Are you busy preparing a marketing campaign featuring influencers and are new to this job? If yes, you must know that there are a few things to keep in mind for making the campaign successful. Influencers have huge fanbases. These fans or followers trust them unconditionally. This trust makes influencer marketing one of the most effective marketing tools for businesses of the present generation.
Your chances of making your product or service popular increase significantly if you can have one or more top social media influencers recommend those offerings. However, for the best possible results, you must firstfind influencersthat match the vision and core characteristics of your business.
The section below talks about ways to identify the best influencers and various other crucial steps for preparing successful marketing campaigns with influencers.
Begin by Developing a Concept Your Campaign Will Be Based on
Ask yourself what kind of goals you want to meet using the campaign. Doing so is important as your goal will decide your strategy. Are you looking to boost your social media engagement or are primarily interested in increasing product sales? To be more precise, define your goals well as they will form the base of your marketing strategy.
As a business owner, you have the right to have big goals. However, for the campaign to work smoothly, you must not begin with massive goals. Also, avoid setting too many goals. Ideally, your first influencer marketing campaign should target a single goal. Once you achieve that, you can use the confidence to target more complex or multiple goals.
After setting your goals, identify the KPIs (key performance indicators) based on which you will measure the campaign’s success.
Find Influencers Who Complement Your Goals and Brand Aptly
For beginners, this task might appear slightly overwhelming. However, if you have well-defined goals, narrowing your focus will become easier. This will automatically make the process of choosing influencers simpler.
For businesses that want to maximize their reach, it would be wise to go for influencers having larger audiences. However, if you are primarily looking to increase your conversions and sales, you should opt for influencers who create relevant content.
To spot the right influencers, you must first shortlist hashtags or keywords that are relevant to your product or brand. Search the keywords/hashtags separately on every social media platform you want to target. The searches will reveal top influencers who post relevant content.
Check their profile and posts, find out basic information about them, and prepare a list of influencers who match the goals and message of your brand aptly. If you can work with a few of them, your chances of having a successful influencer marketing campaign are significantly high.
Don’t Forget to Verify the Authenticity of the Shortlisted Influencers
The world of social media has hundreds of fake influencers. Falling prey to them might end up ruining your business for good. As a result, every time you start working with an influencer, you must verify his or her authenticity.
The best way to spot fake influencers is by checking their profiles carefully. Fake influencers usually don’t create high-quality content. They don’t enjoy audience engagement and the likes and comments on their posts rarely come from active users. You must work manually to spot these fake people and eliminate them from your list of top influencers.
Additionally, stay away from influencers who have experienced sudden follower spikes despite not having any viral content. Profiles having thousands of likes but zero comments also tend to belong to fake influencers.
Contact the Influencers
Once you eliminate the fake influencers from the shortlisted ones, you will have your final list. Influencers, who are interested in partnering with brands, usually mention their email id in their profile’s bio section. If any influencer you want to work with doesn’t have his or her email id listed, get in touch with the person by sending a to-the-point private message.
The message or email you send to the influencer must have basic details of the marketing campaign. You must also explain your expectations from the person i.e., which platforms you are looking to target, the number of posts you want them to make per week or month, etc.
Once an influencer agrees to be a part of your campaign, request the individual to share his/her analytics. This will help you to understand the level of engagement the influencer generates. Having access to the analytics will also allow you to check the influencer’s demographic data. This will help you to determine whether the person is capable of influencing your target audience.
Begin negotiating once you are happy with the influencer’s analytics. If you know the tricks of negotiation and persuasion, you can have the best deal even with the highest-ranked influencer on your favorite social media platform. The price you will be paying will be for creating content and delivering them. Ideally, you should pay 50% of the decided amount upfront and the remaining amount after the influencer uploads the content.
Manage Distribution Carefully
You must stay in constant touch with the influencer after signing the contract. This will help you to stay updated with the status of the campaign at any given time and know whenever any new content gets uploaded. Keep monitoring the feedback you get for each influencer post. Whenever you notice any negative feedback or if any post fails to engage enough audience, speak to the influencer, and address the issue promptly.
Measure the Campaign’s ROI
In this step, you must find out how well the campaign has helped you in meeting your goal. Check allrelevant KPIsto assess the performance of the influencer marketing campaign. If you follow the above guidelines perfectly, you will most likely get desired results.
Final Words
If you are not confident about making an influencer marketing campaign all by yourself, you can seek professional help. There are experienced professionals, who can choose the best influencers for you and help you in designing a perfect campaign for your product and brand.
