Shape Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

The advantages of influencer marketing for brands are countless. From increasing sales to building an engaged community around your brand, influencers offer an array of benefits for businesses large and small. But before jumping into it, you need to have an influencer marketing strategy. Here’s how.

 

Establish your campaign objectives

Craft your campaign strategy according to your goals. They could be:

• Reaching a wider audience and grow brand exposure
• Improving brand reputation and establish trust
• Driving traffic to your website
• Increasing your Instagram audience and engagement
• Generating leads and sales
• Producing branded content to use on your social media

Your goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (SMART principle)

 

Define your target audience

Before deciding what type of influencer marketing strategy to choose for your campaign, you should have a clear vision of who your “Ideal Customer” is.

By defining your “Buyer Persona”, you will know how to tailor your campaign to target the right audience for your brand.

When characterizing your Target Audience, you should consider demographic and psychographic metrics. You should define the age, gender, country residence and interests of your target customers : who they are, where they are located, the kind of products or services they like and use,etc.

 

Evaluate your campaign budget

Is influencer marketing expensive?

You don’t have a budget to splurge on a celebrity followed by millions of followers? Good news, you don’t need to.

Influencer marketing has changed. In the last few years, brands have been more interested in collaborating with mid-size and micro-influencers whose engagement is on average higher than mega-influencers and celebrities, their audience being in general far more committed and involved in their content. 

Therefore, for most marketers, influencer marketing often appears as one of the most inexpensive and cost-efficient marketing solutions : on average, influencer marketing generates a ROI eleven times higher than traditional advertising and more than $7 in value for every dollar spent.

Indeed, viewers, especially young people, tend to show more and more skepticism towards traditional advertising. On the other hand, influencers have the ability to convince that a product or service is good because they rely on their audience’s trust. What would you believe in the most? A product whose benefits are promoted by an ad? Or the recommendation from someone you follow, trust and love the content? Obviously, the second option is far more convincing.

You don’t necessarily have to spend ten of thousands of dollars right away in your influencer marketing campaigns, especially if it’s your first time getting in. 

However, having an idea of the budget you will be able to dedicate is essential to tailor your influencer marketing strategy.

How much do you need for your campaign?

Your campaign budget should take into account the number of posts, videos or stories you are willing to receive, the total audience you are intending to reach and the engagement rate of the chosen influencers.

 

On Ifluenz, the minimum estimated budget you can set is $500. With this budget, you can expect to receive on average three micro-influencers’ posts, reach a total audience of 67,000 people and a total of 3,000 likes and comments. This leads to an average cost per engagement of $0.15.

We recommend brands to allocate a minimum of $3,000 budget for their campaign to reach substantial results. This represents an average of 16 influencers’ posts, an audience of 400,000 followers and a total of 20,000 likes and comments.

The amount to spend on your campaign depends on the influencers you are willing to collaborate with – their following and engagement – and the type of content they have to create. For example, a video will certainly cost more than a single post as it generally requires more time and effort to create.

It is important to keep in mind that for your brand to be successful, your target customers need to see it many times from different influencers. Therefore, you have to be persistent and make recurring campaigns.  

 

Craft your strategy

Define your strategy according to your goals, your target audience and the budget you’re ready to allocate to achieve your campaign objectives.

If your ultimate goal is to reach a new audience and grow brand exposure:

 

• PRODUCT REVIEWS – In this case, you can ask influencers to post a review of your products on their social media accounts. The type of content you can ask may be diverse.
  For example, influencers can make a video review presenting your brand and share it on their Instagram feed or IGTV.
  If you want the content to be more authentic, natural and spontaneous, you can ask influencers to promote your product in their Instagram Stories.
  Product unboxings, frequently shared by influencers on their Stories, are a good way to create awareness around a brand because they generate curiosity and interest about the product.
• CONTEST/GIVEAWAYS – To reach a wider audience and attract potential new customers, you can ask influencers to host a contest or giveaway on their Instagram page.
  Contests typically engage participants the best because they usually involve sharing original content created by participants for the contest purpose, using a particular hashtag and tagging the brand.
  Giveaways are also an easy way for businesses to acquire new followers.
• VISUALLY-APPEALING PICTURES/VIDEOS – If you want your brand to be promoted through product-focused and visually attractive pieces of content, you can hire influencers and content creators to do it for you. They will showcase your products in a creative and inventive way and create original and eye-catching pictures and videos you will be able to reuse on your website and social media.

 

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If your goal is to improve brand reputation and establish trust around your brand:

• BRAND AMBASSADORS – Hiring trustworthy and influential ambassadors to represent and promote your brand in the long run can be a nice way to establish trust around your business. However, in this case, choosing the right ambassadors is crucial: their reputation and content must be of good quality and their values and personality should align with your brand.
• SPECIAL EVENTS – Organizing a special event for your brand is an amazing way to build up your brand’s reputation and authority. Whether it is a music festival, a fashion show, an exhibition or a sports event, inviting influencers to post about the event throughout the day on Instagram is an efficient way to boost awareness. Think of festivals such as Coachella that became viral on Instagram thanks to influencers!
• INFLUENCER TAKEOVER – If hosting an event is too expensive, you can let an influencer take over your Instagram account to pleasantly surprise your audience and introduce to them your new ambassador/ “Friend of the brand”!

If your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website:

• LINK IN BIO – You can ask influencers collaborating with you to share your website link in their Instagram Bio.
• SWIPE-UP LINKS – Asking an influencer to include your website link as a “Swipe-up link” in Story is an easy way to gain website visits, then potential sales. The Story can be saved on the influencer’s Highlights for the audience to find it easily.
• COUPON CODES – By letting an influencer announce a limited-time promotion with a special coupon code to use, you will attract thousands of potential customers to your website.

If your ultimate goal is to increase your Instagram audience engagement:

• CONTESTS/GIVEAWAYS – Asking the influencers you partner with to host contests or giveaways on their account is an effective way to grow your audience and acquire new followers. Among the rules, participants have to interact with your brand and the influencer’s content.
• GENERATED CONTENT REPOST – To boost your brand’s Instagram engagement, sharing visually-appealing content is a must. One of the best ways to do it is by reposting influencer-content and people showcasing your product/service.

Ifluenz tip: Create a hashtag your clients can use when sharing content about your brand and include it in your Bio! 

If your ultimate goal is to boost your sales and generate leads :

• AFFILIATES – If you intend to boost your sales, you can start an affiliate program with influencers: in addition to the regular compensation, influencers receive a commission each time someone buys the product or sign up to the service from their affiliate link.
• DISCOUNT CODES – Because most social media posts do not allow users to share links, you can attribute to each of your influencers a discount code to track referrals from that promotion. Your discount code should be easy to remember and short.

If your ultimate goal is to produce content to use on your website and social media accounts:

• CONTENT CREATION (through influencers and content creators)  –  You can hire content creators and influencers to produce authentic, original and esthetically pleasing content featuring your products/services and repurpose it on your website and social media accounts.
• USER-GENERATED CONTENT – To grow brand recognition and trust, you should repost quality content people share about your brand.

 

Find influencers for your campaign

Using a platform such as Ifluenz is an efficient way to find influencers willing to promote your brand on social media. 

• Time-efficiency: no need to waste your time analyzing influencers’ effective audience, reach and engagement : influencers registered on Ifluenz are regularly verified by our team to ensure the quality and authenticity of their audience, engagement and content.Moreover, on the platform, you can access the influencers’ Stories and audience insights.
• Simplicity: Ifluenz allows brands to simultaneously manage multiple influencers for each of their campaigns. Only influencers matching your criteria are able to see your campaign brief and send you proposals : accept, decline or negotiate their offers! 
• Security: creating a campaign on the platform is free, you only pay when you want the influencer’s content to go live. Your payment is secured by Ifluenz: an influencer gets paid only after a verification period of seven days after publication.

 

With Ifluenz, you can create and fully manage your influencer campaigns. 

 

1. Create your campaign brief
   Creating your campaign brief on Ifluenz is free, quick and intuitive :
   • Describe your product/service/eventSet your campaign cover image
   • Provide posting instructions to the influencers
   • Define your type of influencers
   • Preview your campaign and enter your indicative budget
   • Schedule your campaign

Ifluenz tip: Here’s a small guide of all you need to know to start creating your brief on Ifluenz!

1. Manage proposals from matching influencers
   On Ifluenz, influencers’ proposals differ whether the collaboration requires product shipment or not.
   • The product is needed for the campaign’ purpose : the product is shipped to the influencer:
     1. Receive collaboration proposals from matching influencers
     2. Accept, negotiate or decline them
     3. Ship the product and notify the influencers that the product was sent
     4. Receive post proposals from the influencers posing with your product
     5. Approve and pay for the post to go live
   • The product is NOT needed (/there is no product) : influencers have to submit their own creative content (or use the image you’ve included in the moodboard)
     1. Receive post proposals from matching influencers
     2. Accept, negotiate or decline them
     3. Approve and pay for the post to go live

 

Track and measure your results

With ifluenz, you can track your campaign performance in real-time and get your final report right after the end of your campaign.

Measuring the success of your influencer marketing campaign must be made on your campaign objectives. 

If your goal is to increase your brand reach through your influencer marketing campaigns, you should track your campaign reach. This can help you measure influencer marketing campaign results. 

Here are a few metrics that you can track and monitor to evaluate your campaign’s reach.

The influencer’s follower count can give you an idea of the potential number of people who’ve seen your post. 

To get a better idea of your reach, you should take a look at the number of impressions that your sponsored post received. This number shows you how many times people have seen your post on social media. 

Traffic is a great metric to measure influencer marketing campaign success. You can monitor the number of visits to your website through the influencer’s link or promo code. This will, of course, be valid only in cases where the influencers have posted a link to your website or used a specific promo code. Through this, you can figure out how many people your influencers reached through their posts.

Engagement is one of the most important things that you need to track and monitor to measure influencer marketing campaign success. It’s crucial to not only measure the amount of engagement generated, but also evaluate the cost-per-engagement (CPE). Engagement is obtained by dividing the number of the influencer’s followers by the number of interactions with the posts (likes, comments, clics). A good engagement rate is about 3%.

Improving engagement can help you increase awareness and build your brand’s loyalty. You can track this parameter to measure your campaign ROI.

If your brand’s goal is to generate sales from your influencer marketing campaign, then it’s necessary to track the relevant metrics for that. A few parameters that you can track are:

If you’ve partnered with influencers on an affiliate basis, you can track the sales generated through the affiliate links given to them. For every purchase that people make using their link, they’ll get a commission.

From the links, you’ll also get an idea of how many clicks were generated through your campaign. This can help you determine the performance of each influencer with whom you’ve partnered.

Promo codes can work as great metrics for tracking the sales from your influencer marketing campaigns. By generating unique promo codes for each of your influencers, you can find out how many purchases were made using each code. This, in turn, can help you determine the effectiveness of your influencers and the ROI of your campaign.

You can attach UTM parameters to your URLs and give them to your influencers. By tracking these UTM parameters in Google Analytics, you can figure out how many people visited your website via their social media posts. In addition, by setting up an “Event” in Google Analytics, you can find the number of purchases driven by each influencer and figure out your ROI.

Now that you know it all, it’s your time to shine!