Influencer marketing is about developing a relationship with influential people, or "influencers," who can help improve the visibility and reputation of your brand within its list of followers. In this type of marketing, the influencer promotes your brand's products or services through various social media, such as Instagram and YouTube.
Unlike celebrity endorsements, influencer marketing is not just about making your personality a popular personality to promote your brand, but also to get a reliable and loyal personality in a niche community to show his or her subscribers what is great and why they like it. When promoting your business, they do not follow a script. Instead, they express their approval of your products or services in their own words, so that this approval is made in a very sincere and organic way.
Some of the most popular social media influencers include experts, photographers, foodies, beauty authorities, adventurers, fitness gurus, artists, and role models. For example, a beauty vlogger very followed on Instagram can be operated by a makeup company to present its products on the profile of this influencer through messages, stories and IGTV.
Start with Instagram
If you're just starting out with influence marketing, the best place to start is on Instagram. Although influence marketing can also be applied to other social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Instagram is proving to be the most effective platform for this type of Marketing strategy.
With over a billion active users a month, Instagram is an excellent platform to reach your target audience. Although Instagram's user base represents less than half of Facebook's 2.32 monthly active users, IG users are the most engaged, with 2-7% of them interacting with each publication. This platform is therefore a more effective way to make your brand known.
First things first: Set your goals and performance metrics
Before starting a campaign, brands must first and foremost identify their goals. Whether to increase brand awareness, promote the launch of a new product, increase sales or drive more traffic to your site, you need to clearly define the goals of your campaign, as these are the building blocks of your key performance indicators. It's also great for measuring your competitors' campaign results and applying those that work for your brand.
Then, define your ideal influencer
The next step is to define who your ideal influencers are. It's these personalities who have a significant influence on your target audience and who publish relevant content for your brand or industry.
When looking for influencers, a few factors to consider are their niche, their reach, their voice and their rate of commitment. Watch their posts, stories and videos on IGTV and watch the topics they talk about or who usually speak. It is important that you choose influencers whose interests and specialty match your brand identity. Also decide if you need an occasional and friendly influencer or someone serious and professional.
You must also consider their scope, especially if you want to build brand awareness. You want someone who has a strong list of followers who frequently communicate with these influencers. You need to clearly define the minimum average engagement rate that your influencers should be able to maintain during your campaign.
Start looking for your Instagram influencers
Once you have determined the ideal influencers for your social marketing campaign, you can start your search. There are many influence marketing tools that you can use to facilitate this task. One of these tools is Influence.co, a free platform for influencers and companies, that you can use to search for Instagram influencers and drive your end-to-end influence marketing campaign. This platform not only allows you to find good influencers, but also to understand their audience, allow them to apply, organize your selection of influencers and track your progress.
Grin is another influencer marketing software that you can use. It helps to identify the most attractive influencers and run campaigns effortlessly with the help of the Influencer Marketing Manager, automation tools and workflow. This platform also allows you to evaluate the success of your campaign by indicating the value generated by it in relation to the budget that you have defined for the campaign.
Decide and discuss details of the collaboration with your influencers
Once you have selected the influencers to help you in your marketing campaign, you need to choose the type of collaboration to establish with them and discuss it with your influencers to ensure the smooth running of the campaign. It is essential to communicate the calendar and deadlines of the campaign to your influencers. Also clearly explain to your influencers what kind of content you expect from them. Tell them if you prefer to present your product and mention your brand in their publications or if you prefer that your product promote your products via Instagram Stories or IGTV.
Content use rights are another important thing you should discuss with your influencers. If you plan to use the content of your influencers in your other social media accounts, on your website, or on any other platform, you will need to ask your influencers for full content usage rights. And finally, but not least, compensation. Would you give them free products in exchange for promoting your brand or would you pay them monetary compensation? If you decide to pay your influencers, you will also have to choose to pay them a fixed payment for each position or IG Story, or pay them based on their performance.
Influence marketing is a very effective strategy to reach your target audience and achieve the goals of your brand, if done correctly. Start with Instagram before you start to apply this tactic on other social media platforms. As mentioned earlier, the engagement of Instagram users is more important. It is therefore the ideal channel to launch and experiment your first marketing campaigns of influence. Once you master the art of collaborating with influencers, you will be able to easily get through the other platforms.