Influencers have a strong presence online and on social media, and publish content that engages their audience and strengthens their following. In this article, we will take a closer look at the power an influencer can offer to boost your brand and your product(s)/service(s) and how to best work with an influencer to maximize your opportunity.
Before jumping into this topic, it’s important you know what an influencer is, and how to determine which influencer to work with. We’ve gone ahead and covered that for you. Check out our other blogs to learn more about influencer marketing, and choosing the right influencer to work with.
How to work with influencers
No matter what industry, market or audience your influencer is in, there are certain best practices that are universal if you want your influencer marketing campaign to be successful.
- Choose your influencers carefully
It’s easy to find the person with the most followers online and just throw them a pitch. But that would also be wrong.
Popularity isn’t what defines the ideal influencer; it’s relevance. Their stories have to align with yours, and their audience has to be similar to yours, too. Influencers are highly protective of their audience and ignore pitches that are obvious mismatches.
Carefully consider your influencer’s niche and make sure they’re appropriate for your brand. It increases the chance they’ll entertain your pitch, and that the audience will be receptive. Personalize your pitch to them so they know you value them as individuals, and make it clear you are providing value for their audience as well.
- Don’t rely on a single influencer
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Just because an influencer is popular within your niche, doesn’t mean everyone in that niche is a fan of that single individual. This is especially true for micro-influencers, who by their very definition have relatively small (albeit dedicated) followings.
Instead, approach multiple influencers to increase your campaign’s reach. By engaging multiple audiences, you’ll also be able to get multiple perspectives on your brand and show value in different ways.
- Set campaign goals
The worst thing you can do is to hire an influencer without a specific idea of what you want them to achieve.
The first thing you should do is define your campaign goals. The more specific and measurable the better. Perhaps you want to drive conversions, or increase your brand’s followers, or be known within a new market.
Then, once those are defined, start looking for influencers who can help you accomplish those goals. Look at the type of content they publish and how they interact with their users. Will they help you meet your targets? If so, then you’re golden!
- Determine your offer
Now that you know your campaign goals, and have selected your ideal influencers to work with, it’s important to determine your offer before actually contacting anyone. This can be done in two different ways:
Organic Seeding:
- When you send an influencer your product or service for free and ask that they post something, whether stories or to their feed, sharing their thoughts or experience with their followers. This can include a discount code for their followers to use on the same product or service.
- This is an ideal approach if you’re just starting out with influencer marketing, or don’t have a large budget.
- It’s important to remember that if you choose Organic Seeding, that since you are not paying the influencer to post anything, they are not obligated to do so unless agreed upon within a contract. This is why organic seeding is often used for nano or micro-influencers, as larger influencers are not typically interested in this type of collaboration.
Paid Advertising:
- When you send an influencer your product or service for free and pay them to post and promote it to their followers, sharing their opinion. This can also include a discount code for followers or other incentives.
- This is an ideal approach if you have a budget for your campaign and are looking for guaranteed advertising. It is important to have all the expectations clearly laid out in a contract, including any brand mentions, tags, hashtags, or keywords to be featured, as well as a posting date.
- The cost associated with this kind of advertising will range from influencer to influencer depending on their size of the audience. Typically, influencers will have their own set rates for advertising if a brand asks!
- Give influencers creative control
Don’t try to micromanage how the influencer will produce the content. It’s the influencer’s channel, the influencer’s audience, and the influencer’s name. You’re just riding the wave. The influencer should be given creative control over how they want the sponsored content to go.
You can (and should) set guidelines, though. Things like standards of behaviour, timeliness of the sponsored posts, and the kind of responses the influencer should have when engaging audiences are vital to protecting your brand.
Influencers are a polarizing topic for marketers, with their own supporters and detractors. In truth, influencer marketing will only be as effective as how smart you are in using it.
Approach influencer marketing cautiously. Craft your strategy, define your goals, and choose your influencer partners with care. Do your research and manage your (and your bosses’) expectations. Test, test and test again, and modify your strategy based on your results.
If you can apply this consistently and build upon your success, and you may even be able to become an influencer yourself.
Why is it important to promote influencer content?
Often, once an influencer post is published, it loses organic impact in less than 24 hours. By amplifying influencer content, we can integrate the influencer’s account with our agency account so that we can place ad dollars behind the best-performing influencer content.
On Instagram, it’s currently difficult to tie influencer engagement to an off-site conversion. By implementing a CTA overlay directly from an influencer’s account, we can promote it to the influencer’s followers and additional audiences, like lookalike, engagement, and lists. This enables us to drive engagement off of Facebook and Instagram to a point-of-purchase, like your Amazon listing or website.
Finally, the lack of clear CTA and attribution makes it difficult to measure the performance of an influencer post. We can add UTM tags and Facebook Pixels to track traffic sources to the CTA links. This gives us direct insight into how each post contributes to your sales.
Ready to get started?
Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind:
- There are lots of ways to source influencers. Find what’s best for you.
- Always amplify your influencer content to make the most of each post!
- Vet your influencers and watch out for fake follower counts
- If you can automate influencer research, micro-influencers are typically the most cost-effective partners
If you’re still new to influencer marketing or don’t have the time to get started and you’re interested in hearing how Good Commerce can help with Influencer Marketing? Contact us to book a Brand Discovery session and let’s start achieving your business goals together.