If you think your influencer marketing campaigns aren’t delivering ideal results, it’s probably because you need to make some changes. Influencer marketing sounds easy – you just send stuff to influencers, and they promote it on social media so their fans start rushing to your website, right?
But that’s not exactly how it works. Influencer marketing is much more complicated. and requires a lot more planning than you think. And despite all of these complications, people still choose to work with influencers because they help deliver extraordinary results.
You will be able to experience those benefits too if you remember to follow these tips when running your influencer marketing campaign:
#1: Success Starts With a Goal
Influencer marketing, like any marketing channel, starts with a defined goal. Be clear about what success will look like to you. This acts as the foundation for some of the crucial steps involved in your campaign. Your goal will tell you what type of influencers to look for, and what kind of metrics you will need to use to measure your performance.
For example, maybe you’re a startup or you’ve launched a new product, so your goal is to raise brand/product awareness. In this case, you can use metrics such as number of content created, number of impressions generated, number of people reached, etc. to measure how your campaign is performing. And you can work with relevant influencers in your industry with massive followings.
#2: Define Your Performance Metrics
Now based on that goal, you will need to have a clear idea about which metrics you will use to measure your performance. Which metrics are relevant to your goal? And what kind of performances will determine whether or not you’re on your way to achieving your goals?
For those who want to raise brand awareness, as mentioned earlier, performance metrics will include reach, impressions, etc. If your goal is to drive traffic, you’ll naturally be tracking metrics like click-through rate. If your goal is to drive more conversions, you’ll need to track click-through rate, conversion rate, etc.
To make this task easier, you can use influencer marketing tools such as Assembly, which lets you select your campaign goal, and your major performance indicator based on that goal.
#3: Be Clear About Your Ideal Influencer
Another important step for a successful influencer marketing campaign is to define what an ideal influencer looks like to you. Besides the obvious fact that your influencer needs to be highly relevant for the campaign, for your brand, and for your target audience; you can define your ideal influencer using certain qualities.
For example, you may be looking for influencers with a certain follower range. And you may want to work with influencers who maintain a certain aesthetic – such as clean, crisp, and minimal or bright, fresh, and joyful.
Whatever these qualities may be, you need to clearly list them down so you can easily weed out less ideal influencers among your list of potential influencers.
#4: Understand What Content You Need
Based on what you need out of your campaign, you should also have a clear idea what type of content you need and want from influencers.
For example, if you only want to raise brand awareness social media product features and brand mentions would suffice. Or you could also get influencers to host giveaway contests that will help generate more user-submitted content along the way.
But if you want to educate your target audience about all the ways in which your product can benefit them, honest reviews and tutorial content would be more ideal. And if you want to drive more conversions, you need to make a compelling case by telling an engaging story around your brand and/or product.
Here’s an excellent example of a piece of content that will raise awareness, provide education, and drive sales all at the same time. The following influencer talks about some of the products from Glossier and gives a short review about each of them.
She also encourages her followers to use the link in her bio to get a discount on their first purchase.
#5: Plan Your Compensation Model
What a lot of marketers tend to overlook when planning their influencer marketing campaigns is the process of choosing a compensation model. Sure they might have set a budget for the campaign but they might not have a clear idea how much they can afford to spend on each influencer.
One defining factor for your compensation model would be the types of influencers you plan to work with. If you’re going to work with top influencers you might not afford to work with too many of them based on your budget. But if you work with micro-influencers, you might be able to strike up a deal with several of them.
And in addition to this, you need to select specific compensation models that will be the most beneficial for you and your campaign. You can choose to pay influencers for each post they generate for you. Or you can pay them based on their performance such as the number of clicks, engagement, or sales they were able to generate for your campaign.
#6: Measure Your Campaign Performance
One of the biggest influencer marketing challenges is the process of measuring the campaign ROI. According to an Econsultancy survey, this is the second biggest challenge after the challenge of finding the right influencers.
But it can get easier if you know what metrics to measure, as mentioned earlier, and using the right influencer marketing tools.
You’ll need to keep track of how your campaign is generating results in real time. Take a look at what kind of changes and improves you’re experiencing in your defined performance metrics to understand the effectiveness of the overall campaign.
And make sure you measure how each influencer performs you can discontinue your contract with ineffective influencers.
Conclusion
These are the six most important points to remember when you’re running and influencer marketing campaign. They will help you organize your efforts so you can effectively strive towards your goals. Got any questions about these points? Let me know in the comments.