If you’re new to the world of influencer marketing campaigns, it can be hard to know where to begin. The key to success lies in choosing the right influencers for your campaigns. However, there are things you should consider before you begin working with an influencer.
To help you get started on the right foot, we’ve collected some tips to run a successful influencer marketing campaign for your business.
Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals
Before you start searching for influencers, it’s important to define measurable goals for the campaign.
This will help you to evaluate the success of the campaign and make improvements over time. While there are many different types of influencer marketing goals, they generally fall into one of the following categories:
- Brand awareness: It’s one of the most important goals for any business. It helps people recognize your brand and associate it with a particular product or service. Influencer marketing helps brands to reach new audiences and create awareness for their products and services. This is an essential part of any marketer’s strategy.
- Increase website traffic: If you have a product or service that you want to sell and are looking for a way to get more people to visit your site, influencer marketing can be an effective tool for doing so. When influential people share your content through social media, it reaches more people than if you just posted it on one platform.
- Sales/conversions: The most obvious goal of any marketing campaign is increased sales and conversions. Influencers who promote products on social media often include links in their posts that send readers directly to the product pages on websites where they can make purchases. This is what most brands are looking for from their marketing efforts, so it makes sense to choose it as an influencer marketing goal, too.
Choose your goal carefully as it will help you narrow down the influencers to those who would be best suited for your business.
Define Your Audience
A target audience is a group of people who share common interests, needs, or wants. The first step to creating a successful influencer marketing campaign is defining your audience.
There are two ways to approach this:
- Segmentation: Segmenting your audience based on demographics and psychographics (e.g. age, gender, income level), will help you identify the right influencers for each segment. For example, if you are selling luxury watches, it doesn’t make sense for you to partner with an Instagram influencer who has millions of followers but none of them have a high disposable income. Instead, focus on finding an Instagrammer who has a large following of high-income potential customers.
- Categorization: Categorizing your audience based on common interests or hobbies can help narrow down the field of potential candidates. For example, if you are selling online courses about how to run a successful business, it makes sense for your target audience to be other entrepreneurs or small business owners who are looking for advice on how to grow their business and improve their bottom line.
To be successful with influencer marketing, you need to understand who your target audience is and how they interact with the selected influencers. So, if you’re selling sports shoes, then the best approach might be to work with a fitness influencer who has a large following of female runners in their 30s and 40s who would be interested in purchasing running shoes from your store.
Create Influencer Marketing Campaign Brief
Once you know what your goals are and who your audience is, create a brief for your influencer marketing campaign. This should include information about your budget, or how much money you have available for this project.
Note that influencers may ask for a fee upfront depending on their level of engagement with their followers/subscribers.
Other information in your campaign brief includes:
- What type of content you are looking for
- What kind of tone and style should be used (e.g., humorous, serious, etc.)
- How many words/pictures/videos you need per post
- What hashtags to use in each post (if applicable)
Write a brief that clearly states what you want from your influencers so they can submit content that aligns with your brand. You can also include other relevant information such as deadlines. However, make sure not to overload them with too much data at once as it may be ignored.
Pick Your Influencers
Put together a comprehensive list of potential influencers who can represent your brand in an authentic manner. You can do this by researching on social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Pick influencers that are relevant and compatible with your brand. Research their follower demographics and engagement rates before reaching out to them. This is important because it will ensure that your campaign will be successful and will also help you get a better ROI from the campaign.
Support Content Creation
Think about what type of content works best for your brand and audience. A video might be more effective than a blog post or photo because it allows an influencer’s personality to shine through while also conveying key information clearly and concisely.
In addition, reposting the content from your influencer about your business is a great way to maximize your influencer marketing efforts.
Launch Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Once you have found the right influencers and figured out the best content for your brand, it is time to reach out and pitch influencers to collaborate with you. You can ask them if they are willing to post on social media or create a blog post or video review of your product or service and share it with their followers.
If they agree, make sure that you provide clear guidelines for what kind of content would be most beneficial for both parties. Send samples of your product and information about the service you offer, so the influencers can learn it or use it themselves if they choose. This will ensure that you’re all on the same page.
Discuss your strategy, budget, and expectations with the influencer so they understand exactly what they’ll be doing for you. Give specific deadlines by which the content should be published. Note that even though deadlines seem far away when you’re planning, influencers may have other projects in hand and it may take some time.
Once the contract is signed, you should keep in constant communication with the influencer. This will allow you to make sure that everything is going according to plan and that there are no misunderstandings.
Track Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Now that you’ve launched your influencer marketing campaign, the next step is to measure the results. This will help you determine whether your campaign was successful and whether or not you should repeat it.
Here are two ways to track your influencer marketing campaigns:
Track Link or Discount Code Use
If you’re using a tracking link or discount code, you can see how many people used it and where they came from. This data may help improve your targeting and outreach efforts in the future. If most of your conversions came from one social channel, for example, then consider focusing more effort there.
Analytics Numbers
You can also use analytics numbers to see which influencers did well and who were less popular. For example, if some of the influencers had a high engagement rate but low conversions, perhaps there was something wrong with the offer or it simply wasn’t appealing enough to the target audience.
On the other hand, if an influencer has a high conversion rate but a low engagement rate, perhaps their content just doesn’t resonate well with the followers. This could be useful information about what kind of content works best for your brand.
Closing Remarks
Nowadays, influencer marketing campaigns are a valuable part of your marketing strategy. When done right, it can be a win-win-win situation for all parties involved. Your business gets more exposure and potential customers, the influencer gets paid for their time, and your target audience gets valuable content.
All you need to do is set your influencer marketing goal, identify your target audience, and find the right influencer for your brand. With our guide, you can make influencer marketing work for you. Follow these best practices, and you’ll start your journey on the right foot.
