Influencer Marketing is the fastest growing online marketing channel, crushing other strategies like affiliate marketing, Pay-per-Click (PPC), Email Marketing & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The important thing here is to come up with a proper marketing strategy that will indeed help you reach the right influencers and achieve your goals.
But if you haven’t tried influencer marketing before, you might not know the basic yet important things – where to start and what to include in your influencer marketing strategy.
So let’s focus on that.
What to include in your influencer marketing strategy?
1.Choose An Influencer That Fits Your Brand
Firstly, making sure the influencer selected for your campaign feels authentic & is a natural fit for your brand is a top priority, so the campaign does not come across like an unethical advertisement.
Here are a few examples:
- Bloggers
- Social Media Stars
- Celebrities
- Industry Experts
- Thought Leaders
- Customers
Secondly search through their profile – do a simple calculation of the number of followers.
In addition to searching their profile take note of the engagement they receive on their photos this way you know they have real followers who are aware & engaged.
2. Make Sure Their Followers Match Your Target Audience
When searching influencers on Instagram, be sure to ask them for a breakdown of their audience demographics, by location & interest.
A big marketing push on one or two social networks is important for campaigns that target a specific demographic.
In fact take Snapchat, for example, whose users are under the age of 25. Creating a Snapchat influencer campaign means the brand will reach young people on that platform.
If you find a relevant influencer with 300k followers, that’s great. But if only 20% of those followers are in the US, & you’re a US-based business, you’re not going to get a lot of bang for your buck.
There are other tools & methods you can use to find influencers. Firstly on social media, you can search for relevant hashtags to find Twitter & Instagram influencers. Further more, the following tools are also helpful for identifying social media & blogging influencers.
For more information about finding the right influencers, read this post: How to Find Influencers in Your Niche: 19 Tips, Tools, and Providers
3. Set Out Your Influencer Marketing Goals
As with any smart marketing plan, start by outlining your goals. Set your intentions for what you would like to accomplish with your campaign.
Some goals you’ll want to consider for your influencer marketing strategy include the following:
- Brand Awareness: Getting more people to know, recognize, & like your brand.
- Building Brand Identity: Getting people to see your brand personality and values.
- Audience Building: Getting more people to follow & subscribe.
- Engagement: Getting more shares, comments, & likes for your content.
- Lead Generation: Getting more people to sign up for your lead magnets and offers.
- Sales: Getting more people to purchase your products/services.
- Customer Loyalty: Getting people to stay interested & connected with your brand.
- Link Building: Getting more links directed back to your site.
Most businesses get solid results from influencer marketing, with just the bottom 18% failing to generate any revenue.
4. Track Your Metrics
The only way to know if your campaign is working is to track its success. You can’t make changes if you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, right?
Google Analytics & other automated software show you exactly where your traffic is coming from.
Influencer marketing campaigns can be a great tool for driving brand awareness, but only if you’re willing to put forth the effort.
To find out if you’ve reached your goals, track and measure your results. Use metrics to measure your success depending on the initial marketing objectives you set for the campaign.
- Brand Awareness Metrics: website traffic, page views, social mentions, time on site, site users
- Building Brand Identity Metrics: social mentions, PR coverage (number of articles or links)
- Audience Building Metrics: opt-ins, follows
- Engagement Metrics: shares, comments, and likes
- Lead Generation Metrics: opt-ins
- Sales Metrics: new sales, revenue changes, price per ticket
- Customer Loyalty Metrics: customer retention rates, renewal rates
- Link Building Metrics: number of links, quality of links
Further more, track the data for each of your influencer marketing campaigns so you can look back & reflect on what worked &
what didn’t. Use the data to guide your next influencer marketing strategy. Repeat your successes & halt efforts that don’t produce results.
Conclusion
Therefore, Influencer Marketing is simple if you have a solid foundation strategy –
Lastly, following these four key steps will get you one step closer to marketing success. Always remember these four key steps 🙌🏽
Interested in learning more about influencer marketing? check out similar blogs from my fellow interns.
Written by Christina Sullivan, an intern from The International Institute of Digital Marketing ™