Five Ways to Improve Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Two decades ago, blogging was what most adults back then would consider as a rarely lucrative niche hobby.

It was a leisure pursuit that only teenagers and Zuckerberg-esque geeks had indulged in. In part, the blogging sphere was viewed as a secretive and unexplored part of the web that allowed creatives and introverted individuals to express themselves. As a result, they were able to forge new friendships and cultivate existing ones with like-minded people across web platforms such as Livejournal and Blogger.

Over the years, the blogging sphere has evolved and transformed. Today, it has seen innumerable changes and is becoming quite the trend among tech-savvy individuals who love using the internet. Today, it is a more widely-used and socially acceptable way of expressing creativity and personal style. However, blogging is no longer limited to written dissertations and prose. With the rise of social media platforms such as TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and the like, bloggers are given a variety of options when it comes to expressing themselves. As a result, this gave rise to the term " brand influencers," which has effectively removed the ever-present layer of brand partnerships and advertising that consumers have grown accustomed to in televised advertisements and fashion magazines.

INSPIRING THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE

Today, people tend to follow individuals who are just like them or who they admire to find out what they are wearing, how they are styling, and where they are buying it.

People tend to gravitate towards following influencers as they deem them to be average and ordinary individuals—just like them. More importantly, they felt safe in the knowledge that they were engaging in an entirely authentic, two-way relationship. As a result, it did not take long for brands to realize the potential marketability of these "influencers." By then, we started seeing more and more sponsored, and gifted products appearing in blog posts and videos as brands and beauty companies raced against each other to reach audiences who were enraptured by these influencers and invested in what they had to say.

IT PAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR INFLUENCER MARKETING STRATEGY

In the climate of today's competitive industries, simply identifying a popular blogger and sending them freebies in the hopes that they will feature your brand or business in their video or blog no longer cuts it anymore. If you wish to boost your influencer marketing strategy, read on below for some tips on just how to do this. Influencer marketing, while largely a structured and unregulated practice, has become a strategic discipline that requires your dedication in order to be a success.

WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN

1.) Learn to value engagement over reach

One of the most common mistakes most businesses and brands make is putting so much emphasis on follower count that they overlook engagement. Today, however, posts on Instagram are shown in users' news feeds in order of popularity. This means that posts with more engagement get seen by a wider audience. If a post receives less than 1.2% engagement, it will be seen by only a maximum of twenty percent of an influencer's audience, with some experts saying that maximum visibility can be as little as just ten percent.

Regardless of this statistic, however, engagement should be your main consideration and success metric. No matter how many followers your influencer may have, if audiences are not engaging with their content, then it makes no significance—no matter how many people have seen it.

2.) Get an intimate feel for your audience

If you plan on investing time, money, and effort in hiring an influencer for your digital marketing campaigns, you better make sure that it is the perfect match. Anything less than ideal could potentially be a disaster in the digital landscape. Many businesses think that the best strategy in influencer marketing campaigns is simply to hire the best for your brand. However, if this is your line of thinking in influencer marketing campaigns, you may be wrong in your approach. An effective campaign requires you to tap into your user base to see what kind of followers you have and how they interact with your brand and one another. Also, it would be very helpful to get a sense of what their other interests are. With that information, you can obtain a feel of the type of influencer they will be gravitating to.

As said above, do not hire a person based on follower count or niche alone. Dig deep and research your audience to understand them. Let their online activities, comments, and inclinations guide you in making an educated and informed choice.

3.) Craft campaigns with influencers, not for them.

You partner with influencers because you wish to augment your business goals. Some of the objectives you might have as a brand are to increase your social media following and boost your bottom line. However, all of these will be difficult, if not impossible, to engender if your followers (and your influencers' audience) feel that your joint initiative is contrived and inauthentic.

Your influencer needs to have the business acumen to retain such a sizable following. With that in mind, make sure that your partnership is forged on authenticity. Also, try not to push your own agenda and instead focus on collaboration and active communication to create a work dynamic and marketing campaign that succeeds. Keep in mind that followers can immediately sense that an influencer campaign is overly scripted or promotional, which often stems from a marketer's demands. Allow your influencers creative freedom and permit them to use their own voice and style to introduce your brand to their audience. In this way, you can prove that you trust their judgment and understand what works best for their audiences. Having faith and trust in your influencers will reward you, increase the chances of successful conversions and pave the way for more lasting partnerships opportunities that may go your way.

4.) Be selective in choosing your platforms

While social networks are effective tools for marketing, not all of them are created equal. That said, not all of them are essentially optimal platforms for launching your influencer marketing campaigns. As a business, it is your responsibility to give your marketing metrics a thorough evaluation and see where your efforts have been most rewarded and profitable. Conversely, you should be able to check where you may need adjustments in your strategy as well.

Determine which platforms are a naturally good fit for your products or the services that you offer.

5.) Take advantage of technology to elevate your campaigns

Your marketing campaigns need to be measured, analyzed, and actionably restructured to optimize future initiatives. Needless to say, this should be done for all of your campaigns—with or without the aid of an influencer.

Apart from analyzing relevant KPIs, it is helpful to use content-aggregating platforms and software to identify the status quo of your niche market, leading trends, topics, key demographics, and so much more. To illustrate this point, suppose you are using Facebook as your campaign platform. To easily boost influencers' posts and assess the ROI they provide, you need to have your own conversion tracking software.

Other tools such as Bitly are also useful in determining the ROI of a particular campaign by keeping track of every click an influencer drives to your product-- regardless of what tool or technology you may use, make sure that they can measure your metrics so that you can better align your future objectives.

CONCLUSION

Regardless of what your influencer marketing campaign may be about, always keep the tips above in mind. With those, you will be able to dominate the digital market and boost profitability via brand advocacy and awareness.