The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Influencer Marketing

Love them or hate them, influencers have a lot of power to help companies sell their goods. If you do not take advantage of the ways marketing influences can help create trust in your company, you are missing out.

Thousands of influencers are available online, from cooking to technology. That means that you have thousands of chances to get your product or service among millions of people. 

Influencers will give you direct access to massive audiences you would not otherwise be able to meet. And when an influencer offers you endorsement and support, their followers listen. A single influencer can double your sales.

Want to try influencer marketing but do not know where to start? Check out this guide.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is one of the strongest ways to meet new audiences today. Thanks to the proliferation of social networks, there are influencers with massive audiences in every niche. 

Influencer marketing is when a company works with an online influencer to promote one of their goods or services. Some influencer marketing alliances are less concrete than that – brands actually interact with influencers to raise brand awareness.

Besides, influencer marketing is suitable for multiple social media platforms. However, the response generated on them may differ. It is therefore, wise to choose a combination of social media platforms that are suitable for your audience.

However, if there were no influencers, no one would be talking about influencer marketing. Unlike celebrities, influencers can be found anywhere. Individuals with wide online and social media followings are what makes them popular and suitable for influencer marketing. 

There are influential people in every industry—you just have to look for them. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people would join them. However, several would seem to be average citizens. They may only have a few thousand fans, or even less in some instances. 

How Good is Influencer Marketing for my Brand?

The simplest way to use influencer marketing is to pay influencers directly for their posts.

Take, for example, Instagram. There is a slew of models advertising protein supplements, water bottles, and other related products. These models are paying on a per-post basis.

You don't have to be a big organization to profit from an influencer marketing strategy. 

10 Result-Driven Strategies For Influencer Marketing

These are only a few of the most common ways in which companies leverage influencers' power to promote their goods and brands. Know how to Launch a Killer Influencer Marketing Campaign for your business this 2021 - 

1. Product Reviews

Product reviews are one of the most popular and successful ways to collaborate in marketing your goods with an influencer. We know they work because 64% of shoppers report that they’ve purchased an item after watching a sponsored video reviewing it.

Shoppers are still dependent on feedback as they study products and make purchase decisions. Having a review from an influencer they trust and follow will persuade them to purchase your product. Influencer marketing agencies know how to combine social media marketing and influencers to acquire an eye-catchy product review.

2. Interesting Content

A more subtle way to partner with an influencer is to put your product in an entertaining post or video they create. In this type of sponsored content, the influencer generally doesn’t specifically mention the brand or product verbally but will link to it in a video description or caption or mention it in their stories.

3. Giveaways and Competitions

People love free products, so competitions and give-aways are an important form of marketing leverage. This form of the campaign can be a win-win for both the brand and the influencer, as participants will usually be asked to like, follow and engage with posts, generating wide reach and giving the influencer thousands of new followers.

4. Instagram Stories

Instagram is the top influencer marketing platform, with 92% of influencers being active on Instagram.

More and more marketers are taking advantage of influencer marketing Instagram with influencer stories, which are slideshows of images and videos that disappear after 24 hours, to advertise their goods.

5. Promotion Codes

The perfect way to get a shopper to make a purchase and drive them to press ‘add to cart’ is a discount. Many influencer-sponsored posts contain promo codes that give a percentage of a purchase to their loyal followers and fans when they decide to buy from the partner brand.

6. Special Hashtags

One way to help reach more people with an influencer marketing strategy is by developing a catchy hashtag or using an already existing, common one. Some examples include #FitnessFridays or #TacoTuesday. Major brands promote a personalized promotion using hashtags. 

7. Video and Vlog Content

Video is another important tool when it comes to the relationship between brands and influencers. In reality, 70% of YouTube teenage subscribers claim they are more connected to YouTube influencers than they are to conventional celebrities.

There are several ways you can use the video in an influencer relationship. Product review videos are popular. But you can also try tutorials, try-on clothing for fashion brands, lifestyle home tours or decor brands, or recipes for food brands.

8. Social Media Shoutouts

Social media influencers are the easiest choice and often the strongest. An influencer can simply post your product in a natural way, which is a subtle kind of marketing that will certainly create a trust for your brand. When your marketing budget for the influencer is limited, consider simple shouts on social media as an option for a campaign.

9. In-person Activities

If your company is holding an event or going to a conference, it will help to generate excitement and attract more participants. Hauls and Brand Reviews by Influencers are also a great way for brands to run a marketing campaign with a personalized approach. 

10. Advertising

You may want to step away from the posts on social media and create some conventional advertising. Getting a well-known influencer star in a marketing campaign can be very successful!

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Choosing An Influencer? How Hard Could It Be? 

It's not always easy to find the best influencer for your marketing campaign.

If you've nailed down all of this, bear in mind that the creation process should be collaborative, so you'll need to keep in contact with your influencer and provide relevant information regularly. You will have a fruitful and long-term partnership if the first influencer marketing strategy goes well.

Let's look at how to select an influencer to help your marketing campaign succeed.

First thing’s first: Set Your Campaign Goals

Before you start looking for influencers or planning your campaign, make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. You may have a number of objectives in mind for your campaign, including the following:

• Brand awareness
• Content creation
• Sales or app downloads
• Followers on social media

By setting your campaign goals before selecting influencers, you’ll be able to choose influencers you know are likely to help you reach your goals, rather than working with influencers who may or may not contribute to them.

Audience

Working with influencers who have a relevant audience for your brand is critical for reaching potential customers in every influencer marketing campaign. You can find influencers with an audience in your target location, age, or gender by using audience demographic features available on influencer marketing platforms. This allows you to communicate with the right audience and promote your products and services.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rates indicate how well an audience connects with and reacts to the content of influencers. Good engagement indicates that the audience is interested in what the influencers have to say.

1. To calculate an influencer marketing post's engagement rate, add the total number of likes and comments received by the influencers on the post. 
2. Divide the total by the number of followers of the influencers, then multiply the result by 100.
3. You should find the average engagement rate of an Instagram profile over a minimum of 10 posts to determine the average engagement rate.

You should also check whether the influencers are taking the time to respond to their followers in addition to calculating engagement rates. Influencers who respond quickly to comments form strong bonds with their fans. As a result, their followers are more likely to care about the content that is shared with them.

Relevance

For an effective influencer marketing plan, it is critical to work with influencers who are a good match for your brand. You should be able to imagine your products or services being advertised on influencers' Instagram profiles when you're looking through their feeds. Promotions for a real estate company, for example, would be out of place on the Instagram feed of food and drink influencers.

Influencers with profiles that are a good fit for your brand will have a following interested in your goods or services. Their sponsored posts will resonate well with their audience if you collaborate with them.

Authenticity

Authentic influencers are more likely to have a loyal fan base. You can check the influencers' authenticity by scrolling through their Instagram captions on both normal and sponsored posts.

Look for captions that are well-thought-out and tell a story. Influencer captions for sponsored posts should be helpful to their audience. Influencers may explain why they're endorsing a brand's products or services, how they can be used, or why they love it.

Values

Before collaborating with influencers, make sure your values and those of the influencers are compatible. Examine the influencers' Instagram bios, photos and videos, and captions to get a sense of their values.

Their bios may reveal some of their likes and dislikes, as well as the brands and causes for which they are ambassadors. You should also search for photos or videos that are relevant to your industry. You can see what the influencers usually talk about and what they believe in by reading their captions. 

Content Quality

You give influencers creative freedom to create sponsored content for your brand when you work with them. Because their content will be representing you, it's critical to ensure that the quality of their content matches your brand image. When looking at the profiles of influencers, look for content that is clear, well-written, creative, consistent, and optimized for Instagram.

Frequency

When you're looking at influencers' Instagram profiles, pay attention to how often they post new content. Influencers must engage their followers by posting high-quality content on Instagram on a regular basis to build a loyal following. Instagram accounts that are active should post content at least once every 1-3 days.

Check how frequently the influencers publish sponsored content. You should aim for a good mix of sponsored and non-sponsored content. If influencers publish three or more sponsored posts in a row, their credibility may be jeopardized.

Reliability

The influencers you choose to work with must be trustworthy for your collaborations to run smoothly and effectively. If an influencer is a slow communicator, for example, it may prevent you from completing collaborations on time.

Reliable influencers are proactive, which means they should respond to all of your messages quickly and professionally. If influencers take more than a week to respond to your messages, it could indicate that they'll be slow to communicate once you start working together!

Tracking Influencer Marketing Campaigns

It can feel like a victory when you finish an influencer marketing strategy campaign and see your brand mentioned or shouted out on social media. Getting an influencer to promote your content or messaging, on the other hand, isn't a guarantee of success.

If you've met your influencer marketing objectives, you've truly succeeded as an influencer marketing company. Track and measure your results to see if you've met your objectives. Based on the initial marketing objectives you set for the campaign, use metrics to measure your success.

• Brand Awareness Metrics: website traffic, page views, social mentions, time on site, site users
• Building Brand Identity Metrics: social mentions, PR coverage (number of articles or links)
• Audience Building Metrics: opt-ins, follows
• Engagement Metrics: shares, comments, and likes
• Lead Generation Metrics: opt-ins
• Sales Metrics: new sales, revenue changes, the price per ticket
• Customer Loyalty Metrics: customer retention rates, renewal rates
• Link Building Metrics: number of links, quality of links

Keep track of the results of each of your influencer marketing campaigns so you can see what worked and what didn't. Use the information to help you plan your next influencer marketing campaign. Reiterate your successes and put an end to any efforts that aren't yielding results.

Key Differences Between Social Media Marketing and Influencer Marketing

Partnerships: Social media marketing does not require partnerships while influencer marketing do need an effectual partnership among brands. 

Product Trials: These are required in higher number for social media marketing and in lesser number in influencer marketing.

Customer Persuasion: Brands have to put consistent efforts to persuade customers in social media marketing. However, in influencer marketing, customers are not directly associated with brands, instead influencers make it easier to win customers. 

Competitive Analysis: Social media marketing involves constant competitive analysis while influencer marketing does not require this analysis.

Cost Spent on Promotion: Brands have to invest significant amount on different platforms for social media marketing while influencer marketing involves promotion cost or is compensated by products. 

One can say that influencer marketing is a subset of social media marketing. Besides, marketing strategy for each brand is different some prefer investing in only influencer marketing while others combine different marketing channels. 

Simultaneously, you have to put efforts in choosing the right influencer marketing agency that can generate the expected results. A good influencer marketing agency can connect you with the most reliable and lucrative influencer for your brand.

Conclusion

Influencers are here to stay, but the way the world of influencer marketing looks and operates has changed dramatically in a short period of time, and it may look and operate very differently in five years than it does today. 

While working with influencers has some unique considerations, the process of creating a campaign is similar to that of any marketing strategy: research, set a budget, determine goals, find your influencers, and review and revise.

Once you've got the hang of it, you might want to contact an influencer marketing agency like Brainvire to branch out into other types of influencer marketing campaigns. Because success varies by brand, don't give up if your first attempt fails. Incorporating influencers into your marketing strategy can prove to be extremely beneficial.