The not-so-secret power of influencer marketing has impacted the marketing industry tremendously in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down.
Influencer marketing can do the following:
- Boost a brand’s authenticity
- Help drive engagement
- Drive website traffic and conversions
Even the global brands are taking on a global influencer agency to claim their slice of the pie. Brands like Adidas and Colgate-Palmolive have leveraged influencer marketing on several occasions and, as a result, have increased brand awareness and increased purchase consideration.
If they can do it, so can you.
Here’s how to do influencer marketing the right way.
Start with a goal
You can’t execute an influencer marketing campaign without working towards a clear goal. You will just be moving forward aimlessly, wasting time and resources along the way.
What do you expect from your campaign?
Say you want to improve your performance, what part of your performance do you want to improve? Engagement? Brand awareness? Conversions? Or a little bit of everything?
Goals not only give you something to work towards, but they also determine which influencers you work with and which platforms you operate on.
Find the right influencers
Following on from the aforementioned point, you will want to partner with the right influencers to help you achieve the goal you set out in step 1.
Remember: the influencers you choose must align with your brand’s image and values.
Here are what different types of influencers can do for you:
- Increase brand awareness with top influencers with massive reach
- Boost brand sentiment using influencers who are known for their authentic content
- Build brand trust with niche influencers
- Drive engagement with relevant micro influencers
- Drive conversions with a mix of top, mid and micro influencers across various niches
- Promote product launches using industry experts and niche influencers with significant reach.
Top Tip: partner with an influencer marketing agency to ensure that this job is done thoroughly for you.
Provide sufficient compensation
The biggest mistake you can make in influencer marketing is failing to provide your influencers with sufficient compensation.
For smaller businesses with limited budgets, carefully planning where every last penny of your budget is going to go, is key. Come up with a compensation model that’s beneficial to both you and the influencer. These can be:
- Cost-per-engagement: compensating influencers according to the number of conversions they drive with their content.
- Cost-per-click: compensating influencers according to the number of clicks they drive to your landing page.
- Pay per post: pay influencers a fixed amount for each post they create for your brand.
- Free products/experiences: instead of, or in addition to, monetary compensation.
- Cost per acquisition: compensating influencers for the number of actions or acquisitions they drive.
Plan your influencer marketing campaign
Once you have gone about finding and knowing how you will compensate your influencers you can move onto thinking about what type of campaign you want to execute.
There are many different types of influencer marketing campaigns, but you should choose that which is in alignment with your goals set out in the beginning.
You could:
- Host a giveaway/contest
- Host a brand experience
- Give out a discount/affiliate code
- Allocate brand ambassadors
- Collaborate with an influencer to create a new product
