Have you ever considered partnering with a social media influencer to promote your brand? Over the years, we have worked with numerous influencers that have positively driven leads and sales for our clients. When done correctly, influencer marketing is a great way to build your brand and raise awareness among a larger audience.
While influencer marketing may sound easy, creating a successful campaign takes more work than many realize. For the project to be successful, it is important to define your goals, detail a path for reaching your goals, and develop an integrated strategy to take full advantage of your influencer campaign. In this blog, we share some before, during, and after suggestions that will help you make the most of your influencer partnership.
What Exactly is Influencer Marketing?
An influencer is someone who can affect the purchase decision of others because of his/her knowledge, position, or relationship to his/her audience. When these experts are used to drive your brand message to a larger audience, usually in the form of blogs and social media, it is referred to as Influencer Marketing. The partnership is mutually beneficial as it allows companies to get in front of potential customers and raise awareness for their brand or product while providing the influencer with engaging content for followers.
How Much Does it Cost?
The popularity of using influencers has grown over the last few years, which has led to an increase in their costs. Generally, the price relates to the number of followers. Facebook influencers, for example, charge an average of $25/post per 1,000 followers. Instagram influencers are a little more affordable, averaging $10/post per 1,000 followers. Blogger influencers charge around $60/post per 1,000 unique visitors. When it comes down to it, there is a lot of negotiation involved, especially if there is a product exchange or if you want the influencer to post on several platforms.
Campaign Suggestions
Management of a successful influencer campaign requires preparation, organization, and follow-up. We’ve outlined some suggestions to help you make the most of your campaign.
Preparation Tips
- Determine your budget and outline your goals. Based on the basic rates noted above, decide what level of influencer you can afford and outline your key goals/objectives. Are you trying to increase followers or engagement? Drive leads? Sell a specific item online?
- Develop a strategy that defines the ways (Facebook, Instagram, Blog) you want the influencer to promote your brand and how you will piggy-back on that promotion to fully integrate the campaign into your marketing plan.
- Prepare an Influencer Instruction Guide that outlines the objectives of the campaign and details all instructions, copy points and posting expectations.
- Prepare an Influencer Contract outlining all campaign expectations and deliverables written and signed by both parties. We recommend a legal agreement with photo and video release as well. Save images for future use, but be sure to have rights to the images and give appropriate tags and photo attribution when sharing.
- Research and understand your market. The key to a successful influencer marketing collaboration is making sure that you chose someone who has a following in the market that your brand falls under. If you are a makeup brand, working with a beauty influencer would be a good fit. If you’re in the home furnishings industry then it makes sense to work with a home decor blogger.
- Make sure that the influencer you want to work with complements your brand. Influencers are people, and you cannot force or change their personality or opinions. It is crucial to understand who the influencer you are planning to collaborate with is and if they are consistent with your brand and tone.
- Gather key metrics beforehand. Research an influencer’s reach and engagement before partnering with them as this will give you an idea of what kind of results you can expect from the collaboration. How large is their following? In the influencer world, there are influencers (>10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (<10,000). It is important to note which you will be working with because their potential reach is different. They have different tools at their disposal like the swipe-up feature on Instagram stories which allows influencers to link directly to a website.
- Follow all FTC Guidelines in working with influencers.
During the Campaign
- Integrate your campaign in line with your strategy.
- Promote the campaign on your company’s social channels.
- Like, engage and share all campaign posts and blogs on your influencer’s platforms.
- Save all images for future use.
Post-Campaign Recommendations
- An influencer can give you data on how the campaign went by sharing the reach, impressions, website visits, coupon downloads, and more so you can better evaluate the success of your collaboration. Take time to study the results to see if you met your strategic goals.
- While the campaign is still fresh in mind, note the pros and cons of working with that influencer. What did you learn, negatively or positively, that you can apply to your next influencer partnership?
- Update your Influencer Instruction Guidelines with any talking points or information you may have missed or that you would prefer not to use going forward.
- Stay in touch with the influencer. Engage on their social platforms and write something positive about them on LinkedIn. You never know when they may return the interest by mentioning your company in a post!
At White Label Studio, our dedicated team has a history of working with influencers and understands what it takes to get the results you desire. We would love to help you incorporate these tactics into your marketing strategy. Give us a call to discuss how influencer marketing can help grow your business!
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