Influencer Marketing: Strategy Guide for Brands!

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is booming! Companies can earn $18 per $1 invested in influencer marketing.

With such juicy returns, no wonder brands are scrambling to partner with Instagram and TikTok stars.

However, before you contact influencers, check out these helpful tips and ensure your next influencer partnership is a success!

1. Find the Right Fit

Just because an influencer has over 100,000 followers does not mean they will automatically be a great fit for your company. Before you start collaborating with an influencer, you need to research the type of content they produce and what kind of brand they have.

You don’t want to partner with an influencer who has a completely different brand to your company. For example, if you are a family-friendly brand, then you don’t want to partner with an influence with an edgy teenage thing going on.

It is incredibly important that you perform a deep dive into an influencer’s followers. You need to find out what gender they are, how they are, where they live, and their hobbies. You should only collaborate with influencers whose followers are compatible with your company’s buyer’s profile. 

It pays to be patient! Some companies get overly excited and are blinded by an influencer’s high follower count. Remember to take a step back and really analyze whether a particular influencer can help you reach the right type of customer! Also, if you are having any trouble getting in contact with an influencer, you can use SignalHire which can find contacts of any person through the Chrome extension.

2.Don’t Overpay!

Figuring out how much to pay an influencer can be very tricky. There is not much data on the subject, and influencers never publicize their rates. They try to negotiate with every client individually to get the maximum amount of money. 

The average Instagram influencer with 100,000 followers charges between $1,000 and $2,000 per post. The formula for determining the cost of an Instagram post is $100 per 10,000 followers; however, this rate can change significantly based on the type of content that you want them to post.

It also depends heavily on the influencer’s engagement rate and star power. For example, if you want the Rock to post one of your products, expect to pay $1 million!

When coming up with an offer, don’t be afraid to negotiate. You can often get influencers to greatly reduce their first price. It is not uncommon to cut an influencer’s first price by 30% or more. Just keep in mind the $100 per 10,000 followers rule to ensure you don’t overpay! But don’t just go for the cheapest influencer you can find because they often have poor engagement and followers from countries you don’t target.

3. Don’t Ignore Microinfluencers

While a number of followers is important, it is not the be-all and end-all of influencer marketing. Often it is better to collaborate with a number of highly relevant micro-influencers than one major influencer who has a mixture of followers, with many who don’t align with your brand. 

To determine if working with a micro-influencer is right for your company, you need to really study their followers. Avoid micro-influencers with bot followers and followers who aren’t a part of your target demographic. As micro-influencers only have 5000 or fewer followers, it is critical that a very high percentage of their followers are engaged and match with your buyer’s profile. You can’t afford to have 20% or more of their followers to be a poor fit for your products.

The great thing about micro-influencers is that they are often much more trusted than major influencers. This is because a high percentage of their followers are people they know in real life and are a part of their social circle.

When a micro-influencer recommends a product, it can often have more weight than a post from a larger influencer who has an audience that has become numb to advertising and is jaded. By working with many micro-influencers, you can achieve incredibly high conversions by accessing followers who are highly engaged and are a perfect fit for your products.

4. Decide on Your Content

It doesn’t matter if you work with an amazing influencer if the content you tell them to post is terrible. You need to take great care with the content you decide to shoot out into the world because for many potential buyers, it will be their first interaction with your brand.

To drive conversions and ensure your influencer marketing campaign is a success, you need to make your pictures pop! You want to choose an eye-catching angle that captivates the potential buyers and causes them to stop and stare at the image. Don’t settle until you find that creative angle that makes your picture stand out!

Don’t be afraid of filters! Filters aren’t just for your personal snaps. They are a great way to add some drama to your products and are a great hit with younger buyers. Filters make things fun and break the monotony of standard product photos. You can’t go wrong adding the Moon, Slumber, or Clarendon filter! 

After coming up with the perfect image, it is time to tell a story with your caption! You need to inspire your audience to take action while also connecting with them. Don’t just quickly throw together a boring caption. Take the extra time to come up with something memorable! If you nail the image and caption, your sales will skyrocket!

5. Come Up with a Tracking Strategy

Unless you are tracking your influencer marketing campaign, you have no idea if it has been a giant success or an epic failure. You won’t know if that boost in sales is thanks to other activities you are doing or because you have chosen the perfect influencer. Luckily, now it is super easy to track influencer campaigns.

The best way to track your influencer marketing campaigns is to give your influencers tracking links and affiliate codes. Every time a customer clicks on these links or enters a promo code, you will know that that sale was thanks to your influencer. These links are also great for tracking conversion. You can see how many times people are clicking on the links and buying vs. how many times they are clicking on the links and not buying.

Tracking your influencer marketing campaign is absolutely critical if you want to develop a highly successful campaign. Don’t do all the hard work of finding an influencer and creating amazing content only to drop the ball when it comes to tracking. It doesn’t take long to create promo codes and tracking links, so you have no excuses!

Wrapping Up

Influencer marketing can be an absolute game changer for a company. If you collaborate with the right influencer, your company can go from obscure to well-known overnight.

By following our tips, you should have no issues finding the perfect influencer to work with. Just remember to stock up on products because they will fly off the shelves once you launch your campaign!

Influencer marketing article and permission to publish here provided by Dewey Grant. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on August 2, 2022.