Nearly 40 percent of marketers today say they use influencer marketing to supercharge their efforts. Consider an influencer marketing strategy as the secret weapon to marketing success. Ditch the “I don’t know where to get started” phase, and instead go over a 10 step process that’ll get your very own influencer marketing strategy put in place.
Influencer Marketing 101
You can think of Influencer marketing as another way to conduct social media marketing, with the inclusion of endorsements and product placements from influencers.
Influencer Marketing
A subtype of social media marketing including the resources, benefits, and collaboration with an influencer.
Influencers have a huge impact on their respected audience. They have expressed their expertise in a specific field and have earned their own loyal audience in return. By pairing your marketing with a well-known influencer in our field, you’ll increase brand exposure as well as brand awareness.
Now pair this iconic duo with structured strategy, and your marketing efforts will see only green lights up ahead.
How Influencer Marketing Reinvents Your Brand
Use influencer marketing tactics to develop a greater reach, increase your ROI, and drive credibility. This is something only influencer marketing can do. Pairing a killer brand with an influencer who holds the power and trust over a diverse audience is unstoppable.
As good as all of this sounds, it’s not just influencer marketing that does the trick, but the strategy paired with it that really pulls the weight.
Start With A Well-Defined Strategy
Diving into your marketing efforts without a strategy is similar to taking off the training wheels too early. Your confidence disappears and you lose control. This is why a solid marketing strategy is critical.
Without a strategy to keep your marketing on track, you miss opportunities, lose growth, and may never see the potential your brand once had.
A well-defined strategy speaks volumes of your brand. It proves you do what it takes to reach your full potential and you’re passionate about what you publish. It proves your work is planned, intentional, and ultimately successful.
With CoSchedule Social Calendar, marketers can plan ahead as far as they want into the future, predicting and anticipating campaigns from a mile away. Your efforts are purposeful, organized, and most importantly optimized.
Recommended Reading: 17 Influencer Marketing Ideas To Build A Successful Strategy
10 Steps To Build An Influencer Marketing Strategy
At this point you’re basically an expert in the field of Influencer Marketing Strategy, but it’s time to put this knowledge to good use! Use this simple 10 step guide to construct and launch an influencer marketing strategy that’ll take your audience by storm.
1.) Set Your Goals And KPIs
What do you hope to achieve with your influencer marketing strategy? Take a step back and visualize your goals. Whether it be to increase brand awareness, drive more traffic to your site, or boost sales, lay it all out on the table.
Once you and your team have the same goals in mind, it’s important to clarify your KPIs (key performance indicators) as well. All this means is setting a quantifiable measure of your performance over a certain period of time. It gives you and your team something to compare your progress to, so you can easily see what’s working and what’s not.
2.) Determine Your Target Audience
Your target audience determines which influencer you should choose to work with. Ultimately you want your influencer to relate and speak volumes to your target audience. Take that first step by identifying who your target audience is.
Are they small business marketers? First timers in your field looking for beginner experience or veterans who just want to further their knowledge? Whoever it may be, locate this target audience and you’ll be able to narrow down what kind of influencer is the best fit.
3.) Identify The Right Influencers
Just like identifying the perfect target audience, we use the same process to determine the right influencers for your marketing strategy. Platforms like Afleucner, HypeAuditor, and IndaHash can help guide you through this process.
We get into the features of these platforms below, but they can help you find the best influencers for your audience, goals and KPIs. An influence that is in tune with your audience and goals will bring you nothing but success.
Take it from GymShark, they consistently locate and bring on board influencers that boost their brand. Leana Deeb is a famous GymShark athlete, who’s large following expanded GymShark’s overall reach.
Her loyal following continues to grow, with her very own GymShark line!
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4.) Evaluate Potential Influencers
How do you know if a certain influencer will be the right choice? Pay attention to characteristics about the influencers’ accounts and presence on platforms. Look at their follower count, engagement rate, the quality of their content, and their audience demographics.
All of these are telling signs that can help you decide if their marketing aligns with yours.
5.) Craft The Perfect Influencer Outreach
Now that you’ve found the right influencer it’s time to craft a personalized message to them. Reach out on their preferred platform, and explain to them why they would be a perfect fit for your brand. Dig into details about your marketing efforts, how both your brand and the influencers’ can benefit from working together, and your overall goals from developing an influencer marketing strategy with them.
Here are a few stellar email outreach templates put together from Bardeen. There’s a variety of different templates to choose from, so users can find one that feels tailored to their situation. Also, with easy-to-use fill in the blanks, users can personalize their messages in seconds.
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Pro Tip: Mention what you love the most about their platforms and how they conduct their marketing efforts. This gives insight to what you expect from them in the future and instantly creates a bond between the two of you.
Recommended Reading: 15 Social Media Marketing Examples To Help Inspire Your Own
6.) Negotiate & Set Terms
Before you and your chosen influencer can hit the ground running, it’s important to set a strong foundation. Together, the two of you can discuss rates, content guidelines, and timelines.
This is the perfect opportunity for both parties to be aware of their expectations and get a glimpse into what their future marketing strategy looks like together.
7.) Craft A Content Strategy
Begin to visualize what type of content your influencer will create. This content can take numerous forms depending on what resonates best with your audience. Consider blog posts, podcasts, videos, and social media updates.
Dunkin’ teamed up with E.L.F to launch brand new products as part of their “Wake Up and Make-Up” campaign. This unlikely duo stirred younger generations and grabbed their attention. Dunkin’ pinpointed a fan favorite makeup guru, Mikayla Nogueira.
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8.) Monitor The Campaign
Use tools such as Google Analytics to track your progress throughout the entire campaign. Review engagement, conversions, and ROI to measure the effectiveness and success rate.
Regularly reviewing your campaign’s progress is vital to its success. This process involves identifying any discrepancies or underperforming elements in your campaign and making necessary adjustments. For example, if you notice that your email marketing efforts are not generating enough leads, you could consider improving your email content or design, or segmenting your audience for more personalized communication.
Moreover, monitoring your campaign provides valuable insights into its most effective aspects. By understanding what’s working well, you can focus more resources on those strategies and amplify their impact. For instance, if your social media posts with video content are receiving high engagement, it might be beneficial to produce more video content to further engage your audience.
Consistently checking in on your campaign not only helps in troubleshooting issues but also in capitalizing on successful strategies.
9.) Analyze & Optimize
When an influencer campaign concludes, the journey doesn’t end there. It’s the perfect moment for your team to dive into the data and unearth the narrative behind the numbers. Reflect on the high points that amplified your brand’s voice, as well as the hurdles that presented learning opportunities. By absorbing these insights, your team can sharpen strategies to magnify the impact of upcoming influencer collaborations.
Embrace the unique stories that emerged from the influencer partnerships—analyze the content that resonated, the audience interactions that mattered, and the overall reach of the campaign.
Remember, each influencer campaign is a blueprint for the next; it’s about continuous improvement in the dynamic landscape of influencer marketing. Harness these experiences to achieve peak performance in your future campaigns.
10.) Manage And Maintain Relationships
Influencer marketing is not a one-time strategy. Maintain a strong relationship with your influencer post-campaign in case of potential future collaboration opportunities. You’ve paired up with them and launched a successful campaign together. That’s one strong connection that can be used in the future.
Tools And Platforms For Influencer Marketing
We know what it takes to build an influencer marketing strategy from the ground up, but there are still tools out there that can help you get there. Take a peek at the following tools and platforms built to handle and coordinate any influencer marketing strategy.
HypeAuditor
HypeAuditor serves a comprehensive platform to kickstart influencer marketing. Providing an array of tools to identify influencers, analyze their audience and engagement, and evaluate the effectiveness of influencer campaigns.
Users gain access to in-depth analytics including demographic data, engagement metrics, and extra indicators that guide brands to optimizing their influencer marketing strategy.
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IndaHash
IndaHash primarily helps users locate and connect with digital influencers, enabling them to create and launch brand campaigns on their social media. While using IndaHash, users also gain full visibility of their campaigns, as well as guidance to creating authentic, branded content.
IndHash prides itself on their intuitive features such as their mobile app, access to real-time feedback, and the ability to make changes at any point in the process.
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Upfluence
Upfluence serves as a helping hand to users that are looking to find and connect with the best-of-the-best influencers. On this platform, users can oversee campaigns as well as coordinate payments to influencers.
On top of connecting with the right influencers and launching campaigns, Upfluence provides tools for influence discovery, analytics, and campaign management.
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Afluencer
The place where brands and influencers work together in harmony. Afluencer brings together these two forces to create compelling co-branded partnerships. Through managed collaboration, users can dive into mutually beneficial relationships and strive to create engaging content.
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