The Lion's Den
The Keys to Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign
Influencer Marketing
Customers are no longer making uninformed purchasing decisions for most things they buy. Many of them are turning to friends or trusted online resources to find recommendations. These days, many of those “online resources,” are influencers.
What are influencers, how do they help inspire purchasing decisions, and what makes a successful influencer marketing campaign? Find out our answers and top tips below.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is the promotion of a brand or its products through the use of online individuals who have influence over potential customers. These “influencers” create online content such as photos, videos, guides, and more to engage their audience.
Brands like to work with influencers because they can get their offerings in front of a new audience, but with the recommendation coming from a trusted and respected individual rather than a company.
Influencer marketing is a very effective tool, especially as traditional ad campaigns are seeing less and less return. According to research conducted by TapInfluence, influencer marketing was able to generate 11 times higher ROI than other prevalent digital marketing channels.
What Makes a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign?
Now that we’ve discussed what influencer marketing is, you might be wondering, “what makes a successful influencer marketing campaign, and how do I create one myself?”
While each campaign should have its own specific goals and KPIs, higher brand awareness, increased conversion, and more sales are just a few markers of a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Here are five tips for implementing influencer marketing successfully:
- Do the marketing groundwork first. Before conducting influencer research and outreach, you should have a good idea for a campaign strategy that involves influencers. Consider your brand’s current image in the market and understand your target audience, budget, and goals for the campaign.
- Make sure your influencer is a good fit for your brand. You’ll need to do thorough research to ensure that you have chosen someone with similar values and interests (does your brand fit into their “niche?”), a relevant following (could their followers be potential customers?), and good engagement (do they get a solid number of likes and comments on each post?).
- Choose quality over quantity. When balancing your influencer marketing budget, many decisions will come up, but a huge one will be: should I spend more on fewer big influencers or spend less on a greater number of smaller ones? It’s important to consider the quality and relevance of influencers you choose, rather than only looking at follower counts.
- Build long-term relationships with influencers. Generally, influencers would prefer a consistent revenue stream and a trusted brand partner rather than always searching for brand deals. And on the brand side, once you’ve built trust with influencers, they can become a consistent and trusted piece of your marketing strategy.
- Track it, and make necessary changes for next time. The only way to be sure that your campaign is working is by tracking it. Have KPIs in mind that you can use to measure this campaign against other ones. Note your social following and engagement metrics before and after the campaign to see how they (hopefully) improve. Finally, debrief at the end of the campaign and make needed changes for next time.
Examples of Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Brands running the best influencer campaigns have nailed all of the tips above and are continuing to innovate the way influencers are utilized in marketing in this decade.
Here are a few examples of the best recent influencer marketing campaigns:
Nissan’s TitanAdventure Even
Nissan did an excellent job with their #TitanAdventure campaign, where they reached out to influencers, ambassadors, and “regular” pick-up truck drivers to invite them to a pop-up event. There were engaging activities and even educational moments. While the brand didn’t pay anyone in attendance to create content, by throwing a great event and inviting the right people, they ended up with masses of authentic content.
Buffalo Wild Wings’ March Madness Campaign
Earlier this year, the beloved restaurant chain partnered with influencers and former college basketball players to hype up March Madness fans. The campaign encouraged influencers to boldly and directly ask their followers why they were still on their phones when a game was on. BWW made a great choice in terms of the influencers they used, and while the informal tone of the language they used may have been off-putting to some people, the targeted fans were the perfect audience for it.
BMW’s TikTok Challenge
TikTok dance challenges are immensely popular for engaging a younger audience and lots of brands have attempted to get their choreography spreading around online. BMW did just that, by working with popular TikTok influencers, FalcoPunch and SkyandTami. Their challenge, #THE1challenge, which encouraged users to dance to a certain song around a new or nice car, ended up trending and earned them over one million likes.
How To Turn Around A Lagging Social Media Marketing Campaign?
Influencer Marketing Campaign Tip 1: Data is your BFF
It’s easy to think that after launching an influencer marketing campaign your work is done. But launching a campaign is just the beginning. Once you have launched a campaign, the next step should be to measure its impact and adjust your strategies accordingly. Without measurement, you have no idea of the effectiveness of your overall campaign, which types of influencers are most effective for your audience, and which social platform attracts the most audience engagement. Without post-launch data monitoring, you are left flying blind. Your campaigns are missing out on optimization opportunities and are bound to struggle to scale up and maintain adequate performance.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Tip 2: Target the right demographic
You might be dedicating immense time and resources to your influencer marketing campaigns and wondering why you are only seeing a minimal return. The most frequent cause of this issue stems from an improper target audience. Finding the right influencer whose followers are within your target demographic is the most important aspect of influencer campaigns.
Having an influencer with a million followers promoting your product seems a foolproof path to conversions but in truth, it’s not. If the influencer and their followers have no connection or interest in your brand, then the campaign will be a failure no matter their follower count. Getting your product exposed to a smaller audience that matches your existing customer base is much more important than having a million people who have little interest in your product see it. While small targeted campaigns are less glamorous than large unspecified ones, they are often more effective.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Tip 3: Always review customer feedback
In order to maximize conversions, your attention needs to be focused on the process that occurs after an influencer gains a customer’s attention. After the user clicks on the redirect link to check out your product the sale is far from complete. Most social media users are aware that influencers are paid to promote a product and won’t just rely on their single opinion. Customers will look for client reviews online to ensure that the product is of high quality. A critical channel you need to focus on is publicly available product feedback. According to a new study, internet reviews are just as helpful as recommendations from friends and family. To improve your ROI on your influencer campaigns make sure your customer reviews are positive and plentiful.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Tip 4: Alter your approach
Curated influencers are not the only way your brand can prove its authenticity. Consumers today prefer to do business with businesses that share their beliefs. Consider what your brand represents, what issues you support, and how you might promote your principles through social media. If you can support causes that are in line with your organization’s beliefs you can attract like-minded customers that will be loyal to your brand.
We are used to seeing commercials on TV and knowing that the advertisement is typically done with paid actors that have no connection to the product they are selling. The power of influencer marketing has to do with their authenticity. Make use of this power by engaging with influencers that are promoting your product because they believe in it. If the influencer you work with doesn’t match your brand their content will be less authentic and your campaign will underperform.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Tip 5: Increase your investments intelligently
If you do all of the steps previously covered in this blog post you should be launching highly successful influencer campaigns. You may want to expand this profitable form of advertising immediately but it’s important to do so steadily. Don’t allow your authentic data-driven approach to fall to the wayside as your funnel cash into influencer marketing campaigns. Keep your key principles in place and add campaigns exclusively if they meet your new target audience criteria. Over time your campaigns will grow but it’s important to be patient.
Let Lionize Help Your Company Get Started With Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing can be time-consuming and you may not know where to start. Lionize’s influencer marketing software takes the guesswork out of the process by finding the perfect influencers for your niche. It also automates many mundane tasks, saving you time and effort. Book a Discovery Call today for a demo and to see how Lionize can help you master influencer marketing.
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