Do you have that friend who keeps talking about their free stay at some expensive place? Or a sponsored Trip to Thailand? Carry their super expensive Mark Cross bag here and there? Or take multiple pictures in their Calvins? One who has a Discount coupon with their name?
To understand influencer marketing, we first need to understand who are INFLUENCERS
Influencers are the ones to whom the people listen to, to whom they follow and resonate with, and these influencers through their posts either text or media can influence their viewers or supporters.
Now the means through which these influencers work are facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube
Everyone has heard of :
Cristiano Ronaldo
Amanda Cerny
Jay Shetty
Bhuvan Bam
Now new brands are coming up every day like TIK TOK, AZAR, MPL app, and for these new apps to gain market share reach out to these influencers and ask them to promote their brands/products through their posts that can be either a video, a photo or a text.
Exactly that what INFLUENCER MARKETING is all about promoting/marketing of brands by these INFLUENCERS to their well established follower base.
Creating an Influencer Marketing Campaign – What You Need
To derive the maximum benefit out of your influencer marketing efforts, it is crucial to organize your campaigns carefully and make sure you are not missing any essential component. Here we have compiled the 8 major components required to create an influencer marketing campaign
1. Put your audience front and center
Since your ultimate goal is to convert your visitors into paying customers, it’s only logical to build your marketing strategy around them.
This means you should literally focus all of your efforts into getting to know your audience first and anticipate how they might react. It will also help you figure out which influencers they would follow and the type of content they would prefer. That would also include checking out appropriate blogs, articles, tweets, YouTube channels, or forums.
People are more inclined to value the opinions of actual people, in this case influencers, instead of those of a company, because they are more likely to be genuine. They are independent third parties, unlike the companies trying to sell them their products.
2. The right target audience
Taking the time to find the “right” influencer who has the same target group as you is extremely important.
But the right match increases the chances and the chance of getting the maximum effect of your cooperation. With the right choice, you get direct contact with not only their target audience but also your own.
Now you can reach out, engage and influence your target group in a way that has not previously been possible on a larger scale.
3. Set a budget and determine compensation
Now that you have some idea of what to pay if you’re paying, you need to create your budget. Be sure to also factor in time for planning, executing and reviewing your strategy.
Running a successful influencer marketing campaign is not a set-it-and-go type of strategy. It’ll involve careful monitoring and follow up.
For brands that need a wider pool of influencers, hiring an influencer marketing agency who will do the research and coordination for you is a good bet.
4. Find your influencers and contact them
Back to step one: research. With a plan set around your network, goals and what types of influencers you want to target, we go back to researching to actually find the right influencers to work with.
During this research, keep in mind the below:
- Does the influencer already post about similar things to your service? For example, if you’re a restaurant and you want to promote a new menu, you should be looking for influencers who regularly post about dining out and the food they eat.
- Are they legit? This means scrolling through their feed and clicking through on posts. A poor engagement ratio to follower count and spam-like comments are signs of a fraudulent account.
- Have they worked with similar brands before? Depending on what type of influencer you’re looking for, a seasoned one will be able to show you a press kit that contains a portfolio of their work. The more you invest in an influencer, the more you’ll want to vet them.
5. Follow up
An influencer marketing campaign doesn’t have to be limited to a single post.
By following up and showing gratitude after a campaign, you may inspire the influencer to post about you again in the future or link to you in a relevant post.
Continue to check in with influencers you’ve formed relationships with. As their followings grow, so can coverage for your brand through new influencer marketing campaigns.
Influencers can be a strong source of public relations for businesses. When you treat how you find, approach and work with influencers the same way you would any business partnership, influencer marketing campaigns become more effective.
6. Realize that paid ads have lost their mojo
There is only so much a person can take in terms of ad exposure before they have had it, and with people’s reliance on TV, internet, and social media, all of which feature ads, that margins are getting narrowed every day. Naturally, people respond to this exposure by getting used to the ads, and tuning them out, which renders them almost useless.
What you should aim for as a marketer is providing useful content for the readers, because that’s the way they are getting their information these days. Instead of having services and products forced upon them through ads, they turn to those brands which are more subtle about their sales pitches and which provide information they can actually use. Those brands are also more likely to have influencers promote their product.
7. Keep track of everything
One major advantage of digital marketing over its analog counterpart is that you can keep track of everything and use all that information to develop and fine-tune your marketing strategies.
Not only can you immediately access every single post, share, or like, but you can analyze every single aspect of influencer marketing using software such as Google analytics, which is free, yet amazingly powerful.
You can even monitor the demographic aspect of influencer marketing, and time of day/days of the week which have been the most fruitful in terms of visitors and shares.
8. Review and change your strategy
Even if your influencer campaign is ongoing, you should still have pre-determined dates where you’ll measure its progress. The next part of this guide will go into how to track your results. Not all campaigns are successful but hopefully, you’ll learn with each one you create.
Wrapping Up
Influencers are here to stay but how they look and operate in five years may be drastically different from today. This guide will help you get started with building your strategy. While there are some unique considerations to working with influencers, setting up a campaign is the same as most marketing campaigns: research, set a budget, determine goals, find your influencers and review and revise.
What strategies have worked for your niche when it comes to working with influencers? Let us know in the comments below!
