How to Run an Influencer Marketing Campaign
Here’s how to run an Influencer Marketing Campaign
Contrary to popular belief, Influencer Marketing is not a new concept. It’s the new wave of celebrity endorsements, digital PR, brand ambassadorships and word of mouth marketing that forward-thinking brands and marketers have been doing for years.
It involves brands leveraging the power of social media identities and tapping into their highly engaged audiences. Think of it like friends swapping information about a new product or service, except on an amplified scale online.
With the rise of advertising noise in the digital space, it’s becoming harder for brands to make an impact and gain trust through online marketing. Because of that, the argument for Influencer Marketing is simple – people trust recommendations from individuals more so than they do from brands. In fact, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people over brands, even if they don’t know them.
With stats like this, it’s no wonder that Influencer Marketing is quickly becoming one of the most powerful marketing strategies for brands.
Here’s a step by step guide to help you run your first Influencer Marketing campaign:
1. Identify your goals
Like with any successful marketing strategy, the first step of running an influencer marketing campaign is to identify your goals. Popular influencer campaign goals include:
- Awareness – e.g. reach, impressions
- Engagement – e.g. engagement rate %, comments, likes, shares
- Content Generation – e.g. user-generated content, influencer content
- Community Building – e.g. follower increase, positive comment sentiments, customer retention
- Traffic – e.g. link clicks, website visits, signups
- Sales – e.g. revenue correlation, ROI
You might like to focus on one or combine a two or three to target.
For example, if you’re a start-up or new to social media, your goals might be focused around awareness and community building. Or if your brand is already well established online you might like to steer towards a traffic building or content generation strategy.
2. Develop your strategy
Next step is to develop a campaign strategy that aligns with your overarching campaign goals. When coming up with your strategy there are three main points to consider:
- Social channel – Which channel/s should I use?
- Post type – What type of post should I engage the influencer/s for? E.g. videos, static, story posts or an influencer hosted giveaway
- Budget – How much do I have to spend?
3. Choose your influencers
You’ve outlined your goals, set your budget, and chosen your campaign and channel types – now it’s time to choose your influencers.
Choosing the right influencers to share your brand’s story is the backbone of any successful influencer marketing campaign. But with so many potential influencers out there, how do you find the best suited to your brand’s needs?
Firstly, it’s important to think about their audience. After all, your main aim is to appeal to their followers, not just the influencer themselves. Remember, influencer choices should be less about reach, and more about relevance. Opt for influencers with an engaged and loyal following, are authentic and have credibility in their area of expertise.
Some other factors to consider are:
- Follower size– What is their audience size and does it fit in with your campaign goals?
- Quality content– Is their content of high quality? Can you see them creating awesome content for your brand?
- Engagement rate– Are people commenting, liking and sharing their posts?
- Niche / Tone of voice– Does it suit your brand?
- Post frequency– Are they posting regularly? If they haven’t posted in a month, their followers have likely lost interest.
You may like Bluewire’s Influencer Outreach Email Template.
4. Define your campaign deliverables
To ensure a smooth creative process between brand and influencer, it’s important to create a campaign brief for everyone to be across. A lot of influencers are in high demand from brands, so make sure you put together a compelling pitch.
The brief shouldn’t be too long and complicated. We suggest using dot points in the form of a do’s and don’ts list to communicate your vision and strategy cleary. This might include information such as the campaign hashtags, relevant handles to tag, post due dates, caption guidelines, and compensation. Including a visual mood board with examples of what you’d like your influencer’s post to convey is also a great way to get potential influencers excited about the project.
5. Measure campaign success
The final part of how to run an influencer marketing campaign….
To effectively measure your campaign ROI, it’s necessary to put metrics in place to track during the campaign. Throughout the campaign, monitor your progress to ensure you are meeting benchmarks and that influencers are performing well. Not only will these metrics help you measure your campaign they will also help with the optimisation of your future influencer campaigns.
Make sure you note highlights such as the influencer/s that generated the most conversions and/or the type of content that generated the most engagements.
6. Wrapping things up on how to run an influencer marketing campaign
After the campaign, showcase your influencer’s work by reposting their posts on your branded accounts. And make sure to include a hashtag – often smaller influencers will jump on board in the hope of getting a feature on your account! Influencer reposts are great ways to bulk up your content bank without having to spend hours creating it yourself.
About Victoria Harrison
Victoria Harrison is the Managing Director of Influencer Marketing agency, The Exposure Co.
In 2015, Victoria took the risk of turning her hobby project into a full-time business. Fast forward 5 years, The Exposure Co. is now at the forefront of the industry as one of Australia’s leading full-service influencer marketing agencies with a network of over 7,500 digital influencers.
Victoria spends her days helping clients leverage the power of social media and working with influencers across several platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. She has a proven track record building influence for national and global clients and loves empowering brands to maximise their potential on social media.
If you’re looking for some more information and resources or interested to see how influencer marketing can work for your brand, please contact Victoria at [email protected]
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