Creating an Effective Influencer Marketing Plan

With careful consideration and strategizing, brands can build an effective influencer marketing plan that maximizes their efforts. Like cooking a delicious meal, a successful influencer marketing plan requires the right ingredients and a well-thought-out recipe. 

Benefits of an influencer marketing plan

According to Convince and Convert, the top 13% of marketers are getting great returns from influencer collaborations. Influencer marketing plans are necessary mainly because they allow brand stakeholders and influencers to stay aligned on campaign expectations and deliverables. A carefully crafted plan ensures marketing budgets are used efficiently by partnering with influencers who can generate the engaging content that will inspire action among the target audience. 

Here’s how to get you started: 

1. Identifying the target audience

One of the significant components of an effective influencer marketing strategy is determining the target audience. Consider these questions:

• Who your products and services are meant for?
• Where is your target audience spending time online?
• How do your target customers shop?
• How can you expand your reach in the future across different markets and audiences? 
• Which influencers are connecting to your target audiences?
• Do your customers need additional education about your products or services?

2. Determining goals

Identifying goals is essential to the success of a campaign. To identify appropriate goals for an influencer marketing plan, it’s important to consider which action the campaign aims to inspire among the audience. This could include increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, or driving website traffic. Is the goal to generate interest in the brand or nurture existing clients?

Additionally, it’s important to set measurable targets so that progress can be tracked throughout the campaign. Choose the metrics that will be measured and reported, whether that’s cost per engagement, video views, enrollments, website traffic or sales.

3. Choosing the right influencers

Collaborating with the right influencers is crucial for success. Influencer marketing platforms like Marketplace and IZEA Flex show audience demographic information that can help brands determine whether an influencer reaches correct audience. Relevant metrics such as engagement rates, follower count, follower demographics, and social media reach should be considered when selecting potential influencers. Also, working with a niche creator with a smaller but engaged audience can benefit brands. 

Choose creators who have a positive reputation and are known for their authenticity. Finally, it is worth looking at how much experience an influencer has working with similar brands before selecting them as part of an influencer marketing plan. 

4. Crafting your message

When crafting your strategy, consider brand values and what differentiates your brand from competitors. Highlight the unique value proposition, including any practical or emotional benefits. Use this information to put together a creator brief that clearly outlines the message potential influencer partners should convert through their content.

Focus on how the product or service being promoted can solve a particular problem for people. It should also include a clear call to action so followers know what steps to take next. Lastly, ensure you have a tracking system in place so you can measure the success of your campaign and tweak it as necessary. This can be done through tools like Tracking Links or Google Analytics or Shopify integrations in IZEA Flex.

Implement your plan

After forming a solid foundation for an influencer program, it is time to take action and implement the plan. But how? Developing engaging content with the help of your influencers.

Reviewing creator content

While providing a detailed creator brief is important, give influencers some creative freedom to create content that is interesting, informative, and creative. Different types of content can be used, like videos, podcasts, or photos. 

Content should be tailored to each influencer’s strengths and interests. Doing this will ensure the messages are effectively communicated and resonate with the relevant audience. Also, creating a cohesive narrative across multiple platforms will help to strengthen brand recognition and loyalty among followers.

Track results

Now it’s time to track your success and tailor your efforts to improve the results. By monitoring metrics and KPIs, you can see how your audience engaged with the content and, if needed, alter your plan to resonate better with them in the future. Thanks to Solution Partners, influencer marketing companies like IZEA can provide influencer reporting with all the data you need to do this. You can also choose to put paid media dollars behind the content to increase its shelf life and visibility.