership positions to spread the word about your brand. These people may be paid or unpaid spokespersons for your brands, products, and services.

The profitable thing about influencer marketing is the leverage. Instead of marketing or selling to one person at a time, you are marketing to key leaders with followings who can influence many people at once.

Influencer marketing varies by industry; here are some common examples:

• Locating photos of your product already on social media and reaching out to those people to do more
• Hiring a social media expert with a large following to talk about your clothing line
• Having a prominent lifestyle blogger post a photograph containing your juice product
• Starting a referral program for a makeup company so “regular” women will spread the word

The common theme to all of the above examples is finding people who have a huge number of followers that just happen to be your ideal customers.

To take advantage of this marketing method, ask yourself who is influential in your industry that has the ear and respect of your customer base. How could you partner with them so it’s a win for you, them, and their following? You may or may not need to compensate them, depending on their revenue model.

There are plenty of apps to help you locate influencers relevant to you. A favorite is Ninja Outreach at ninjaoutreach.com.

Try reaching out to influencers to leverage your existing marketing and make your marketing dollars go farther. 

Tim Ferriss made the 4-hour workweek a popular concept in his 2007 book. But is there such a thing, and more importantly, can business owners like you and me cash in on it? As the last of the Baby Boomers approach retirement, the topic of working less while making the same or more income is popular.

Here are five ideas to help you work fewer hours while making the same or more income.

Active vs. Automatic Revenue

Some business models allow you to generate automatic revenue. Automatic revenue is revenue you can earn and leverage over time by doing something only once and not over and over again. Active revenue is earned while doing something over and over again. Showing up for a teaching job with a live audience is active revenue while producing and selling video recordings of the same teaching is automatic revenue.

A goal of a 4-hour workweek concept is to increase automatic revenue while reducing active revenue. You may have to think out of the box to do this in your industry, but the payoff can be huge.

Delegation and Outsourcing

One traditional way to move to a 4-hour workweek is to have others do the work. Hiring staff frees up your time and allows your business to become scalable. When it runs without you, it’s more salable too.

Time Batching

If you have a lot of distractions in your day, you can easily double your productivity by learning time batching, which is grouping like tasks together in a block or batch of time and getting them done. For example, if an employee interrupts you with questions multiple times a day, train them to come to you only once a day to get all their questions handled at one time. Take your calls one after the other in a group, and then stay off the phone the rest of the day. Do the same with email, social media, running errands, and all of your other tasks.

Automation and Procedures

New apps save an amazing amount of time. List all of your time-consuming chores and then find an app that helps you get them done faster. For example, a scheduling app can reduce countless emails back and forth when setting meetings and appointments. To-do list or project management software can cut down on emails among you and your staff. And apps like Zapier can connect two apps that need to share data, reducing data entry.

Leverage

The key to working less is to embrace the concept of leverage. How can you leverage the business resources around you to save time, increase staff productivity, and improve profits? It takes discipline and change, two difficult goals to accomplish. But when you do, you will be rewarded.

An interesting way to fund your dream project, whether you are a startup or a more established business, is to consider crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is when many people provide the money in small amounts for a project.

Although crowdfunding is not new, it became much more popular when organizations like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub, and GoFundMe created web platforms to enable this method of raising funds. The 2015 crowdfunding market is estimated at $34 billion and is growing exponentially.

In crowdfunding, the person who initiates the project receives the money that the people contribute. The web platform that supports the project usually gets a percentage of what’s raised. It varies as to what the people who contribute to the project receive in return. It can be the payback of a loan with interest, shares of stock, rewards, or a possible tax write-off in the case of a donation.  

You probably hear about companies that get funded overnight, making it look easy to create a successful crowdfunding campaign. There is a lot that goes into the launch of a successful campaign. Here are some steps:

1. Design your project and research how much money you need
2. Choose your platform (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc.). This requires careful research about which platform is best for your type of project as well as a complete understanding of the rules and limitations of that platform. For example, on Kickstarter, if you don’t reach your goal, you don’t get any money, including what you have partially raised.
3. Create a video that tells your story and makes the pitch. You must not only grab attention but appeal to both the rational and emotional sides of your followers. You must also provide an enticing reward for your followers.
4. Count your followers. Do you have enough to raise the capital you need? If not, create the marketing you need to build your followers and make your numbers.
5. Gain some big name backers if you possibly can.
6. Develop a carefully orchestrated launch using multiple marketing channels, including social media and press.

With the explosive growth in crowdfunding, it’s here to stay. Consider how it may help your business grow.

If it’s been a while since you’ve adopted new marketing methods, it might be time, especially if you want to attract younger customers. Here are five ideas to do just that.

1. Video

With YouTube as the second largest search engine, using video in your marketing is a slam-dunk return on investment. If there is an educational aspect to your sales cycle, a video is perfect to get the message across.

Even better news is that many companies still haven’t caught on to how powerful video can be in marketing, so you will have an advantage. There is no longer a financial barrier to entry as most videos are no longer professionally made.

There are so many ways to create video: using a webcam, capturing your screen with webinar software or TechSmith’s Camtasia®, or even using your cell phone. If you have a gmail address, you already have a YouTube account, and you can easily crate and customize your own YouTube channel.

The hardest part of adding video to your marketing is to simply take the leap. 

2. Social Media

Social media is now one of the best places for a business to expand brand awareness. LinkedIn provides customers with a way to discover your background. It’s also a good source of new employees. Facebook and Google+ enable you to build community and learn more about the interests of your customers.

Twitter is perfect for announcing sales and boosting event excitement. YouTube enhances education and motivation. Pinterest for Business and Instagram are perfect for retail to showcase new products. Tumblr is a must if you market to teens.

If you’re new to social media, choose one or two sites and set up your profile. If you already have some social media profiles, consider expanding or increasing your activity.

3. Content Marketing

Content marketing is another way to educate your customers before and during the sales cycle. With content marketing, you creates a report, white paper, or educational video that describes a topic congruent with your services. The content is typically “gated,” meaning the prospect needs to provide email address or phone number or both, so that you can follow up on the lead. The content should be enticing and educational and should also introduce the prospect to your brands and services without being heavy handed about it.

Content marketing is a great lead generator, especially if you have a sales staff that can deliver scripted follow-up calls.

4. Mobile and Wearables

Over a year ago, Google proclaimed there are now more mobile searches than desktop searches. For the last few years, it’s been increasingly important to make sure your website delivers a great experience via mobile technology.

Wearables are growing as fast as mobile did. Innovative companies are providing a rich customer experience through wearables. It’s now common to see wearables in health, sports, household automation, and virtual reality entertainment. But others are having fun with creative solutions, such as British Airways blankets that turn a color based on a passenger’s mood and Nivea’s children’s sunblock that comes with a GPS bracelet tracker so the kid doesn’t stray too far away.

5. Marketing Automation and Integration

Today, the entire marketing funnel can pretty much be automated, from SEO-enhanced social media posts to landing pages using content marketing to follow up emails, videos, and shopping cart links. Almost every business needs a website, list management system, shopping cart, social media automation app, and a CRM, Customer Relationship Manager. With this automation, you may be able to reduce sales labor as well as customer support expenses.

Integration of multiple marketing channels and methods is essential as the buying decision has become more complex and trust is built slowly over time. Successful marketers are integrating SEO (search engine optimization) with social media, video with content marketing, and email marketing with landing pages, to name a few.

Try any of these five trends to give your marketing a future-focused boost.