Influencers are becoming the popular kid in marketing. In 2023, more than 80% of marketers considered influencer marketing a crucial part of their social media strategy. This happens because influencers can build an engaged and close community with their followers, creating a sense of authenticity and honesty that can positively influence their buying decisions and expose your brand to a broader audience.
Consumers are 92% more likely to trust a brand recommendation from their peers than a traditional social media or TV advertisement. Thus, it is unsurprising if you want to test the waters of influencer marketing, which can be a bit scary, especially if you’re new to it. Nowadays, there are a zillion influencers on social media, and you may wonder, are influencers effective? How much do they cost? How do I sign with them?
Luckily, that’s why we’ll be covering it in this post. So, buckle up because we’re in for an exciting ride to create a successful influencer marketing campaign.
It is undoubtedly exciting to imagine an active and engaged audience interested in your brand and your products. You may want to shoot for the sun and hire a celebrity influencer to promote your business to a global audience. However, shooting for the sun without a clear social media strategy may likely result in another Icarus crashing into the sea. So, before sending emails to influencers, you should define your action plan.
To help you define your strategy and consolidate a clear and actionable plan, you can answer these questions:
Determine your business needs and goals, both in general and on social media. These goals will help you set an influencer marketing guide with content guidelines, topics, and trends that best suit your ultimate objective. For example, if you want to introduce a new product, the influencer posting a TBT (throwback-Thursday) story on how you started your business may not contribute to this goal.
Likewise, defining your message is essential to creating compelling content. To increase your chances of success, ensure the campaign messages align with your brand values while resonating with the influencer’s audience.
Creating an influencer marketing campaign budget will help you manage your expenses and allocate your resources for high–value partnerships with influencers. It will also establish the possibilities within your reach to start your influencer marketing strategy and propose your partnership more clearly and engagingly to the influencers.
For instance, if you dream of working with a celebrity influencer with millions of followers, like one of the Kardashians, you’ll need to invest a few thousand dollars, but if your budget is more limited, say 500 dollars per month, then working with a micro-influencer can be the best option.
When setting the budget, it is also essential to consider how you will compensate them for collaborating with you.
Some influencers may accept free products or services as compensation for their services. Still, others can be more strict and only accept payment upfront, or you can settle on commission payments, so having a flexible array of payment options is crucial when looking for influencers.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to accept every term and condition and spend your budget to sign a contract. Though influencer marketing is one of the best social media practices nowadays, its also a partnership and both parties can rightly negotiate an agreement for mutual benefits.
Still, avoid aggressive or dismissive communication, making it look like “you’re doing them a favor ” or expecting them to work for free. Nobody likes to minimize their work, and these established internet celebrities can be savvy if mistreated.
When discussing influencer marketing, most people dream of collaborating with massive influencers with over 30 million followers on Instagram. However, this type of influencer may only be a great fit for some businesses. Sometimes, their audience needs to be narrower and more active, which can result in ignored content that wastes your money.
So, to avoid getting disappointing results and starting to spiral down an existential crisis of is “influencer marketing effective? Why don’t they like my content?”, find the influencer type that fits your goals and budget the best:
Creating the best influencer marketing campaign also requires you to choose the right type of influencers that contribute to your goals and fall within your budget.
Once you’ve determined which kind of influencers you want to work with, creating a list of the ones you want to work with will help you organize your efforts.
To do so, you can use free and paid tools to research the influencer market deeper and look beyond their follower numbers. Consider their niche, previous experience with other businesses, their messages, and how they relate to your brand. Use this influencer marketing guide to choose wisely between the options you’ll find.
When you have narrowed your options, it is time to contact them. Your outreach will depend on the type of influencer you choose. Celebrity and macro influencers tend to work with agencies that manage them, so you’ll likely have to contact their agency to reach them. Some others have their business contact information displayed on their social media “bio” (biography), and with micro and nano influencers, you could send a direct message on the platform.
Regardless of their preferred communication channels, ensure your message sounds like a business proposal highlighting the benefits for both of you. If the initial conversations go well, you can delve more deeply into your influencer marketing campaign.
The best influencer marketing campaign establishes key milestones and metrics to review its progress. This will help you adjust any content and influencer underperforming according to your campaign goal and hold the influencer accountable for their work.
For example, your influencer marketing strategy may aim to increase awareness of your newly launched product. In that case, you may focus on the number of impressions or how many people clicked on the link if you’re directing customers to a landing page, video, or website with the product details.
If you and the influencer agreed that they’d publish four reels promoting your product during one month and have to get 100 views for every reel posted, setting views as the primary influencer marketing KPI will help you see if the goal was accomplished. If yes, you know what kind of content and influencers work for your business. If not, it’s an opportunity to review what happened with that content and change your strategy for the next time.
Creating an influencer marketing campaign is similar to any other paid campaign for your social media. Though rewarding, working with influencers and social media can become exhausting when you are beginning. From setting budgets to designing Canva posts and logging into Instagram at 7 PM to publish while running your business, you may feel overwhelmed and think about giving up.
If you want to avoid neglecting your social media because you’re too tired to worry about it, Xperience Marketing offers you the most complete suite of social media management services for your business. Together, we’ll work to develop your social media presence and expand your community and reach, so when you reach an influencer, you get a “yes” instead of a “sorry, not interested right now.”
And see what a strong social media presence can do for your business.
