Are you tired of being a one-trick pony?
We know it’s tough to get noticed in today’s crowded market. But we’d like to help you stand out from the crowd, and give you the opportunity to be featured in our next issue. That’s right—we’re talking about influencer marketing, which is how some of the world’s biggest brands are getting their message out there in a way that will actually impact people’s lives.
Who are influencers?
Influencers are people who hold a lot of influence over other people. They can help you sell more products because they have a large audience who trusts them and listens to what they have to say. And they can help you attract new customers by inspiring them with their own stories or experiences. So, if you’re looking for an opportunity to get your name out there, but don’t know where to start, look no further than influencer marketing!
Influencer marketing does not have to be expensive as hiring A list celebrities. There are influencers in pretty much every niche that can promote your products to their audience for a fraction of the cost. Let’s learn today how to do influencer marketing by finding, vetting and partnering with the right influencer to grow your business.
Before we begin, it is important that we establish the fundamentals of influencer marketing like what it is, why it is important, and the different types of influencers.
What is influencer marketing?
The practice of working with influencers to promote your brand’s message, products or services and influencers are just people who have an active and ideally sizeable audience who they are actually able to influence.
It is favourably done on the social media networks like Instagram, YouTube, twitter, Facebook and many more.
It really works, because we are already borrowing trust from a person who already has influence over your targeted audience.
Now the amount you pay to an influencer will vary on a case-by-case basis and largely depends on the level of influence that person has and the niche they’re in.
This simple follows the law of supply and demand.
There are generally 5 types of influencers which are categorized based on the size of their following
- > Million Followers = A list celebrities
- 600K – 1M Followers = Mega influencers
- 100K – 500K Followers = Macro Influencers
- 10K – 100K Followers = Micro Influencers
- 1K – 10K Followers = Nano influencers
Now, we won’t be giving the number of followers too much consideration because it is not how you should select the collaborators you work with.
Influencers must be thoroughly screened before you even consider approaching them. Will dive more on this in a moment.
We’re going to walk you through the process of creating an influencer marketing campaign from start today. To set this up, you don’t have to run a huge enterprise. This is really simple to understand.
How to build a powerful influencer marketing strategy?
We are going to look at some of the powerful steps in creating a successful campaign down below.
- Set your campaign objective and budget
- Research influencers
- Vet influencers
- Reach out to brand sponsorships
- Work together
Set your campaign objective and budget
Let’s begin by defining the campaign’s main goal, which is the first phase. Just ask yourself up front what your objective is. Why did you wish to collaborate with a powerful person? Of course, increasing sale is an excellent goal, but generally speaking, there are three key goals that you might not have considered.
- Spread brand awareness and improve brand perception: This strategy aims to make your brands or products known to your target market.
- Create interest and desire: This goal is all about teaching potential customers more about their problems and how your products or services can solve them right away.
- Improve conversions (sales, newsletter subscribers, free trial sign ups, email list building).
This stage will be going to define your primary objective. Because naturally, people will become aware of your brand whether you try to promote education or ask them to buy something. But by solidifying a goal, you will be able to keep messaging consistent with what you hope to achieve.
Defining your budget
Keeping track of your expenses is going to help you understand whether your campaign left you in the red or in the green. Just be certain that you do, at this time, have a general concept of how much you want to spend. Be truthful to yourself. The size of your budget is not really significant. To make sure you are getting a return on your investment, it is crucial to stay on top of your stats.
Finding the right influencer
So, there are tons of ways to find influencer to find influencers in your niche. It is important to note that at this stage you are just brain storming a big list of people to potentially work with.
Which type of influencers you want to use—nano, micro, midsize, or large—must be decided at this point. Each has advantages and disadvantages. However, keep in mind that when influencers expand, they do have a tendency to lose touch with their following, and their specialty may begin to saturate. Additionally, just because they have a sizable audience doesn’t guarantee that they will automatically convert that audience for you.
Don’t limit yourself to counting. Tier 1M followers won’t help you if, for example, their audience is mostly in Canada and you don’t even ship there.
To make sure that it is the right fit, you can ask for the help from social media platforms and google as well.
- Search for the top influencers on Google: A number of list posts should come up. Click through a few of the influencers’ links and visit some of their pages. Record their details and write it down somewhere if they seem like a potential fit for your brand.
- Conduct a search on the relevant social media site: For instance, if I had a beauty kit, I might look for youtubers that post makeup tutorials.
- Reverse engineer your competitors’ campaigns: This will largely boil down to the marketing medium you want to promote your brand on.
For instance: Brands will often ask for Instagram influencers to use a common hashtag on their sponsored posts. So, when you see one of these posts, click that link and then look through some of the other posts. You will usually be able to tell that it is sponsored because it should say” Paid partnership with xyz”.
At this point, you will see a nice list of influencers to potentially work with. This brings us to arguably most important part of the process that is to actually vet the influencers.
Vet influencers
Now, the number of the followers or subscribers is almost never a good metric to look at alone. That is why, at this point, we are having a list of potential people we want to work with. This part is super important because choosing the wrong influencer can lead to no engagement or even worse, you can hurt your brand. There are two main parts to vetting:
- You want to make sure that the influencer will be a good representative of your brand.
- You want to get an understanding of the engagement metrics you can expect.
This should help you come up with ways to create projections for your campaign. Now, the way vet influencers will vary depending on the social media network you are working with. But the good news is that you can use some tools paired with common sense to make sure you don’t fall victim to fake influencers.
Mainly, there are 3 things you can look at:
- Engagement rate
- Engagement quality
- Consistent growth
When it comes to influencer marketing it is idea if you promote your brand with influencers who are moving in upward direction. Because by the time their tractions start to flatline, that’s why you will usually get superb results. Let’s move on to the next step.
Reach out to brand sponsorships
One thing that often gets overlooked at this stage is that people think that influencers will work with them because they have money in hand. But that could not be further from the truth. Just as you have gone through a detailed process to vet potential influencers, they will likely do the same for you. After all, these influencers have built their own personal brand and the last thing they will want to look like is a sell out to their audience. So, at this stage you will need to find contact details, which is pretty easy. They will usually be on the About pages on YouTube and fakebook and within profile on social networks like Instagram and twitter.
The pitch
- Introduce yourself
- Explain why you are a good fit for them.
- Ask if they are open to sponsorship
So, the best thing you can do at this stage is just ask if they are interested in a collaboration.
Working together
All that left is to start working with the influencers.
Influencers campaigns tend to work best when it is done in collaboration because you know your product best and they know their audience best. What works for both parties and as you run your campaigns, see if your campaign objectives are being fulfilled.
Wrapping up
The wonderful thing about influencer marketing right now is that there aren’t really any laws, other than the requirement to disclose that the sponsorship was paid for. Get creative, find people who would be great brand evangelists and give it a shot because you wont know how well it works until you exactly try. Whether you are an influencer or a business that pays influencers, we would love to hear about your experiences using influencer marketing.
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