6 Steps and Creative Ways to Use Influencers in Your Advertising
- Steps for executing a successful influencer marketing campaign
- 1. Define your Goals
- 2. Define your Budget
- What are the Influencers in Marketing: Pros and Cons
- Pros and Cons of Micro-Influencers
- Pros and Cons of Mid-Tier Influencers
- Pros and Cons of Top-Tier Influencers
- 3. Find the Influencers
- Reach out to Influencers
- 4. Negotiate Terms
- 5. Call to Action
- 3 Creative Ways to Agree on Compensation
- 6. Track the Results
In the realm of influencer marketing, launching a successful campaign can be daunting. A key component to ensure success lies in collaborating with suitable social media influencers. If you're wondering about the process of reaching out to influencers, the associated costs, and the potential for driving sales, fret not. This guide will provide a comprehensive walkthrough of setting up an influencer's campaign, offering innovative tips along the journey.
Steps for executing a successful influencer marketing campaign
Using influencers for marketing doesn't necessitate being a big business, and the process is fairly straightforward.
These are the steps we will examine to craft a successful influencer campaign:
- Define Goals
- Define Budget
- Find and Reach out to Influencers
- Negotiate terms
- Call to action
- Track the results
So let us take a look at these steps for using influencers for marketing your product in detail.
1. Define your Goals
The initial step involves introspection regarding your objective. Why do you seek collaboration with an influencer? Undoubtedly, boosting sales stands as a significant motivator, yet there are alternative objectives worth considering. Illustrations of more prevalent goals include:
- Foster brand recognition and enhance the brand's perception.
- Elevate social interaction and engagement levels.
- Enhance conversions, encompassing sales, subscriber growth, free trial registrations, and the expansion of email lists.
Let’s take for example a Hot Sauce as the brand that we will be promoting. To set your goals, simply use a Google doc where you can write down your thoughts on goals. Let’s say we want to increase our Sauce sales by 2 times on marketing investment.
2. Define your Budget
Step 2 involves delineating your budget. While it might be tempting for independent business owners to overlook this step, tracking expenses is crucial for assessing the campaign's financial outcome. Opting to remunerate influencers with products simplifies the calculation process by determining the cost per influencer.
So let’s say that the average rate to ship a package is $13 and our Hot Sauce costs $12 to produce. Then, we can put aside $25 per influencer. Maybe we want to work with 10 influencers to start. That way the budget per influencer * number of influencers = campaign cost.
What are the Influencers in Marketing: Pros and Cons
The 3rd Step will be finding the right influencers. Here we have options:
- Nano or Micro-Influencers
- Mid-Tier Influencers
- Top-Tier Influencers
To understand what is the influencer that fits our product marketing the best, we need to define the pros and cons of each type.
Pros and Cons of Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers usually have less than 10k followers. Brands like to work with them because their audience is dedicated and they trust them through and through. The downside is that micro-influencers don’t usually do this for a living, so they may lack the time or experience to work with you.
Pros and Cons of Mid-Tier Influencers
Mid-tier influencers may show great results, since at the size of 10k-100k followers, they’re still going to have that genuine two-way connection with their audience, so you can rely on the investment returns. The downside is that these people will likely be receiving monetary compensation as this could be their full-time job.
Pros and Cons of Top-Tier Influencers
Engaging with top-tier influencers brings excitement due to their expansive reach (100k-1M) and potential immediate impact on your business, provided their audience remains engaged and relevant. It's important to note that as influencers grow, their connection to their audience may weaken and their niche could dilute. A large audience doesn't guarantee conversions. Consider shipping logistics, especially when targeting audiences in different geographical locations to avoid complications like shipping from the US to Australia.
A valuable tip is to request analytics screenshots from the influencer to assess their audience demographics and trends. This step is crucial regardless of the influencer type and shouldn't be overlooked. Influencers are accustomed to such inquiries, so don't hesitate to ask.
3. Find the Influencers
You can just go on Instagram, type some hashtags, and search through the top section but the results could be limited. There is a robust platform called Dovetale to help you find Instagrammers and YouTubers where you can base your search on specific keywords, locations, niches, and audiences. You can even send a message straight from this platform. They normally have a 14-day trial. For TikTok influencers search you can use an alternative called Hypetrace, as the Dovetale has no TikTok included. As you have chosen your influencers, make sure to verify them by researching their content to fit your product.
Reach out to Influencers
Here you have to beat any hesitation to reaching out to even big influencers as you are going to offer them to become a part of your business with means value for both sides.
In the message you are going to send, describe why you think this partnership is a good match considering their content fit with your product. The next part of the text should be a call to action, where you ask them to review your product in one of their videos and tell you if they are interested in collaboration. Leave contacts and product details information for them to consider. Don’t give much of a detail, as the point of that initial message is to get them interested and establish a connection.
4. Negotiate Terms
When you get feedback from your initial message to the influencer, it is time to negotiate terms. Provide details on your product and explain what you want to see in their video, what to focus on, maybe it is the ingredients of your Hot Sauce or anything else in specific. Exchange your visions on collaboration to find common ground where you both benefit of such a partnership.
5. Call to Action
Agree on how they will mention you. Do you want your name to show up on screen? Or maybe you want to be tagged in the photo? Or maybe you want them to include a link to your website in the description box. Asking them to check for your product updates to see a new collection is also a pretty clear call to action.
3 Creative Ways to Agree on Compensation
If you have a budget to pay for their time, then you can just simply negotiate the rates. If that is not an option, you can still bring them value that is not just a simple money exchange:
- Product: You can exchange products for content which is a very popular way to carry out influencer relationships.
- Professional opportunity for content: You can invite the influencer to design a custom Hot Sauce line in exchange for them talking about it on their social media. This is a win-win as it adds them an experience as an influencer, and for you, you get to add a new collection with a face behind the line.
- AD Spend for content: Send your product to the influencer, prompting them to capture a photo or video with it and share it on their social media platforms as usual. However, in this scenario, request the influencer to send you the content, which you can then utilize as an advertisement on your own platforms. This strategy is effective because it leverages exposure from the influencer's shared content while also granting them exposure through your advertisement.
6. Track the Results
Maintain organization in your campaigns and diligently track your outcomes. Beginning with smaller initiatives allows you to gauge the efficacy of influencer marketing for your business. However, managing ten relationships concurrently can still be demanding to oversee effectively. For that you can use the HubSpot tool, where you can make notes of people’s social media handles, shipping addresses, and when shipments were sent. You can write down the results that the influencers brought to you here as well. We also recommend inputting contacts that you have reached out to so that you are not accidentally reaching out to someone more than once. At utmaker.com you can get a link (UTM code) to keep track of your income by asking your influencer to put that link in his YouTube description box. That way you can see how many people click the link to go and buy your product.
Author
Editor with 15 years of experience and enthusiasm about the digital video industry. Managed video editing processes for projects with billions of views and created flagship video products from idea to successful launch. He reads over 40 books a year and travels extensively.
