Influencer Marketing: Develop Your Strategy In 5 Easy Steps
If you have been researching influencer marketing, you must have come across some clashing facts with advice regarding how it is essential for businesses to use influencers or how it is unnecessary for growth.
Planning your influencer marketing strategies as a brand has become way too difficult now. But we are here with a perfect blog to help you understand whether your brand needs influencer marketing or not, and if yes, then how to develop your strategy.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencers are individuals who have built a strong base of dedicated followers on social media, and they are regarded as experts in their niche.
So, typically influencer marketing is a kind of social media marketing that involves recommendations and product mentions from such influencers. This type of marketing works because of the enormous trust influencers have developed with their dedicated followers, and endorsements from them act like social proof to your brand’s prospects.
Importance of Influencer Marketing
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for influencer marketing, and this strategy is well-known. However, many other platforms are emerging as an excellent option for influencers. As per sources, this industry is all set to achieve a worth of $10 billion in the year 2020. Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok have their own fair share of influencers with separate demographics.
Most marketers believe that the ROI from influencer marketing was higher than or comparable to other forms of marketing. Furthermore, a lot of businesses have expanded their budget plan and are focusing on hiring more influencers.
Now that you are aware of the position of influencer marketing in the business world, it is time to discuss how to develop an effective influencer marketing strategy for your business in 5 easy steps.
Develop Your Influencer Marketing Strategy In 5 Easy Steps
Sending out free products to influencers or your friends or acquaintances wouldn’t bring you strategic success. Just like any other marketing tricks, you will need a calculated targeting and planning for effective influencer marketing.
- Finding and Paying Social Media Influencers
Every successful plan begins with deliberate research. Select the platform you want to focus on first. You can expand to other platforms later, but it is always better to stick to one when you are first starting. It’s better if your brand already has its presence on this platform or considering expanding into it. Moreover, the demographics are different for every social media platform, so make sure the platform you are choosing resonates with your target audience.
Choosing your ideal platform also depends on what industry you are in. For instance, fashion and beauty brands flourish on YouTube and Instagram. While researching, also consider the type of influencers you are interested in marketing. Are you looking forward to hiring celebrities with millions of followers? Or maybe micro-influencers with 2-3K followers? Perhaps influencers with around 10K followers would be perfect for you. Before deciding on this, consider your budget.
Consider everything starting from influencer rates, your expected ROI, overall marketing goals, and compensations as some influencers work individually while some work with agencies. Research is the key, and your whole strategy will primarily be based on it.
- Establish Your Budget and Management Strategy
Now that you know what type of influencers you are going for and how much you will have to pay them, it is time to decide your budget. Also, do not forget to include your time for planning, reviewing, and executing the strategy. Conducting a rewarding influencer marketing campaign is not just a “get set go” type; you will require to supervise it and follow up regularly.
Since this is not an automated ad strategy and involves humans and partnerships, you will have to keep an eye on it. You might need to bring in some changes from time to time. If you have sufficient time and money, you can opt to set up a formal ambassador program.
However, for businesses that need a big pool of social media influencers, it will be a great bet to employ an influencer marketing agency which is going to conduct the research and management for your brand.
- Determine Your Brand’s Goals and Message
Typically, businesses carry out influencer marketing for two main reasons – raise brand awareness and boost sales. Rather than setting these two reasons as your marketing goal, it will be better to initiate your strategy by focusing on your brand’s actual requirements. Maybe you want to expand your customer base in youthful demographics, or perhaps you want to grow into a new customer base with a new offering.
The influencers are capable of reaching a particular group of audiences. They will help you reach a targeted audience who tends to be interested in your offerings and engages with your brand.
Your brand’s message is just as important as your brand’s goals. Even though you do not want to suppress your influencer’s creativity and uniqueness, you definitely do not want them to post something irrelevant to your marketing campaign. This is why determining your message and goals play a vital role in your strategy.
- Discover Your Influencers and Get In Touch With Them
Once you have got your plan, budget, target influencers, and goals figured out, its time to go back to step one. Now you need to find the exact influencers you want to work with.
Asking these questions will assist you during your research:
- Has this influencer been posting things related to your products? For example, if you own a cosmetics company and want to promote your new makeup kit, you should go for influencers who often post about skincare and the beauty products they use.
- Are they genuine? You can confirm this by scrolling through their feeds and checking their posts. Poor engagement ratio to followers count and spammy comments can be a sign that the account is fake.
- Have they been involved with related brands before? An experienced influencer will be able to present you with a media kit containing their work portfolio, depending on the kind of influencer you are looking for. The more you are investing in your influencer, the more you would want to examine them.
Once you have found your ideal influencer, you need to get in touch with them. While micro-influencers can be contacted by dropping a direct message on the same platform, established ones usually mention their business inquiries information on their official social media handle. In either way, it is pretty easy to reach out to them.
- Review and Improvise Your Strategy
Once you have planned out the entire strategy, you can take a break, go around, engage in something else, come back, and review it again. See if any changes might make it even better.
Even when your influencer marketing campaign is continuing, you need to keep a regular track of its progress. Be ready to make any changes in between in case you find that it is not running successfully.
Well, it wasn’t so hard, was it? Like any other marketing strategy, it’s all about research, setting the budget, determining goals, finding influencers, reviewing, and revising. With these five simple steps, you will be able to develop a successful strategy. In case you fail at your first attempt, do not just give up, remember, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” We hope this information was useful for you. Let us know how this strategy works for you in the comments below!