10 Influencer Marketing Tips That You Need to Know

Influencer marketing campaigns earn $5.78 for every dollar spend.  This stat according to Influencer Marketing Hub says a lot. Not to mention that influencer marketing is now more favoured than print marketing.

The business world is evolving by the day. Marketing isn’t what it used to be in the 90s and earlier in this decade. Social media influencers have become a vital part of the marketing plans for many businesses.

One of the reasons why social media influencing is growing is of course the growth of social media itself. Today, online users spend millions of hours on social media networks in a single day. Then there is the monotony of the traditional marketing methods. People don’t want to see the promotional messages of old and bringing in an influencer comes with its allure. Your brand gets appreciated better when you have someone endorsing it and if that someone has a massive following, you are in for excellent outcomes.

But before you approach Helen Janneson Bense or Elisha Herbert to help market your products or services, you need to know the influencer marketing tips that will deliver excellent results.

Influencer Marketing Tip #1: Set Your Objectives

Before you ring the most admired influencer, you need to have a clear outline of the objectives you want to achieve in the campaign as this will define the approach of your strategy.

Are you looking to create brand awareness or you want to grow sales? If you are a start-up, perhaps you want to let people know that your brand exists before you go into the business of generating leads and conversions. If you are looking to create awareness, then your metrics of interest will include the likes, impressions, shares and things which generally show that people are interested in your brand.

For a campaign that is aimed at driving sales, you can have the influencers linking to your sales pages or you can create affiliate links.

These different approaches will enable you to analyse the metrics that matter to your campaign such as the cost per lead.

Once you have your goals set, you can then come up with a strategy that has a sense of direction.

Influencer Marketing Tip #2: Identify Your Target Audience

Besides setting objectives, you need to identify your target audience. By identifying, I mean understanding the people you target.

You need to know the social media channel where they dwell, their demographic attributes such as their mean age and location. You have to know what they desire in life and their interests.

When you can understand what kind of people can associate with your brand, it will be much easier finding the influencer who can impact positively on your business.

Influencer Marketing Tip #3: Identify Your Best Influencer

Influencer marketing is a service on demand and you need to do your background research keenly so that you don’t fall for the bait of fake influencers.

The fake influencers have devised methods of inflating their followers. They can create multiple accounts and follow ‘themselves’. Some even use follower bots. You don’t want to pay your money to someone who has bots for followers because you will get losses. Take your time and research well about an influencer before you trust them with your brand. Look for reviews, referrals and the outcomes of past campaigns.

Identifying the best influencer isn’t just about checking the genuine ones. You also have to find an influencer whose followers can associate with your brand. Find someone with an audience that can bring in more leads and conversions. Here, you need to strike a balance. Going for people with a very wide reach gives you more impressions and creates brand awareness but when you narrow down to the most appropriate audience, you get more conversions.

Influencer Marketing Tip #4: Remember The Role of the Influencer

When you approach the influencer, you have to remember that you want them to display your brand to their audience. Here, you are not entirely in control because the influencer understands their audience better.

Someone with a large following has probably been in the field for some time and they know what kind of campaigns can succeed. Give the influencer a listening ear and don’t go dictating terms like you would for other forms of marketing.

Influencer Marketing Tip #5: Budget Wisely

You need to have a budget set aside for your influencer marketing campaign. Give it a share of your marketing spend based on analysis of metrics. Know where influencer marketing falls on list of priorities.

You need to have an idea of the payment that will be demanded by the different cadres of influencers. As you would expect, the micro-influencers can be more flexible. For some, even a free product will be enough. However, if you are going for the big names with millions of followers and many successful past campaigns, you might have to part with huge amounts. The bottom line is planning and knowing how much you are ready to spend on influencers.

Influencer Marketing Tip #6: Your Messages Should Be Passionate

Influencers have been around for a while now and online users can easily tell when a popular figure is marketing a product. Your aim shouldn’t be to stifle this effect. However, you need to make people feel the closeness of the influencer to your products.

The messages they share should be authentic and genuinely show the people how your brand can help solve a problem.

Influencer Marketing Tip #7: It’s Not Always About Sponsored Content

When you think of influencer marketing, it doesn’t always have to be a few lines punctuated by ‘sponsored.’  The campaign can be more fun and yield better results when you create partnerships that go beyond a social media post.

You can organise events together or do an advert on the local mainstream media featuring an influencer. Their followers will be curious about this new twist.

Influencer Marketing Tip #8: Build A Long Term Relationship

After getting an influencer that has an impact on your business, it is wise to keep them within reach because you might need them in the future. When you create a long term partnership, their followers will start identifying with your brand.

You can use the opportunity to grow your online followers and grow your business. What’s more, a long term relationship benefits you in term of costs. Because you have built trust, you can benefit from discounts.

To keep the influencers around, you need to compensate them well. The last thing you want it someone with a massive following trashing your name on social media because you failed to pay them. You can also strengthen the bonds by giving them gifts.

Influencer Marketing Tip #9: Don’t Expect Results Overnight

Influencers can get your name to millions of people in a short time but that does not mean that your sales are going to triple in the blink of an eye.

You need to integrate all the other elements of marketing to finally get these people to convert. It might take some time to realise the outcomes of your influencer campaign because the buyer has to go through several phases before they eventually decide to complete a purchase.

Influencer Marketing Tip #10: Continuous Tracking

You need to keep measuring your outcome to know how the campaign is helping your business. Continuous tracking will help you make decisions on whether you need to increase the money spent on influencing or to change your strategies.

Monitoring will give you important data such as the return on investment. You can also analyse the reach you got from an influencer and the level of engagement you got from different channels.

With these tips, you can create an effective influencer marketing campaign that will help your business achieve its objectives. Web Performance Media has been engaging influencers for a long time and we understand what it takes to create a successful campaign. Let us show you the way to the most prolific influencers who will take your business to the next level. We also have the tools to monitor the important metrics and guide us on the tweaks that should be made. Call us today and start benefiting from this popular way of marketing.