Effective Influencer Marketing Strategy to Create Successful Campaigns

Influencer marketing is a widely used strategy by brands to promote their products or services via recommendations or endorsements from internet influencers. Most influencers are active on social media or blogs, but there are some other media as well, such as podcasts. This specific type of marketing is often utilized as a part of marketing campaigns in building brand awareness, which then leads to increased sales and conversions. Similar to other tactics in marketing, it also requires thoughtful planning and targeting. Read how to build a great influencer marketing strategy below.

How to Establish Excellent Influencer Marketing Strategy

1. Determine the goals and messages

As said before, influencer marketing strategy is often used to raise brand awareness and build up sales. That being said, sometimes you need to tailor the goal to suit the brand’s needs rather than setting these two goals because they are just too broad.

Some examples of a specific goal are to enhance the brand’s customer base in the female demographic, or to penetrate the newly launched product into a new customers group, or to promote your brand values in the sea of trend-following brands. As influencers’ audiences are usually made up of very specific segments, you can utilize the influencers to get your brand’s messages across to targeted audiences who plausibly feel interested in your content or products.

2. Find the influencers and know what to pay them

Similar to any other strategy, you have to start by researching first. Research is a fundamental part of this process, as you’re likely coming back to it throughout the process.

• Select a platform to focus on. In the very beginning phase of your campaign, it is best to concentrate on one platform only. It is always possible to expand to others later. Choose a network where your brand category has a presence already or is going to broaden into it. As an example, if you have a fashion or beauty brand, then it may suit YouTube or Instagram better than Twitch.
• Narrow the category of the influencers that you are interested to work with. Perhaps, you figure that choosing micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers is going to be more effective than going with celebrities with significant followings, or vice versa. However, don’t forget that you should match your preferences with your budget.
• Find the influencers. Finally, after you’ve built a plan around your goals, influencer’s category, and resources, it is time to actually search the influencers. The influencers’ lifestyles should match with your brand messages. It is also important to look for the engagement ratio because it signifies the number of fraudulent accounts. You may utilize tools such as Twitter analytics to determine the best-suited influencers for your campaigns.
• Calculate the costs. Compensation differs immensely between influencers. Micro-influencers who have followers of less than 2,000 may accept to be part of your marketing campaigns by receiving products only, but not so much with the bigger ones. Some influencers work independently, while others are represented by a network or agency. A celebrity with a household name or influencers with massive followings may demand a specific amount of compensation. This step requires you to consider the expected return on investment of this specific campaign.

3. Reach the influencers and arrange the budget and the management strategy

Now that you’ve decided on the platform, the influencers, and estimate the costs, it’s time to move into the execution phase.

• Reaching the influencers. There are several ways possible to reach the influencers. You may message them privately by using the feature of the said platform or you may reach the contact information that’s usually provided in their bio for business inquiry purposes.
• Create the budget and the timing. The budget part is a self-explanation, while for the timing you need to consider how long it takes for planning, executing, and evaluating your campaign. As the campaign progresses, you have to monitor it thoroughly and follow up.
• Cultivate a relationship with the influencers. Remember that influencers are human instead of automated advertisements. Allows room for errors and falls off during the entire process of the campaign. Growing and nurturing the relationship between the brands and the influencers requires more than one night, so find out what works and what doesn’t as time goes by.

4. Evaluate and improve the strategy

As the campaign using influencer marketing strategy keeps progressing, you have set dates when you should measure the development. This requires you to use quantifiable metrics to track the results. Chance is, you won’t achieve perfection in the first round, but there’s always an opportunity to become better.

Influencers marketing strategy becomes more and more popular during the last decade, and it probably won’t go anywhere in the near future. By following the step-by-step strategy provided above, you can build an effective marketing campaign, and get used to the rhythm to make a perfected campaign in the upcoming years.