The emergence of social media celebrities has led to an explosion of instagram influencer marketing in recent years. It is an effective marketing technique that is about more than just likes and shares. Consider a single customer praising your brand to hundreds, if not millions, of friends. Building influencer relationships enables brands to leverage an influencer's reach to achieve marketing goals. But where do you even start if you want to hire an influencer for your brand? It can be tough to narrow down your goals, the type of influencer you want, and the goals you want to achieve through an influencer strategy. Here are some steps you can use to restrict your search and ensure your instagram influencer marketing strategy is as effective as possible.
What is influencer marketing ?
Instagram influencer marketing is a strategy used by businesses to promote their products. The method comprises cooperating with paid social media influencers. By reaching out to a large, engaged audience, influencer marketing allows businesses to establish trust. Other benefits of this strategy include reaching a broader audience, developing social following for your company, improving site traffic, creating more leads, and driving sales. In exchange for their suggestion, the influencer can expect monetary remuneration or complimentary products and services. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 90% of marketers would budget for influencer marketing, with 62% increasing their current budget.
According to the same report, most firms that have worked with influencers are pleased with the conversion rates and sales they gained as a result of the relationship. The good news is that even businesses that hired micro-influencers saw great benefits. According to Convince & Convert, the top 13% of marketers are reaping significant benefits from influencer partnership in terms of quantifiable outcomes.This explains why marketers are boosting their budgets for influencer marketing.Considering that, you can accomplish it and make a difference.
Define your marketing objectives and your budget
You must identify your goals and annual budget to ensure that your plan remains consistent throughout the campaign. It is critical to understand that this is not a quick remedy. Patience and strategic thinking are required. When it comes to budgeting, you should anticipate paying influencers a flat amount based on their number of followers and the quantity of sponsored posts you request. For example, 19% of businesses spend between $1,000 and $10,000 per year, while 18% spend $100,000-$500,000 per year. It will depend on your industry and whether you aim to reach out to macro- or micro-influencers or an instagram marketing agency. Micro-influencers get $100-500 every engagement, whereas macro-influencers earn $5,000-$10,000 per post. So, when it comes to you objectices, you should consider these :
- increase the number of purchases
- increase brand awareness and brand identification
- increase your brand's social media following
- earn more engagement on your content (shares, comments, and likes)
- improve your marketing funnel or sales pipeline by delivering a promotion or lead magnet
Determine the type of campaign you want and your core messaging.
After you've determined your target demographic and buyer profiles, you must decide what types of campaigns to run. Instagram marketing strategy should inspire consumers to learn more about or interact with your content while also inspiring the influencer to work with you. The messaging you chose should be conversational and authentic, but you should also ensure that each influencer post is consistent with your brand voice and values. Depending on the specifics of your campaign, you may also want to collaborate with each influencer to create landing pages, post visuals, and other materials. It is important to use certain keywords to draw the attention of your audience and encourage engagement with your business. Here are some campaign types you may use :
Choose the best influencer for your marketing strategy
There are numerous ways to find instagram influencers, ranging from social influencers and bloggers to thought leaders and B2B industry specialists. Consider using an influencer marketing tool like Influence, Brand24, Meltwater, etc. or hiring an instagram marketing agency to assist you uncover possible partners if you plan to promote on social networks like Instagram. To boost your exposure, it's usually better to collaborate with an influencer that has a presence across numerous media.
For you to choose the best influencer for your marketing strategy, ask yourself these questions :
- Is the influencer's engagement ratio credible?
- Does the influencer share content related to your industry or brand?
- Has this influencer already worked with similar brands?
- Is the influencer's style and attitude consistent with your brand's guidelines?
You may have a list of influencers to contact after answering these questions. After that, you must begin contacting potential influencers. Micro-influencers are typically contacted by direct messaging on their most popular social media network. Contacting famous instagram influencers via their website or email may be the best way. After that, you'll work with the influencer to create campaign requirements, content deliveries, and reporting activities.
Control your influencer campaigns
Whether you start with one influencer or ten, handling the campaign details will be an important element of your approach. You have the option of being hands-on and interacting personally with each influencer, hiring an agency, or using an influencer marketing platform to manage the process. Notice that your starting point and your budget will have a significant impact. Remember that influencers are not your employees, but rather brand ambassadors entrusted with supporting you in establishing a network of prospective customers. With that in mind, here are some tips to help you manage your influencer relationships:
- Create a simple onboarding process and communicate your style standards in advance to ensure that each influencer understands your expectations.
- Inquire with your influencers about how they generally deal with brands, including monetary incentives, discounts, or free products.
- Give your influencers as much creative freedom as possible so that their work appears genuine to their fans.
Influencer management is important to the overall success of your campaign. You risk damaging the partnership by micromanaging the campaign process, but you also risk losing sight of your brand messaging if you are too involved. To be successful, you must strike the perfect balance.
Tools to control your influencer marketing campaigns
To help you manage your different companies and your budget, do not hesitate to use specialized tools. Indeed, tools like intercept help brands to have total control over their marketing campaigns.
This tool will allow you to :
- A follow-up of the campaign and its performance. You will be able to know the number of clicks on your different campaigns, their number of displays as well as their conversion rate.
- A live monitoring to avoid fraud on your campaigns. Take full control of your campaigns by monitoring false click fraud, suspicious activity and country distribution.
This is a very interesting tool that will allow you to follow your campaigns more closely and thus be able to select the best influencers.
This tool monitors your campaigns in real time to spot any abnormal activity that might occur during their execution. You can then monitor the success of your campaign and detect suspicious clicks and engagements of influencers.
Keep track of your progress and make changes to your strategy if needed
Monitoring campaign results is critical so you can decide whether to continue working with the same influencers or adjust your instagram marketing strategy. The first stage is to analyze whether your campaign met its objectives.
Here are a few key performance indicators to help you measure success:
- Brand awareness: website traffic, social or PR mentions, and the quality of links
- Audience building: social followers and opt-ins
- Engagement: likes, comments, and shares
To optimize future initiatives, you should track the data from each campaign to see what worked and what didn't. Did a video reel, for example, generate more engagement than a typical article post? What was the conversion rate on your dedicated promo code landing page? Track all campaign variables to determine how to improve performance in your future campaigns.
