Influencer Marketing – 7 Steps for Success!

FIRST OF ALL WHAT IS IM?

Influencer marketing is when a brand uses an online influencer to market their product or service by leveraging the following that an influencer has. When you choose the perfect Influencers or Content Creators, they already have established trust with your ideal audience across multiple channels.

Influencer marketing works BECAUSE it uses social proof and word-of-mouth marketing (This is the BEST kind of marketing!).
49% of consumers today say they depend on influencer recommendations.
Okay, so what exactly is a Brand Influencer vs Brand Ambassador?

Brand Influencer Someone with a following in a specific niche category that they engage with regularly. Brand Ambassador Someone who is hired under contract to help a business achieve specific goals. So now to what you really want to know, which is what I get asked by literally everyone (not in marketing).

DOES IT EVEN WORK ANYMORE?

UMM…YES! BUT THERE IS A BIT OF A CATCH…
It’s an investment. It can be time-consuming and take up a lot of resources. Now that Influencer Marketing has been around for a while social media users have caught on. Authenticity is essential for a successful campaign and so is devoted time and effort. This means emulating early IM strategies of casting a wide net (think FashionNova or FitTea) will no longer guarantee your brand going viral.

The old way of thinking, ie: a lot of posts or celebrity posts will equal campaign success is gone with the wind if you know what I mean.
IM is not a one size fits all kind of marketing. And it should not be used as a stand-alone tactic! Influencer Marketing is great at a few different stages of the customer journey but for beginners awareness and engagement are key!

So what does it take to ensure success?

Follow These 7 KEY Elements

Set Goals!

You should be able to communicate to anyone who asks how this campaign aligns with the customer value journey and your entire marketing strategy. Every IM campaign is different and the goals should reflect that. There are dozens of different goals to set for a campaign, but generally, an IM campaign should target at least one of the five main goals:

1. Build Brand Awareness
2. Increase Traffic
3. Social Media Followers and Engagement
4. Sales and Lead Generation
5. Gain Customer Insight

Your goals need to tie into your marketing plan as a whole and also your entire business plan. Read more about influencer marketing campaign types here – The 3 Main Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns.

Choose the Right Channels

You need to be where your customers are. After defining the target audience for your campaign, make sure to focus your efforts on where your target audience already is hanging out!

Ex: if your targeting Moms between 25-35 Instagram would be a safe bet, BUT if you’re targeting dads who are 45+ FB would be better.

Identifying the Right Influencers

This is by far the most overlooked part of a campaign. Identifying the right influencers is time-consuming and tedious! But this must be given the attention it deserves for a successful campaign. In order for your campaign to make sense, every influencer chosen needs to align with your brand and messaging this is where you want to define your wants by considering things like: niche, age, locations, following, content type etc. (This is super important for the authenticity piece we’ll touch on later).

Every influencer needs to be vetted across all platforms. There are different software to make this process easier. Check for things like brand alignment, suspicious follower activity, follower demographics, quality content etc. After vetting I’d suggest picking out 5-10 times as many influencers as your campaign needs to create your wishlist. Depending on your niche you can expect one out of ten to want to work with you. (Some industries will have higher uptake ie: luxury items like jewelry, fashion, makeup etc).

Micro-influencers are proven to be more successful than celebrities due to their authenticity, ALSO they almost always make KILLER content! One of the best things to come out of an IM is the User Generated Content, so make sure you have a plan to work the rights to the UGC into the influencer contracts and terms.

Remember: Engagement > Followers

Diversify your Strategy

Like mentioned before influencer marketing works best when it complements other marketing strategies. You can’t expect one stand-alone IM campaign to deliver some crazy ROI when that’s all you have going on. You should also be employing your marketing toolbox tactics to create a well-rounded marketing plan.
Make sure your IM campaign strategy is not one-sided. Plan for owned paid and earned media. To build authenticity use your User Generated Content for your own organic social, while boosting the most on-brand and successful influencers posts.

Keep It Authentic

If you chose the right influencers they should align with your brand and you should have trust in them. Of course, give them guidelines but also allow them the creative freedom to do what they do best. CREATE.
This kind of mutually beneficial relationship works best when you don’t have to micromanage everything about their content. Their followers can tell when they aren’t themselves and that is when campaigns fall flat.

Review, Test and Optimize Influencer Content

Every campaign will have amazing concepts and some that don’t really deliver. A key to getting great results is to review, test and optimize successful content. That means double down on content and concepts that are working. Look to boost the most successful posts and you should encourage your influencers to do the same.

Measure Results

Just like all things in business you need to measure your results. This is how you determine the success of your campaign. By consistently measuring your KPIs the effectiveness of your campaign is quantified. This means your impressions, engagement, UGC, clicks, downloads, visits, whatever you decide is important! You can also take note of best-performing influencers and content and use this in the future. This shows your social ROI which cannot be ignored.

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Interested in learning more about influencer marketing campaigns? Check out my post – The 3 Main Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns.

I’m always up for a conversation about influencer marketing!

If you ever have any questions or just want to connect and bounce ideas off each other – connect with me on social media IG @conradsocial Twitter @socialconrad 

Leave a comment of your thoughts below or if you have any questions!