With the rise of local and global brands in the region, and the introduction of new products and options in the market, consumers are more prone to lose sight of who they can trust and what is the best product to buy. Consequently, customers are relying on word of mouth from people they know or from relatable influencers.
If you’re looking for a way to seize the attention of your ideal audience, you should look for someone who already has their ear.
According to Hubspot, searches for influencer marketing have grown by 1500% in the past four years. With this increase in interest in influencers marketing, we believe that now is the right time to start considering prepping an influencer campaign. In this article, we will cover 4 steps to plan a successful influencer campaign.
But first, we’ll explore why influencer marketing is important? And how to select the right influencer for your campaign? So, read on to find out the answers.
Why is influencer marketing important?
- Proved lucrative: A 2019 survey by ‘The Influencer Marketing Hub’, said that businesses are making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.
- Your audience trust them: A finding from the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2018, says that 91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as friends and family
- Can drive sales: Nearly 40% of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer
37% of participants of the following survey claimed they’d be more likely to trust a brand after seeing an influencer promote it.
Still not sure if you should opt for an influencer campaign? Check the following guide to Arab social media influencers.
4 steps to plan a successful influencer campaign
- Determine your campaign goals
- Set your budget and choose your influencer
- Connect with the influencer and build the right campaign
- Measure and optimize your results
Determine your campaign goals
Building a successful influencer campaign is all about being goal-oriented. To do that, you have to determine your goals and KPIs first. What exactly do you want to achieve with your influencer marketing campaign?
- Increase your following number.
- Build awareness of your brand/ products.
- Establish trust with your audience.
- Generate more sales/more leads for your business.
- Boost traffic to your website.
To help you set your goals, remember that means that your goal needs to be SMART:
- Specific: It needs to be detailed.
- Measurable: If you can’t measure the success of your goal, why even do it?
- Achievable: Can you really reach that goal?
- Relevant: How is this goal helping your business?
- Time-bound: What is your goal’s deadline?
If you need help in defining your goals, check The Essential Guide to Writing S.M.A.R.T. Goals from SmartSheet.
After setting your goals, it is time to list out exactly how you’re going to measure these goals? What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
If your goal is to improve brand awareness, you can measure the traffic to your website or social media engagement. If you want more sales, then you would focus on the number of sales.
Set your budget and choose your influencer
Second step is to set your budget, choose the social platform that you want your influencer to be on and choose your influencer.
Your brand should already have a presence on the platform that you’ll launch the campaign in. The industry you are in also matters when you are planning to implement an influencer marketing campaign.
For example, beauty and fashion brands shine on Instagram and YouTube.
Then, identify the influencers that rule your niche. There are numerous types and classifications of influencers, depending on how you want to classify them:
- Gender
- Audience size: There are five types of influencers: Celebrity (Mega) Influencers, Macro Influencers, Mid-Tier Influencers, Micro-Influencers, and Nano-Influencers
- Type: Blogger, journalist, entrepreneur, etc.
Each type and category have its own benefits and drawbacks. But generally, it’s not about how many followers the influencer has, it’s about how engaged their audience is and how truly influential they are.
If you are already active on social media platforms, you may have a good idea on who is influential. If you do not know who to choose, use a platform or an agency to help you. You can also use influencer marketing tools to help you in your quest.
Related article: Influencer marketing: trends and tips to empower brands
Connect with influencers and build the right campaign
Once you find the influencers you want to work with, there are several ways to connect with them:
- Follow them online and build a relationship with them.
- Reach out directly via email to ask them if they’re interested in collaborating.
- Reach out to the agency that they work with to connect them with you
After you connect with the influencer, try to build a strong connection with them. And then, build the right campaign that serves your goal. It is always best to discuss what kind of campaign you will work on with the influencers you have chosen.
And most importantly, let them have their creative freedom; after all, there’s a reason why you choose them, and there’s a reason why their audience loves their content. If you control what they can say too much as part of the campaign, it won’t likely be as authentic to the influencers’ followers.
Remember, they know their audience the best! They can come up with the type of campaigns that will make an impact and get their audience to act.
To know more about how to deal with your influencer, check out this guide from Jeff Bullas.
Measure and optimize your results
From the very beginning of the campaign, keep a close eye on it. It’s important to continuously monitor and track its performance. Look for what’s working and what isn’t; and try to optimize it.
- Keep an eye out for any mistakes, whether posting wrong copies or assets or grammatical mistakes.
- Identify social posts that are working very well and pay to boost them to generate even more results.
- Change the calls to actions (CTAs) if they don’t work.
What should you measure?
Here are the metrics you will want to keep an eye on when measuring your influencer marketing campaign’s success:
- Reach
- Resonance
- Brand Awareness
- Clicks
- Conversions
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Follower Count
In terms of measuring the success of the influencer’s campaign, BuzzStream and BuzzSumo both have analytical tools built into the software to help you measure the success of the campaign.
Or you can create a specific hashtag to track your campaign’s success. On the other hand, if you’re aiming for more sales, giving out affiliate codes or tracking links is a great way to track:
- Source: Where the clicks/traffic are coming from.
- Medium: Traffic type.
- Campaign: The one that got them to click.
This will also help you especially if you are collaborating with several influencers, you can create different tracking links to help you track each result.
Launch your own campaign
Do you think you’re ready to launch an influencer campaign on social media? You can check our articles that will help you with set up and maintain your social media platforms.
