Working with influencers has been in fashion for
years to increase a business's visibility and influence. However, there are so
many brands available that you need to be careful and know when it is
appropriate to collaborate. Regardless of how many followers an account has,
inviting the influencer and his friends to spend the night at our hotel is a
very generous gesture of solidarity and may result in zero results.
How many times have you asked an influencer to
collaborate in exchange for giving away their product or service for free?
While this may sound unbelievable, it is a task that many people take advantage
of due to their ignorance of what influencer marketing actually entails.
How to run influencer marketing campaigns that
are truly effective and profitable? We explain it to you in this article.
Work with
influencers to help your brand
Influencers are people who influence a specific
audience to make decisions related to a specific sector: food, video games,
travel, fashion, electronics, etc.
The growing trend of developing strategies with
influencers makes many people demand an influencer and deep down, they just
want our services for free. And, on the other hand, the digital marketing
ignorance of the owners of those accounts with numerous followers means that
many collaborations have very few results.
However, if we know how to choose an authentic
influencer related to our brand, we can add a significant number of followers
and benefit from multiple benefits.
Benefits:
●
Fame and popularity increase
●
Connect better with our target
audience and reach new market segments
●
Extended conversations about our
products and services
●
Increase web/social network visits
and conversions
●
If done correctly, advertising has
a good return on expenditure
How influencer
marketing works
Influencer marketing is a marketing method that
establishes coordination and collaboration agreements between companies and
influencers. In other words, companies, and individuals who are considered
influential in a particular sector or topic, can spread a message.
On the Internet, there are a series of social
platforms where the visibility of famous people dominates and is a reference
for a large number of users. These platforms are usually YouTube channels,
blogs, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook...
Currently, there are many ways to develop
influencer marketing:
●
Create publications on social
networks, either through sponsored posts or more or less hidden presence of
products or services in influencer content. These collaborations are usually
accompanied by photos, stories or videos that are published at a certain time
or with a certain frequency.
●
Sponsored blog posts that usually
include a commercial aim by inserting a CTA, as well as guest posts that allow
us to write an article on the influencer's blog with a link to our website.
●
Banner ads on influential websites.
●
Contests and raffles where
influencers encourage users to follow company accounts.
●
Promotion of discount codes for
online shopping promotion in business ecommerce.
●
Invitations to be active on their
online social networks at events held by companies and influencers, etc.
What to
keep in mind when hiring influencers?
To choose an influencer to agree to collaborate
with, follow these recommendations:
●
Define measurable and specific
objectives that you want to achieve and if they are linked to your online marketing
action plan.
●
Analyze the profile of influencer
followers: gender, age, country...
●
Beyond the number of followers you
have (which can be bought), not only on Instagram but on other platforms where
you are present, check what interactions you get on most of your posts: blogs,
YouTube,… Are there comments from users who recommend tips or influencers? Have
you applied the product?
●
Analyze the type of content you
publish on your social networks and blog: what tone and communication style you
use, what values you maintain, your brand image, how you respond to other
users' comments,... with whatever you want. fit? Convinced by your brand?
●
If you cooperate with your
competition, cooperation can be somewhat forced.
●
Ask for your quote. Influencers
with a large number of followers (for example, over 50,000) will offer you more
expensive rates that you may not be interested in. Instead, look for NANO or
MICRO influencers, those with around 10,000 followers, stories that can be
linked, and who can make a significant impact.
●
Ask him to show you his Instagram
profile or his channel stats or success stories of his collaborations with
other brands. This way you will know for sure how the influencer works and what
you can achieve with your campaign.
6 Steps to
a Marketing Campaign with Influencers
Once you've contacted the influencers you want to
work with and they show a favorable trend, you need to define an influencer
marketing campaign. To do this, follow the steps below:
●
Define the goals you want to
achieve with this campaign: reach, web traffic, lead capture, sales…
●
Specify the target audience you
are addressing and the most important information you have about it: gender,
age, location, and hobbies... Does it match the profile of your community of
followers?
●
Define in detail the campaign you
want to run with cooperation, what steps will be taken, and with what kind of
strategy: number and frequency of publications (not just one!), using hashtags,
using investment campaigns, etc.
●
Agree on KPIs (Key Performance
Indicators) against which you want to measure performance and track the results
of each activity. To do this, decide which tools to use (we mainly recommend
Google Analytics and Metricool). The most important thing to remember is:
○
Reach Sponsored Content (Unique
Views)
○
Interaction rate: Number of
comments, mentions, publications shared...
○
Number of clicks on links
○
A number of conversions
(downloads, registrations, purchases...)
●
Set a budget: This is the most
important part, but you can agree to a flat fee and cover the cost of paid
advertising yourself.
●
Launch influencer marketing
campaigns and start promoting. Remember that, being a collaboration, you must
promote and share the content uploaded by the influencer so that your followers
are aware.
●
Analyze and measure how profitable
your influencer campaigns are proving to be.
Why should
influencers work for your brand?
This provides an interesting collaboration for
both parties.
Is it clear that the influencer is interested in
financial compensation? Before demanding how the influencer will benefit from
the collaboration, present them with a useful offer that you can afford.
A very common example of collaboration with
influencers is a free shipment of the product so that they can give their
opinion about it.
There are times when a discount voucher for a
certain period, access to a part of our service, or, for example, a visit to
our facilities in exchange for trying the product may be worth more money.
Later, the influencer himself speaks of the experience and that opinion has
considerable influence on our public decision-making. For example, you record a
video that shows you using our products or services, and thus, we may use that
video for our website or share it on social networks.
Analyze
marketing statistics.
Influencer statistics are the same thing: you can
start publishing on social networks without analyzing the data, but how do you
know that your activity is going in the right direction?
You just don't have to know. And you can't
achieve any of your goals.
In other words, extracting and analyzing
influencer statistics is essential if you have a company or personal brand.
Because they help you check how your strategy is working on the platform so
that you can improve its performance and meet your goals. For example, reach X
number of followers and get X impressions…
In other words: without statistics, you will
blindly continue your project and in the end, you will be shipwrecked!
If you want to learn more about this topic, we
recommend joining one of the top marketing platforms for working with
influencers: FameNet. You can definitely increase your learning and experience
from it.