15 Tips From An Experienced Influencer Marketer

As the landscape of marketing is evolving, it's crucial to stay up to date with what tools are impacting today's audiences. Many influencers are independently growing their own mass following, and gone are the days where influencers rely on corporations to make a living. If you want more information on influencer marketing in general read more here.

Everyday people can become motivated MUAs, ambitious artists, and fireball fitness gurus on social media platforms, amassing huge target audiences that are perfect for influencer marketing. 

However, figuring out influencer marketing can be complicated, from managing ROI to deciding what influencers to use. We're here to help you navigate all the twists and turns in the influencer market. 

We've created 15 essential tips to ensure your success with an influencer marketing campaign!

1. Know Your Objectives

2. Understand Your Target Audience

3. Figure out where you will find influencers

4. Decide Your Reach

5. Understand Engagement

6. Understand CPE

7. Appreciate Influencers

8. Reach out Personally

9. Start a Relationship

10. Collaborate on Creative

11. Stay True to Your Brand

12. Use Your Channels

13. Evaluate Engagement

14. Implement Changes

15. Be consistent, stay updated!

Know Your Objectives

It's crucial to figure out what you want to do before you do it. Seems obvious, right? Having a clear objective before taking action allows you to measure your success and implement changes if your goal seems far off during your marketing campaign. 

Whether it's to drive traffic to your website, to promote a new product, or for brand awareness, always keep your objective in mind when planning and implementing your marketing strategy.

Understand Your Target Audience 

Now that you know your objective, seriously consider who will be the focus of your marketing campaign. Often, a broad marketing campaign intended to capture all audiences is too general to catch anyone's attention. Focus on a specific demographic, and consider age, gender, and wealth when deciding who your target audience is. 

Most marketing strategies vary in effectiveness depending on demographic, so dedicate time and research towards figuring out what will impact your target demographic. 

Understanding different demographics' priorities and their likelihood of utilizing your service/product is essential in creating your marketing strategy.

Figure out where you will find influencers

There are three main methods to find influencers to promote your marketing campaign. 

The first method is organic, in which you, yourself, reach out to influencers and negotiate a deal. However, this method is risky as it's challenging to know the crucial factors to your marketing strategy's success, whether an influencer's audience engages with their posts, what content will an audience engage with, or even if an influencer's audience is composed of real people! 

The second method is through a marketing platform, but entrusting your marketing campaign to an automated software may not do you any better. In fact, in a recent study, two fake Instagram accounts, composed of stock photos and fake followers, were able to secure four paid brand deals through automated marketing platforms. Meaning, paid brands can waste money to market to absolutely no one.

The third method is through a marketing agency. An excellent marketing agency will take a hands-on approach with every step of influencer marketing. The experts at Blitz Marketing have loads of experience and can plan, outline, and execute an effective influencer marketing strategy with proven results.

Decide Your Reach 

You may think that the bigger audience an influencer has, the better. However, utilizing smaller influencers can be just as, if not more, effective. A smaller influencer may have a more reliable connection with their audiences or dedicate more attention to your product/service. 

Plus, influencers are usually paid depending on their audience's size, so you may be able to engage more people through more small influencers with the same budget. 

The type of influencer you reach out to is a complicated decision that can determine your influencer campaign's effectiveness, so be strategic and don't assume a bigger audience equals better ROI.

Understand Engagement

Figuring out how much engagement an influencer can generate is imperative to your marketing strategy. Engagement is how much an audience interacts with influencers' content and can be measured through various factors.

 However, it's important not to rely solely on numbers and percentages as the type of engagement an influencer generates matters. Ask yourself what kind of commitment is best for your product/service, and keep your objectives in mind.

Understand CPE

Another way of measuring influencer success is through tracking CPE, or cost per engagement. CPE determines how much you're paying per like or comment, and the goal is to have a lower CPE. Maintaining a low CPE can depend on what category the content belongs to or the type of influencer.

Appreciate Influencers

Influencer marketing is far more personalized than other marketing strategies and boosts higher ROI because of it. It's important to understand that you are connecting with a person, not a business. Respect their brand and support their endeavours as an independent creator.

Reach out Personally

When reaching out to influencers, make sure you reach out personally. It lets them know that you are invested in the creator and can potentially maintain a long-term working relationship. Address them by their name and incorporate some personality. 

Influencers generally prefer an email exchange but if that’s not possible, DMs don’t hurt. It can be easier to go through an agency, and at Blitz, we specialize in influencer marketing through established connections to secure the right influencer for you!

Start a Relationship

While money is great, there are other vital aspects to an influencer's platform and your own to establish a mutually beneficial relationship beyond financial compensation. 

Great long-term relationships between brands and influencers can result in both parties accessing each other's audience, thus increasing you and your influencer's overall reach.

Collaborate on Creative

Influencers have built a brand on their own, and your influencer content must align with their already established image. Take this opportunity to open your mind and adapt your marketing strategies for their audience. 

This way, your influencer campaign will have the most impact and make your influencer motivated to continue working with you.

Stay True to Your Brand

Although creating content that aligns with your influencer is good, creating content that aligns with both your brand images is perfect. Remember to maintain your brand's tone and identity throughout while appealing to your influencer's audience.

 It can often be challenging to find this balance. At Blitz Marketing, we excel at working with both brands and influencers to create engaging content proven to give you a high ROI.

Use Your Channels

After dedicating valuable time and effort to creating engaging content, think of all the channels you can release it on. Adapting your content depending on the platform can significantly increase engagement, especially if you tailor content for varied audiences. 

A Facebook post should look vastly different from a Snapchat post because of how audiences on each platform consume content.

Evaluate Engagement

As you implement your marketing strategy, it's imperative to your campaign's success that you can evaluate engagement. Take note of what platforms and content are getting you higher engagement and what is not up to par.

 Your objectives should tell you whether your campaign is on track to be successful. There are various ways to measure engagement during a campaign, including built-in social media tools and web analytic services that can offer more in-depth insight into what's hitting and what's missing.

Implement Changes

With new data in hand, you can adapt your marketing strategy to capitalize on what's bringing in a higher ROI, and invest less in what isn't. This information is valuable for creating future marketing campaigns and helping you understand the market for your product/service.

At Blitz Marketing, you can trust the experts; we can efficiently gauge consumer data, adapt marketing strategy, and increase the success of your marketing campaign, all in real-time.

Be consistent, stay updated!

Consistency is critical in marketing, and even more so in influencer marketing. Many successful influencers operate based on a content schedule to nurture their audience and build rapport. 

Similarly, you want your product/service to truly be affiliated with the influencer to capitalize on the strong relationship the influencer has with their audience. 

Posting often, including through other channels (Instagram/Facebook stories), makes your influencer's endorsement of your product/brand more authentic, and thus, audiences will be better received.