3 Thumb Rules For Influencer Marketing
Unless you are living under a rock, you must have heard about influencer marketing.
Though brands have a long history of using sports and movie celebrities for product endorsement. However, with the rise of social media platforms ( Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube), influencer-based marketing campaigns are on the rise.
New tools have made it possible for smaller/mid-size brands to try influencer marketing without spending a ton of money.
Unlike traditional methods, modern brands have a more straightforward way to measure the campaign reach and ROI. In particular, we are witnessing more and more eCommerce stores are exploring this channel to reach their targeted audience.
A recent study from InfluencerMarketingHub has shown us that increased number of companies are planning to spend on Influencer marketing from 2018.
Source: InfluencerMarketingHub
The primary reason is higher ROI(Return on investment) compare to other forms of advertisement. The study has found that brands are getting 7x more than their investment and it becomes their go-to strategy when it comes to customer acquisition.
Before we dive deep into the thumb rule for Influencer marketing, Let me give you a quick brief about IM.
What is Influencer Marketing
From Wikipedia
“ Influencer marketing (also influence marketing) is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.”
In simple terms, brands use highly influential people to reach their target buyers.
Influencers may talk about the product through their facebook page, twitter handle or Instagram/Snapchat accounts. Sometimes influencers may overtake brand’s social account and start the conversation directly.
Source:
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The same study by InfluencermarketingHub has revealed that 67% brands are planning to increase their influencer marketing budget.
Things you should keep in mind before running Influencer marketing
Pick Channel Wisely
One important question you should be clear about “Where do my next customer hangs out?”.
As a brand you might be having a strong presence is Facebook & Instagram. If your Instagram conversion rate overrides facebook rate, then you should deploy your marketing efforts more into working channel.
If your data supports Instagram, then you should be looking out for a suitable Instagram influencer.
If your brand is new to the market and you do not have much data to take a decision. Then you can look out your competitor and understand their customer acquisition strategy through tools like similarweb and make the decision based on the insights.
Source:
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As you can infer from the above image, that eCommerce store Beautycounter get their major traffic through Facebook than any other social channels.
Build Relationships
Once you narrowed down the channel, your next task is to select influencer. During LaunchMetrics survey, they found that 75% marketers agree that finding the right influencer is the most prominent challenge.
So, while picking up the influencer try to build a relationship before kicking off your campaign.
Few pointers to decide your collaborator.
Alignment - Your brand mission and vision should go well with your influencers ideology. For instance, if you are into selling organic products, it makes sense to find an influencer who advocates for socially impacting business and who believes in doing good.
Engagement - Easy to pick your influencer if you are just going with NUMBERS(read as followers) good luck with that. However, to choose a real winner, you need to dig little deeper and monitor their engagements. How active their followers are with his/her content.
Prior Experience - Though it is not necessary that your collaborators have previous experience in running sponsor content. If they have any track record working with brands, then that is a high positive sign.
Metrics To Monitor
When it comes to any marketing activity, you should be clear about the end goal.
Are you planning to run a campaign to get brand exposure or you wanted to improve sales?
Once you zero down on campaign goal, you can share your expectation with the influencer and create a campaign accordingly.
Tools to track your campaign
Bitly - Enables you to create a unique shareable link. It allows you analyse how many clicks you have received, at what time you are getting higher engagement rate.
Leadpage - Tolls like instant page creators makes it easy for you to create unique landing pages to capture your site visitors email.
Personalized Products - If you are collaborating with artists, then you can create customized products and share with their audience for purchase. Bigger brands like Toms have worked along with Haitian artins for limited edition shoes.
Final Word: Whether your business in B2C or B2B, it all comes down to H2H - Humans to Humans. Same applies to influencer marketing too. Be open to new ideas and at the same time have a clear vision before getting your hands wet in influencer marketing.
Please feel free to share your experience in running influencer marketing.
