Social media is saturated with content, which can make it difficult to reach your target audience. We believe that almost every business can benefit from working with influencers. In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing digital landscape, using influencers is one guaranteed way to grow your business. Influencer marketing allows you to reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and create new and engaging content. Let’s look at how to create an influencer marketing strategy that works for your business.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is "a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers – individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche" (SproutSocial). Celebrities are known to be the original influencers, but in today's digital world there are many different types of influencers that can offer new forms of value to your business.
How much does influencer marketing cost?
Influencers determine their own rates. Micro, macro, and mega-influencers tend to require payment for their work. Nano influencers may accept free products, services, or experiences as a form of payment. Before you reach out to influencers think about a realistic budget for your business.
A typical rule of thumb influencers follow when making their rates is $10 per thousand followers. For example: if someone had 10,000 followers, they would charge $100/post. Remember: This is only a baseline that some influencers follow so this is not necessarily what you will always see. Influencers typically have tiered pricing structures that offer different services (static feed posts, stories, video content, etc.). Each influencer is different so don’t get discouraged if one influencer is out of your budget.
If you're a small business, the cheapest and most effective form of influencer marketing is to partner with nano or micro-influencers. These influencers typically have a small, yet loyal following with a very targeted audience. Influencers with fewer followers tend to require smaller budgets and usually have a higher engagement rate than larger influencers.
Note: When sourcing influencers, do your research and ensure their social media platform aligns with your brand and the audience they attract is one that your business is looking to target. Creating a buyer persona will help with this.
We recommend asking the influencer for their “insights” before asking if they are interested in working together to ensure their demographic, (age, geographic location, etc.) aligns with your target audience.
What are social media insights? Professional accounts on Instagram and Facebook provide their users with data that tracks and monitors their audience. We call this data “insights”. Any influencer you are looking to work with will be able to provide this data before partnering.
How do you create an influencer marketing strategy?
Here are some steps you can follow to help streamline the process of finding and collaborating with an influencer:
Do your research: You can learn a lot from other businesses. Discover what works for similar brands, your competition, and large successful businesses. Learn about what content is getting the most engagement and see how similar strategies can fit into your broader marketing strategy.
Decide on a budget: The amount of money you can spend on a campaign will help determine what influencers you can collaborate with.
Choose relevant influencers: Once you know the target audience and goals of the campaign, it's time to find the right influencer. Ask yourself: Are they posting a lot of sponsored content? Have they posted about similar products or services? Does this collaboration feel authentic?
Reach out: Once you find an influencer that aligns with your business reach out to them. They may have an email address in their bio or a website link with contact information. If not, you can always send them a direct message. Remember - who, what, where, when, why.
Agree on a collaboration: Outline the timeframe, content usage, deliverables, and goals. This will make executing the collaboration less stressful. To ensure the influencer delivers what is being asked, we recommend a formal contract or informal write-up that all parties agree to that outlines the who, what, where, when, and why.
Track the results: This step is often forgotten but can be the most important if influencer marketing is going to be a longer-term strategy for your business. Measure the progress of your campaign so you can make adjustments to your strategy. Don't worry if one of your campaigns wasn't as successful - each campaign will yield different results. As we know, the digital world is constantly changing which means we need to be constantly learning.
Summary
When sourcing influencers, do your research. Ensure the influencer’s social media platform aligns with your brand and the audience they attract is one that your business is looking to target. Measure, track, iterate. You won’t always get it right but don’t forget to give it more than one shot.
Influencer marketing is here to stay. Get started on building your strategy so you can incorporate influencer marketing in your next campaign. If you're still unsure how to incorporate influencers into your marketing strategy reach out to us - we're here to help!
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