So, you’re finally ready to develop an influencer marketing strategy for your brand. Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. The important thing is that you’ve recognized the value of partnering with content creators on campaigns and are taking steps to include this high-value tool in your marketing efforts.
To help you start your influencer marketing course, we’ve crafted an overview of the steps to research, choose and approach influencers and how to build relationships with your content creators and work together to engage your target audience members.
Building relationships with influencers
Gone are the days when you looked for a single trending content creator with whom you could pay to make a one-off promotional video for your brand. Your goal when looking for influencers should be to find several content creators with whom you can create a long-term partnership.
Connecting on social media
The foundation of any relationship you start with an influencer begins with observation. Spend some time following potential partners whose audience mirrors that of your brand. Don’t worry about the number of followers; watch how they connect with the influencer.
Does the creator take time to interact with their followers’ questions and comments? Do their past posts seem to align with your brand values? Do they have experience working with brands? If so, did their calls to action drive followers to take action in some way?
Simply taking time to observe content creators on their channels should give you enough insight as to whether or not they’ll serve as a good match representing your brand.
Develop strategies to engage
As you begin to find influencers, be careful not to jump at the chance to partner with anyone with a shared target audience and good engagement. Influencer marketing for business is a different ball game than simply following a creator whose content you find educational, informative, or entertaining.
You need to know what key strategies you plan to implement for your brand’s campaigns to narrow your influencer research further. If you plan to only use long-form video, for example, you may want to lean heavily into YouTube influencer research. Likewise, if you know you’ll aim to reach millennial women on Instagram, turn your attention to Instagram influencer research.
Key strategies for influencer marketing
As a general rule of thumb, your approach should follow these steps before you launch your first campaign:
- Define the goals of your campaign. Are you trying to drive traffic to your e-commerce store? Build brand awareness? Get people to sign up for your newsletter? Download an app? Start a free trial?
- Identify and segment your audience. Group consumers by the criteria that bind them to the specific campaign. Is it based on their preferred channel, lifecycle stage, income, or pet ownership? The more specific you are with your brand’s desired audience, the easier it is to determine which content creators are a match.
- Set your budget. Will you be paying influencers in free products, discounts, travel, or money? Knowing how — and how much — your marketing budget allows you to compensate influencers will help you narrow down your content creator pool.
- Confirm the type of content and channel. Are you creating a trending challenge on TikTok, sharing a guest post from an industry expert on LinkedIn, or looking to sponsor a video tutorial on Facebook? Again, knowing what you want to do will help you determine who to do it with.
- Find your influencers. You’ve got the criteria. Now, determine who can fit the bill using an influencer marketing platform to ease your search.
Once the campaign launches, you can promote it, engage with followers, and track your success with analytics.
Analyzing influencers
Reach and engagement are key indicators of whether your target audience is paying attention to the shared content and feeling moved enough to act on it. When researching influencer marketing, you’ll need data to back up your hunches about whether an outstanding content creator is also a good fit to represent your brand.
Evaluating reach
Look through past posts to evaluate an influencer’s reach (the number of people who see the content) and impressions (the number of times the content was viewed). This will help you decide if you’ll get a big enough ROI to make partnering with that content creator worth it.
Assessing engagement
Engagement metrics, including likes, comments, shares, and other interactions, provide key performance indicators that allow brands to determine if their content is being promoted successfully.
Identifying key influencers
Thanks to a growing number of affordable influencer marketing tools, you can fast-forward through the tedious task of evaluating content creators one by one to see if any match your criteria.
Using tools
Today’s influencer research tools can quickly help you narrow your search to find the right influencers to amplify your brand message through unique and engaging campaigns. Many of these tools now allow marketers to manage their influencers in one hub, automate campaign reporting, reveal social media trends, and provide valuable insights to help you determine the ROI of your campaigns and make adjustments to improve upon them.
Leveraging social networks
If you know the platforms you want your campaigns to be hosted, you can search for content creators on the particular network. But again, that can be a time-consuming task. Save time and aggravation by using filters in the influencer marketing hub of your choice to narrow down your influencers to particular social networks.
Strategies to approach influencers
Always start your influencer market research by following content creators, engaging with their content, and observing how they interact with their followers. If you’re impressed with what you see, craft a compelling email or direct message that clearly states your enthusiasm for their content, your intentions for reaching out, and a brief introduction of your brand’s goals for any campaign on which you’d like to partner with them.
You can also contact influencers through communication methods provided on whichever influencer marketing hub you’ve decided to use.
Influencer research
As your team begins to research influencer marketing, it may feel like an insurmountable task to feel fully educated on the subject before getting started. But by following these chronological steps and implementing best practices, you’re already ahead of the game.
Don’t let your fear of the unknown delay your efforts to invest in influencer marketing too long; your competition may already be reaping the rewards of this invaluable tool. Just do your due diligence in gathering information, finding the right influencers, and analyzing the results of your first campaign. With the right tools, you’ll learn from your mistakes and improve upon each effort, turning influencer marketing into one of the most powerful resources.
