5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Doing My First Influencer Marketing Campaign
There’s a primary reason why businesses are creating influencer marketing campaigns. 90% of marketers believe influencer marketing to be effective, according to a recent report.
However, the same report discovered that finding the right brand ambassador is still the most significant challenge for 34% of businesses running in-house campaigns.
In addition, running an influencer marketing campaign is complex. It requires strategies, finding the ideal influencer (selecting one in-house or contacting an influencer agency), negotiating terms, setting up a content brief, and much more.
It’s not a simple process: it takes time, thoughtfulness, and focus to deal with any problems that may arise.
Working with an influencer marketing agency to achieve your campaign goals can be incredibly useful and practical. Yet, some businesses opt to run campaigns themselves.
Continue to read to learn about what it takes to work with an influencer brand ambassador.
1. Followers Matter The Most
An essential reason behind purchase decisions has always been the sense of belonging: consumers must feel connected to brands to buy their products.
Nowadays, authenticity is one of the main selling points. Influencers can give the ”human” quality to brands and allow consumer audiences to see products differently.
A common misconception is that the influencer’s branding and personality are more important than their audiences. In reality, the influencer’s followers matter the most for businesses.
The influencer’s followers are your potential customers, and therefore it’s worth finding out where they are based, their interests, age, gender, occupation, income level, and education level.
The more you understand your target market, the better it will be when searching for an influencer, as you’ll already have in mind who you want to target. Also, it will allow you to focus your ads and reach the audience most likely to turn into customers.
Therefore, before you even search for an influencer, develop a clear understanding of your social media target audience. That’s essential for any social media marketer.
Also, consider finding out the influencer’s audience engagement on other sponsored posts. It’s likely that whoever you pick probably partnered up with a brand before, especially if content creation is their full-time job.
In conclusion, you want to ensure you’re targeting the right audience for your business. If the influencer has the appropriate target customer for your brand, then you can indeed consider working with them.
2. Strategies Are The Key to Succeed
Maybe a few years ago, brands could offer influencers some money and ask them to post their product on their feed. Not anymore.
To make influencer marketing effective, your brand must consider ”creating awareness”, which involves aligning your business with your values, beliefs, and personality. So, before anything else, you must know your business and yourself.
Also, ”consideration” counts. You must think of the audience’s background, personal views, mindset, and so on.
Try to visualise your audience, their needs, requirements, emotions, and their difficulties.
Suppose your product has the potential to add value to consumers’ lives. In that case, when they see their favourite influencer recommending your product, they’ll be more likely to be interested and make a purchase.
Ask your brand ambassador to mix it up, displaying: infeed posts, stories, and videos.
Each one of these posts can benefit your business in a different way. In-feed IG posts are permanent, stories are cheaper (due to lower production costs and quicker creation), and video is 64% more effective in convincing customers to purchase a product than other mediums.
Prices vary, but you can get five to seven stories at a similar price as one permanent in-feed post. Consider all these factors and choose the right strategy for your business.
In conclusion, consider ”creating awareness”, try ”consideration”, and ”conversion” (multiple posts per influencer). All of this is for an effective marketing strategy.
3. Provide Influencers Content Briefs
Influencers are usually highly creative and super inspired to create great content. However, they certainly need some guidance for campaigns.
Think about it: you give all the creative freedom to the influencer, and so, you let them come up with the video script to promote your product. How would you ensure that the content creator provides the right message to their followers about your business? There’s no way you could do it. So, make sure you have some creative control.
Create a content brief stating the guidelines, expectations, and deliverables to any social media content creator you hire. That helps to ensure that your influencer and brand goals are synchronised and the success of your business’ campaign.
Overall, a solid creative brief outlining your campaign goals, tone, and brand’s personality can guide the influencer in doing their job correctly and showcasing your business in the best way possible.
4. Influencers Must Believe in Your Brand
It’s undoubtedly better for your business to work with an individual who shares the same views, principles, and values as your brand. This way, they’ll be more likely to endorse your product or service genuinely.
You may think that hiring a top influencer should be a priority, but it shouldn’t. Compatibility is essential to certify that your brand’s voice is represented with the best interest on both sides.
Indeed, you don’t want to work with an individual with a bad reputation or whose actions might cause a bad image for your brand. So, when selecting an influencer, choose wisely.
Your brand should perceive influencers with large social media followings carefully, opting to focus on those with respected opinions due to their ability to communicate thoughtfully.
In addition, be aware that the most suitable influencers are the ones that do more for your brand: they don’t just post about your product or service. They engage with followers to achieve the best results in your influencer marketing campaign.
If possible, build authentic relationships with influencers. They will know your business better and offer a more accurate view to their followers when promoting your product or service.
When you’re both aligned (business and influencer), you can have a mutually beneficial partnership, which may lead content creators to feel more motivated to perform their best.
In conclusion, it’s better to find an influencer that believes in your brand and not one who is just doing it for the money.
5. Have a Long-Term Mindset
Keep in mind that an influencer is an extension of your team. Just like your employees, they represent your brand.
Ideally, companies should aim to find a long-term brand ambassador. If you opt to hire a different influencer every time your business runs a marketing campaign, you’ll be wasting time, as it takes a lot of effort to find a new and suitable influencer.
Even if you quickly find a new influencer, things such as contracting, payment, providing a content brief (with clear instructions and making sure they understand it), and negotiations take time.
Therefore, using the same influencer is more practical and safe: you already know they are compatible with your brand, and so, they’re more effective in the long run.
In addition, market analysts estimate that the influencer marketing industry will reach $15 billion by 2022, a rise from $8 billion in 2019. This industry will certainly grow in the next decade, and your business must keep up with the times.
Undoubtedly, social media influencers will remain a crucial trust-building mechanism, helping to establish businesses’ brand identities.
Overall, it’s worth having a long-term perspective regarding content creators, considering that influencer marketing is predicted to grow.
Influencer Marketing Campaign: Worth It?
There’s something special about influencers: they’re usually experts in their fields. Also, they interact with their followers (unlike most celebrities) and become a source of advice and suggestions regarding consumer products.
This knowledgeable influencer status, given by their audiences, can surely be leveraged by businesses.
However, managing an influencer marketing campaign is time-consuming, requires expertise, and many businesses don’t have enough staff or resources to work on it.
If that’s the case for your business, then it’s worth considering allocating part of the marketing budget to hire an influencer agency. Their work is more likely to be effective in helping you reach your brand campaign goals.
This type of campaign is important for companies. After all, product recommendations from trustworthy and successful social media creators might reduce the typical cynicism among the average consumer response to ads.
Think about it: consumers are more likely to be more receptive to product or service suggestions when recommended by individuals they see as a trusted source. Influencers certainly can be one, and so influencer marketing is unquestionably an effective outreach method.
Do you want to learn more about influencer marketing campaigns? Reach out now!
