July 26th, 2019 | 5 min
Influencer Marketing has been around for a long time, but knowing how to get started with it and why you should invest in it is still difficult to understand. To help with this, we have put together this guide, which will give you knowledge and tips on how to create a successful marketing campaign, involving the best suited social media influencers.
Firstly, let’s start with what influencer marketing is and how to identify a social media influencer.
Influencer marketing is when a brand works with someone that represents their brand in a positive way – this personal is known as an influencer. These influencers will organically generate the message that the brand is trying to create through different mediums. For example, selling products, a service or an advertising campaign.
The aim of this type of marketing is for the influencer to attract the brand’s target audience, or perhaps, a new target market. This type of marketing originally came from the strategy of celebrity endorsements; this is when celebrities use their fame to promote a product or service.
It is said that 70% of millennials trust influencers more than traditional celebrities, and over 50% of women make purchases through Instagram and Facebook due to influencer marketing posts. The influencers are also there to voice their opinions on the products and services which has generated 49% of customers depending on these recommendations when making a purchase.
This has impacted on an increase in spend with 67% of marketers planning to increase their budgets in the next 12 months, especially on Instagram.
Instagram is one of the most popular platforms for influencer marketing, with 34% of the sponsored content appearing on Instagram stories which features the ‘swipe-up’ option where followers will be redirected to a link with more information.
An influencer is someone who affects a customer’s purchase decisions due to their knowledge and relationship with the customer in the market they’re targeting. Therefore, a social media influencer is someone who creates this effect through different social media platforms. On top of this, the best influencer for your brand is someone who can organically reach your target audience through trust and engagement in an original way that your competitors haven’t done before.
However, social media influencers won’t want to follow strict guidelines on how to advertise, so the most important factor is choosing the right influencers for your brand that agree with the brand’s values and are passionate about them.
There are many types of social media influencers, such as celebrities, bloggers and content creators, industry experts and micro-influencers. An example of a celebrity social media influencer is Christiano Ronaldo (@christiano), who has 176 million followers on Instagram, reaching an engagement rate of 3.11%.
Ronaldo’s main paid partnerships are with sports and nutrition brands, such as Nike and HerbaLife, which fits his lifestyle perfectly. This is also what his followers will be interested in seeing because they will identify sport and nutrition with Ronaldo when following him.
A micro-influencer is someone who has between 1,000 to 50,000 followers. They are considered an expert in their niche. An example of a micro-influencer is Chelsea Martin, known as @passporttofriday who has 19.9k followers and a 2.97% engagement rate, specialising in honeymoons and luxury travel.
Chelsea collaborates with hotels, healthy lifestyle brands and companies, such as Duco Italy, that represent hotels and destinations around the world. These companies fit with this influencer’s lifestyle and other personal travel posts, so her target market is in alignment with the brand’s target market that she’s collaborating with; therefore, her followers will be interested in finding out more about the paid collaborations, increasing engagement.
There are three R’s to consider when creating an influencer marketing campaign:
The best influencer to represent your marketing campaign is an influencer that has a high level of similarity in content and/or target market. This is important so the message being projected is reaching the right target audience.
For example, @nimbleactivewear collaborated with a number of fitness/vegan influencers to launch their
new activewear, so the influencers have a highly relevant target audience as their followers will also be interested in fitness and healthy eating, which is what Nimble Active Wear is based around.
Reach is all about the social media influencer’s followers. Most brands may choose an influencer due to their large following; however, this might not be the most successful option. This refers back to relevance, and how more relevant influencers that are passionate advocates of the brand, will be more suitable in representing the brand.
Resonance works similar to reach, whereby brands may not always benefit the most from generating the highest engagement rate. The most important technique is making sure you’re targeting a relevant audience, so a smaller, more relevant niche is much more effective than an irrelevant mass market.
It’s important to get familiar with the rules of influencer marketing before going ahead. This allows you to know what you’re doing is safe and legal. The official CAP Influencer’s Guide can be found here.
This tip requires planning out step-by-step your plan of action. For example, which influencers are you going to approach and how are you going to approach them? Then, define what you can offer the influencers and how this will motivate them to collaborate with you.
Once you’ve decided the best influencers to represent your brand, social media will come in handy to communicate with your future influencers by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts. This is a great way to start engagement by cross-promoting your brand. A recent study showed that more than 25% of 18 to 24-year-olds claim that social media is their chosen source of news and this demographic is becoming increasingly more relevant, especially on social media.
An example of a brand engaging with its target influencers through social media is in the comment section from influencer, Alex Bowen. Alex collaborates with various fashion brands, such as Boohoo Man. In the comments on his advertised posts, other smaller fashion brands ask to collaborate with Alex. This is their way of communicating with their target influencers and finding their target followers.
You want to create a mutually beneficial relationship with your influencers, so avoid working with influencers for just one collaboration. This can be managed through CRM (Customer Relationship Management). The long term relationship is then established because you can tailor their experience during the collaborations.
An example of a brand that has created a long term relationship with an influencer is the clothing brand, In The Style. They release a new clothing range every 4 to 6 weeks, but they first collaborated with Charlotte Crosby in 2014 where she created a clothing collection (Nostalgia) with them.
The collection was then expanded in 2016; now in 2019, she has an established relationship with the founder of In The Style, and is still collaborating with the brand, creating additional clothing collections with them frequently, which she promotes as advertisements on social media.
At Brave Agency, we are here to provide you with a strong focus and expert knowledge on how to improve or create your influencer marketing campaign, so if you are looking for guidance, call our marketing specialists today, on 0845 544 3626.
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