If you’re a marketer and you haven’t given influencer marketing a shot, then you’re missing out! Influencer marketing campaigns are an effective strategy for your brand to drive results. According to a recent report focused on this marketing approach, an overwhelming majority of marketers, approximately 90%, have incorporated influencer marketing into their overall marketing plan. Why is this strategy gaining immense popularity? It’s simple: influencer marketing carries the incredible potential to significantly boost brand visibility, cultivate authentic interactions, and even generate substantial sales growth. In this blog, we have created an expertly crafted guide that will help you run influencer marketing campaigns with ease.
what is influencer marketing campaigns?
In the rapidly evolving realm of marketing, influencer marketing campaigns have emerged as a dynamic and potent strategy that empowers brands to enhance their business and establish a robust brand identity. Such campaigns involve collaborations between brands and influential individuals who boast a significant social media following and wield considerable influence in the online sphere. Referred to as “influencers,” these individuals partner with brands to endorse and showcase their products or services.
By harnessing the potential of influencers, these campaigns effectively generate brand awareness, captivate audiences, and drive tangible results, propelling businesses to new heights of success.
In general, influencers possess a certain level of credibility and authority within their follower base. This is why their audience values their opinions and recommendations and considers them to be trustworthy. Brands leverage influencer marketing campaigns to tap into the influencer’s connection with their followers, thereby expanding their reach and boosting brand visibility. These campaigns effectively generate engagement and drive sales for the brands. Various methods are employed in influencer marketing campaigns, including giveaways, product reviews, sponsored posts, and more. These activities are carried out across popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
What are the types of influencer marketing campaigns?
Within this dynamic landscape of influencer marketing campaigns, you can find a variety of campaign types and each comes with its own unique advantages. Let’s explore a few of these enticing options together:
Sponsored content:
One approach to influencer marketing campaigns involves creating sponsored content in collaboration with influencers. This is where influencers create their own content and share it on their own social media as well as other online spaces. Although a brand can also create content in-house, running an influencer marketing campaign is not only creative but will also fetch you better results. 81% of marketers use influencer content and 51% of them say that it outperforms the content created by their brand. Influencers have a hold on their following. They understand them and can create the type of content that engages and entertains the audience.
Sponsored content can be in the form of a video, image, or social media story, too. Your brand can connect with these influencers to communicate to them the kind of content you prefer. By sharing the type of brand messaging and personality you want to show through the content, you help influencers create content pieces that integrate your brand in a smooth, seamless manner. It is also important to remember that these influencers can contribute to content ideas because of their expertise in the field. Moreover, social media influencers promote your brand across different platforms where they share their content, enabling you to achieve a broader reach. This is how influencer marketing offers the advantage of fresh and engaging content.
Reviews and demonstrations:
Influencer marketing can be utilized by your brand to execute campaigns centered around product reviews and demonstrations. In this type of campaign, you provide influencers with your products at no cost, allowing them to try them out and provide honest reviews to their followers. Additionally, influencers can showcase how to use the products and provide other relevant details. Due to the trust their followers have in them, their opinions can significantly influence the audience in a positive way.
Contests and giveaways:
Giveaways and contests are among the most enjoyable and fun forms of influencer marketing campaigns. These are popular influencer marketing methods as people love both winning and getting freebies. They make your campaign interactive and also give you better reach. Brand awareness increases because contest rules can help bring more followers to your brand page and help hike the shares on the content pieces too. Engagement and increased brand awareness are the main advantages of implementing this type of influencer marketing campaign.
Affiliate influencer partnerships:
If your brand’s primary marketing objective is to boost website traffic or drive sales, you can engage in influencer marketing through affiliate influencer partnerships. In this type of campaign, a unique affiliate link or custom code is given to each influencer and they earn a commission based on the visits and sales you get from that link. Affiliate marketing enables you to effectively track and measure the performance of your campaign. This will, in turn, help you to easily measure your return on investment (ROI).
What are the basic elements of an influencer campaign?
Influencer marketing campaigns have certain basic elements that will help you ensure successful execution. Making sure that you have these elements in your campaign will help you carry them out better.
Technology is one of the key elements that make influencer marketing a success. It helps in an easy and efficient formulation as well as execution of the campaign. Whether it is payments to influencers, campaign insights, or negotiation, making use of the latest tools is imperative to running a smooth campaign.
Next up is your list of influencers. Creating a list of creators who are suitable for your campaign is a very important step in influencer marketing. The list should be created based on the goal of your campaign, the audience you want to target, the personality of your brand, and the nature of your product. Start by creating a big list and narrowing it down. Make sure to include influencers from various creator categories and genres to gain a wider reach.
Deliverables are another major element of influencer marketing campaigns. It’s important to know exactly what kind of content you’re looking for. Make sure that you know the content formats and the number of content pieces you need from the creators on the basis of what you want to communicate. Content creation and review will be made easier and you will be able to coordinate better with your influencers.
How to create a successful influencer marketing campaign?
Set your goals: It is very important to start by setting your goals for your influencer marketing campaign. Think about the current positioning of your brand and what it needs right now. You may need more brand awareness or engagement, or maybe you are looking to increase your sales. Once you set your goals and KPIs, you can make decisions about all the other campaign activities on the basis of your goal.
Identify who your audience is: The next step is to define your target audience. Based on your brand and product, define who it is exactly that you want to reach out to. Identify their interests, age group, and consumer behavior. This will help in making your influencer marketing campaigns effective and better targeted.
Define your budget: When it comes to influencer marketing, you need to have a predetermined budget that you can stick to throughout the campaign. Defining this budget will help you make decisions such as which influencers and which social media platforms you can pick for your influencer marketing campaign.
Pick the right creators: The selection of influencers is key in carrying out successful influencer marketing campaigns. When choosing your creators, analyze whether they will match your brand values and the messaging that you want to promote. Look at their personality, content quality, engagement to follower ratio, and previous partnerships before you confirm them.
Promote the campaign: Once you go live with your influencer marketing campaign, make sure that you promote the influencer content that has been published. You can share this content on your brand’s social media pages as well. Converting this content into social ads will help you gain more reach and generate engagement.
Measure campaign performance: As a brand that is using influencer marketing as part of your marketing plan. It is important for you to assess if your campaign is performing well and getting you the results that you were hoping for. Tracking your influencer campaign insights can help you understand what your return on investment (ROI) is. This will also help you make better financial decisions and refine your audiences.
What are the key objectives, KPIs, and metrics to consider when running an influencer marketing campaign?
When running influencer campaigns, it is important to set objectives and KPIs and determine the metrics that you will be tracking. Your marketing objective can be any of the following: Increased brand awareness, maximum reach, and high engagement. Your objective can also be sales, but they arise from building towards the three objectives mentioned above.
The metrics that your brand can consider while running these campaigns and assessing their performance are as follows:
Reach and impressions: Impressions are the number of times your post was displayed on a person’s social media feed. Reach is the number of people that saw your post or content. These metrics help you determine how wide your reach is and how much brand awareness the campaign has fetched you.
Engagement: This is one of the most important metrics to track when you run influencer campaigns. It includes likes, comments, shares, and clicks. Your engagement rate can be calculated by dividing the number of post engagements by the number of viewers/followers. High engagement rates are a good sign as they indicate that your audience is interested in your content and are actively listening to your brand message.
Web traffic and sales: You can know how well your campaign is doing by measuring the number of website visits, number of orders and sales, etc. With affiliate links and discount codes, you can trace these sales back to your influencer campaign.
What are the challenges in tracking influencer marketing campaign performance?
Measuring the results of your influencer marketing campaigns is one of the most important yet challenging steps. Brands believe that it is not possible to determine the return on investment (ROI) that comes from their influencer marketing campaigns. In fact, 84% of marketers agree that one of the biggest problems with influencer marketing campaigns is not being able to effectively measure their ROI. They also do not have access to real-time insights or analytics. The influencer marketing industry also lacks standardization when it comes to measurement and reporting. Since there is no standardized approach to measure the impact of influencer marketing campaigns, it can be difficult to manually compare results across different campaigns and influencers. What’s more concerning is that influencers are often not very cooperative in sharing insights or results of their posts with the brand.
Kofluence to the rescue
Tracking the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns does not have to be a hassle. You can partner with influencer marketing platforms such as Kofluence for a worry-free, smooth experience. Kofluence is the world’s largest AI driven influence platform. With over 500K influencers bringing in a reach of over 4 billion, we have carried out over 2000 successful influencer marketing campaigns. We have a cost per KPI approach – this approach includes both above the line KPIs such as views, reach, etc., and below the line KPIs such as downloads, registrations, and more. A standardized procedure for measuring performance and massive liquidity of credible, cooperative creators makes way for easy tracking. Our influencer marketing platform also has a dashboard with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based performance prediction for brands to view real time insights and analytics. This will help them not only obtain feedback and refine their audiences but also understand what works and what does not. Understanding how much revenue the influencer marketing campaigns bring in will aid in assessing your ROI which will further help you to make marketing decisions that are backed by data.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing has become a widely embraced strategy among marketers from various industries. This expert guide has equipped you with valuable insights to execute successful influencer marketing campaigns. Now, it’s time to turn those insights into action. Strategizing, executing launching, and measuring the results of influencer marketing campaigns need not be a tedious and overwhelming task. With our advanced platform here at Kofluence, you gain access to a diverse network of influencers ready to collaborate with your brand. Whether you’re looking to partner with micro-influencers in specific niches or tap into the expansive reach of macro-influencers, Kofluence offers a comprehensive range of options tailored to your campaign goals. So, if you are ready to drive real results, register with Kofluence today.
If you found this blog to be helpful browse through our website for other blogs on similar topics or get in touch with us for your next influencer marketing campaign! Download the Kofluence app and find relevant campaigns catering to your target audience! To opt-in, download the Kofluence app here: iOS users, and Android users.