HOW TO DEVELOP INFLUENCER MARKETING STRATEGY.
On average people spend 145 minutes per day on social media. For a business person, this represents 145 minutes opportunity to advertise your products and services. The increase in the number of hours people spend on social media has fueled digital marketing campaigns globally. One method of marketing online is influencer marketing. To understand influencer marketing, you need to understand what is a social media influencer. A social media influencer is someone who wields their influence through social media. When you hire an influencer to promote your products or services, that’s influencer marketing. Just like any other marketing tactic, influencer marketing takes deliberate targeting and planning, this is how you do it;
- Determine your goals.
The two most common reasons for using influencer marketing are to increase brand awareness and improve sales. Instead of having these two broad goals, it will be more effective if you can focus on your brand’s needs. Perhaps you want an increase in Gen Z customers or generally increase your customer base in a younger demographic or simply you want influencers to talk about your brand values.
Influencers reach very specific audiences, which means influencers will help you ensure a very targeted audience who is likely to be interested in your product reads and engages with your content. Think about how your influencer marketing campaign will fit into your broader social media marketing strategy and create measurable goals you can report on and track.
- IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.
For you to have an effective influencer marketing campaign, you need to get the right influencers who will reach out to the right people using the right tools. Define who your audience will be for a specific campaign, it can be your current customers or entirely new audience. Understand your audience personas and get influencers with matching qualities.
- Set a budget and management strategy.
There are different types of influencers, and the type you choose will determine your budget. There are Nano-influencers, they have 10k followers or less, micro-influencers, they have 10k-100k followers, Macro-influencers, they have 100k-1 million followers, and Mega-influencers,1 million + followers. Running a successful influencer marketing campaign is not a set-it-and-go type of strategy. You will need to carefully monitor and follow up on the campaign. Unlike an automated ad, influencers are human and often balance multiple partnerships, so it is not unusual for influencers to fall behind on their commitment to post on time or make errors in your call to action. You will need to be hands-on and cultivate a relationship with them.
- Consider the three Rs of influence.
The three components of influence are Relevance, Reach, and Resonance. By relevance, we mean getting an influencer that shares relevant content with your business and industry. The influencer’s audience should align with your target audience.
Reach is the number of people you could potentially reach through the influencer’s follower base. Resonance is the potential level of engagement the influencer can create with an audience relevant to your brand. When it comes to influencer marketing, bigger isn’t always better, a huge follower count is meaningless if those followers aren’t interested in your products and services.
- Compile a shortlist of potential influencers.
When thinking about who you will work with, trust is the key. Your target audience must trust and respect the opinions of the influencer you choose to partner with. If they don’t trust the influencer, the results will be superficial and you will struggle to see a tangible business impact from all your efforts. You know an influencer is trusted by the level of engagements they are getting. Look at the likes, views, comments, and shares. Beware of inflated follower count bolstered by bots and pseudo accounts. Find someone who creates content that can complement your own.
- Do research.
Take time to look at your potential influencer postings. How often is he/she sharing sponsored content? If they are posting tons of paid posts, it is highly unlikely the engagement rate will last. A good influencer will have plenty of organic, non-paid content to keep followers interested and engaged. Have the same in mind when thinking about your demands for the influencer. Asking for too many posts within a short period may make the influencer turn down the offer. When you approach an influencer about an offer, you’ll need to show that you have put in work to understand what they do.
- Collaborate with your influencer to develop effective content.
Social media influencers are content creators, therefore allowing them the freedom to showcase their creativity is a good idea. Give some guidelines about what you expect and let them get working on creating the content using their creativity. Resist the temptation of stage-managing the entire campaign.
In conclusion, influencer marketing is the current trend in digital marketing. This technique was previously used by businesses through contracting celebrities to market their products, but currently, you don’t need to pay a lump sum of money to celebrities to achieve this. You have the freedom to choose from the different types of influencers that match your budget and get the results that you want. However, not all campaigns are successful but hopefully, you’ll learn with each one you create.
Hit the subscribe button to get a notification when the next article drops about how to track an influencer marketing campaign.
Stay safe.