The Lion's Den
How Do You Create An Influencer Strategy?
Instagram Marketing
An effective influencer marketing strategy involves careful planning and execution. By working with the right influencers, you can increase brand awareness and drive sales while building strong relationships with your target audience.
In this blog, we’ll walk through the steps to create an influencer strategy, from understanding the different influencer types, to finding creators to partner with, to building out an effective strategy, and we’ve even included some examples of great recent campaigns.
What Are The Different Types Of Influencers?
There are millions of influencers out there today – and some people don’t even realize their potential to scale and monetize their social media presence yet. To help distinguish the types of influencers on Instagram and other major platforms, marketers have agreed upon a few top influencer categories.
The categories of influencers typically align with their following or reach, (the number of people they have the potential to sway.) There are 4 types of influencers, and they break down into the following groups:
- Nano-influencers (<10,000 followers). At the lowest tier, we have the smaller influencers, who are just starting to build their platform and personal brand. Though their reach is small, their trust with their followers is high.
- Micro-influencers (10,000–100,000 followers). Next up, we have micro-influencers, or those who are maybe newer to the game but becoming established and credible in the space. Having a nice range of followers and the capability for highly targeted messaging, micro-influencers typically provide a nice bang for your buck in influencer marketing.
- Macro-influencers (100,000–1,000,000 followers). These are the very established influencers who are typically excellent at creating content within their niche. They have a high following and suitable engagement, and you can be assured that your brand partnership is in good hands, as they likely have a lot of experience working with brands.
- Celebrities (>1,000,000). Celebrity influencers are the most well-known of all the influencer groups, and thus they are also the most difficult to get ahold of and the most expensive to work with.
How Are Social Media Influencers Identified By Brands?
It’s very important for your campaign to identify quality influencers, and there are a few methods to do that. Most influencers are currently found on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook, so starting your research on the social media platform your brand wants a strong presence on is advisable. Here are a few other ways that brands identify influencers:
- Influencer marketing platforms. Brands frequently use sophisticated influencer scouting platforms and agencies to scout for influencers. Lionize, a leading influencer marketing platform, can assist you in finding the ideal collaborators for your business by offering a curated influencer network for you to reach out to depending on your target audience.
- Top influencer lists. With a quick Google search, you can find tons of articles and lists of the top influencers in various categories. This is a great method of primary research, or compiling existing research, although some of these lists can be outdated.
- Your own influencer networks. The more you work with influencers and focus on building long-term relationships with those who have a positive impact on your brand, the more you can start to keep a list of your favorite brand partners. By doing so, you can create a community of advocates who can help promote your brand over time.
What Should An Influencer Marketing Strategy Include?
Creating an influencer strategy involves a series of steps to identify, approach, and collaborate with influencers to achieve your marketing goals. Follow these steps to create an influencer marketing strategy template to help you achieve success with your influencer marketing campaign:
- Define your goals. Determine the specific objectives you want to achieve through influencer marketing. For example, you might want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or boost sales for your product.
- Identify your target audience. Knowing your target audience will help you find influencers who have a relevant and engaged audience that matches your brand’s target market.
- Find relevant influencers. As we explained above, there are multiple ways to find content creators to work with. Try to look for influencers who have a significant following in your niche or industry.
- Evaluate influencers. Once you have identified potential influencers, evaluate them based on their engagement rate, audience demographics, authenticity, and any other metrics relevant to your campaign.
- Develop a campaign plan. Determine the type of partnership you want with the influencer (e.g., a product review, a sponsored post with a paid partnership label, or a brand ambassador) and how it will tie into your campaign.
- Agree on a partnership plan. Negotiate the terms of the partnership, including payment, content guidelines, and timeline.
- Measure the results. Track the results of your influencer marketing campaign to determine its effectiveness. Use metrics such as engagement rate, reach, and sales to measure the impact of your collaboration.
What Are The Best Examples Of Influencer Marketing Strategies?
There have been so many amazing influencer marketing campaigns in recent years. Here are a couple influencer marketing strategy examples from 2022 that we loved:
- Mastercard wanted to promote their cashback offers and especially show how helpful they were to travelers. By selecting highly engaging lifestyle and travel influencers to partner with and rallying around the hashtag #travelwithmastercard, they created over 100 pieces of content and received over 2 million engagements.
- The HISTORY Channel may not have always been considered the coolest channel on the block, but their 2022 TikTok influencer marketing strategy aimed to change that. By partnering with creators with specific knowledge on a niche for engaging videos, they gained over 12 million views and a reach of over 20 million.
How Lionize Can Help With Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
Develop an effective influencer marketing strategy without all the hassle. Lionize’s influencer marketing platform streamlines the process, from finding the perfect creators to represent your brand, to tracking campaign results. Book a Discovery Call with us today to learn how Lionize can help your brand nail the next influencer marketing campaign.
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For Agencies
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