If you’re looking to create (or improve) your brand’s influencer marketing strategy, you’re in the right place.
We’ll run through the dos and don’ts, explain the different types of influencers you’ll want to consider, take a closer look at TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube strategies, and give you a handy template to get you started. But first off…
Influencer marketing is when brands use well-known creators and influencers across different social media platforms to promote their products, services or brand identity. When a brand works with an influencer to create a campaign or endorse a product or service, then they’re using that person’s influence to reach a community of loyal followers.
Now this is where it gets interesting. At first, influencer marketing was all about brands connecting with the big name influencers to reach large numbers of people, but this has slowly evolved to include niche influencers that talk to smaller communities. The audiences might be smaller, but they’re more targeted.
The types of influencer you choose to work with will depend on multiple factors, such as audience size, credibility, audience niche, quality of leads, and authenticity. You don’t need an influencer to have a massive following if they connect with their audience on an authentic level and deliver quality leads to your brand.
Top tip: Our CAST tool makes it a lot easier to find the right influencers for your brand.
There are several different types of influencer that you can include in a truly engaging and relevant influencer marketing strategy:
In terms of delivering results, an always-on strategy is the best influencer marketing strategy. This doesn’t need to mean you have creator content going live every day, or even every week, but it does mean you have a regular and consistent flow of activations across the year.
The reason for this is it means your brand is being repeated to potential customers, improving brand recall, but also as it means you can iteratively improve your performance by making amends and adjustments to your approach campaign to campaign.
An always on approach is the opposite to a short-term or campaign-only approach. These short bursts of activity don’t provide consistency, and means you’re relying on that one or two campaigns per year to drive value. You wouldn’t do this with any other channel, so why would you with this one?
Your first and most important consideration when it comes to creating an influencer marketing strategy, however, is to acknowledge that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all.
When it comes to creating the best influencer marketing strategy, you need to tick six key boxes:
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to ensure that your influencer marketing strategy comes with clear goals. These will ensure you choose the right influencer, create the right campaign, talk to the right people, and put the right metrics in place to measure the success of your campaigns.
Here are a few goals that may resonate with your strategy:
Brand awareness uses key influencers to put your brand name in front of thousands of people. It helps you build a brand, do a hard launch of a product or service, and use the trusted presence of an influencer to gain traction.
Build a brand through engaged followers or gain traction in new markets. This is a slow-burn process that uses trusted influencers to put your company name in front of a new audience so you can build market share.
Drive leads using authenticity and engaged communication with an influencer that talks to your target market.
Grow your business using lead generation, brand awareness and new market share through clever influencer marketing strategies and tactics.
Improve sales. You’ll want to use smart tools and metrics to see how well your campaign is working and to constantly refine your approaches and influencers to keep driving sales.
Achieve a very specific goal for the brand. If you’re launching a new app, service or product and want to get hands and eyes on this fresh new launch, then you need to keep that overall goal front of mind.
Once you’ve defined your goals, chosen your influencer, defined your audience, and identified your key metrics, you’re already well down the road to structuring the perfect influencer marketing strategy. However, there are a few more steps you need to take:
A lot of the things you shouldn’t do with an influencer marketing strategy are directly connected to the things you should do…
You won’t see much success if you have poor tactics that don’t resonate with your target market or your chosen influencer. If there’s no alignment between your brand and the social media platform you use or the influencer you choose, then you’re not going to see great results.
You need to align your influencer marketing strategy with your social media strategy to keep everything tight and on track.
If you forget your goals, focus only on one platform (you lose out on so much visibility if you restrict yourself to Instagram alone, for example), have no strategy documentation, and don’t have clearly defined metrics in place, then your campaign has no foundations from which to grow. You can’t assess a campaign’s success if you don’t know what defines that success or what return on investment (ROI) you’re aiming for.
Knowing how to measure ROI and the results of an influencer marketing campaign is probably the biggest challenge when creating a campaign. It’s also tough to find the right influencers – people who fit with your brand, resonate with your strategy and who will work with you to create magic – and it’s hard to juggle all the admin that goes with influencer marketing.
You have to ensure deadlines, contracts, content and other similar important factors are always tightly managed so that everyone is on the same page, all the time.
There are several ways you can address these issues. With ROI, you can set clear metrics at the start and ensure you’ve got the right tools to assess them, and then you can collaborate with a trusted partner to find and manage influencers more effectively. Vamp has a customisable business package that you can use to tick all these boxes, easily.
Download our free influencer marketing strategy template to get started with creating a winning campaign.
When it comes to creating an influencer marketing strategy customised specifically for Instagram, you need to use all the points listed above (defining your goals, market etc) but add in some special sauce to really make your campaign sizzle.
With Instagram, you can gain superb traction with branded content, sponsored posts, reviews, and contests that can be measured using UTMs (urchin tracking markers) and other metrics to assess reach. With its huge market and impressive influencer followings, Instagram demands precision in your tactics and choice of influencer.
Just like with Instagram, TikTok influencer marketing strategies need goals, KPIs, and planning, but their extra value comes with the platform’s ease of use and rapid visibility of campaigns.
TikTok is fast, visible, and fun, which makes it relatively simple to build a campaign and get your brand out there, but if you really want this to work you should have an existing TikTok presence of your own. If your brand is established on the platform, then you’ll experience more traction than if you send users off the platform.
YouTube influencer marketing is a great fit for unboxing videos, leveraging celebrity channels, and creating a solid body of video content. However, this platform is often left behind because of the cost of creating the video content and the difficulty in assessing ROI – affiliate links and other metrics are more difficult to implement and use.
You need to take this into consideration when planning a YouTube influencer marketing strategy. That said, YouTube has superb reach and often has better conversions than the other platforms because of its perceived reliability and stability – it’s got gravitas and this can really benefit your brand.
To measure the success of an influencer marketing campaign across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, it is crucial to define and track specific KPIs. These can include engagement rates (likes, comments, shares), reach and impressions, follower growth, website traffic, and conversions. Tools like Google Analytics, platform-specific insights, and third-party software can help in monitoring these metrics. Additionally, qualitative measures such as sentiment analysis and audience feedback provide valuable insights into the campaign’s impact.
Negotiating contracts with influencers can be challenging due to various factors. Common pitfalls include unclear deliverables, unrealistic expectations, and ambiguous payment terms. It is important to outline specific requirements, deadlines, and content ownership rights in the contract. Both parties should agree on compensation, whether it’s a flat fee, commission, or product exchange, and ensure compliance with legal guidelines and disclosure requirements. Open communication and mutual understanding can help mitigate these challenges.
Head to our Case Study Hub for examples of influencer marketing campaigns across every industry. Here’s a quick glimpse at some of our latest case studies.
Hilton Case: Hilton activated creators to enhance their campaign’s reach and impact. They utilized a mix of micro and macro influencers to generate authentic content, increasing brand visibility and engagement. The creators produced various content types, including posts, stories, and videos, which led to a substantial increase in engagement and reach.
Armani Beauty: Armani leveraged TikTok for its marketing campaign, focusing on informative content to drive organic reach. The campaign featured influencers who created engaging, educational videos about the products. This approach led to high levels of organic reach and engagement, showcasing the power of TikTok in connecting with a younger audience.
@ginasdiary Adding the super smooth shade ecstasy to my shopping cart this summer! ☀️ It’s finally available in @SephoraMiddleEast & the @Armani beauty website! HURRY UP #LuminousSilkGlowBlush #BLUSH #Armanibeauty #Armanibeauties ♬ Strawberry – Prod. By Rose
Russell & Bromley: Russell & Bromley partnered with 21 creators to promote their Spring collection. By giving creators creative freedom, the campaign produced diverse content that resonated well with their target audience. The strategy included repurposing high-performing organic content for paid media, significantly boosting engagement and driving traffic to their website at a lower cost.
Vamp makes it a heck of a lot easier to deliver on your influencer marketing strategy. From finding the perfect influencers for your brand, to managing workflows and budgets, everything you need is on one easy-to-navigate platform. So what are you waiting for? Get started with Vamp today.
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