Influencer Marketing 101: Eight Key Components for a Successful Campaign
Many decision-makers in industries such as beauty, fashion, and lifestyle noticed: Influencer marketing is a crucial component of increasing sales.
Why has influencer marketing become such a success?
92% of people trust individuals over brands. (source: Nielsen)
This attitude has enormous ramifications on marketing as we know it. Consequently, as long as an individual advertises your product, your chances are pretty good to sell it. This is especially worthwhile in comparison to other marketing methods.
It does not matter whether the individual is a stranger or your best friend. Even unknown online reviewers lead to a trust bonus for companies.
Influencer Marketing – An End of Growth Is Not in Sight
The adoption of influencer cooperation into the companies’ marketing mix is quite high. 81% of brands have already collaborated with influencers, while 84% plan an influencer marketing campaign in the next twelve months. (source: emarketer.com)
Thus, marketers have increased their influencer marketing budget continuously over the past years. According to Mediakix, influencer ad spending reached between 5 billion and 10 billion dollars in 2020.
This fact demonstrates the tremendous revenue influencer marketing generates. In addition, the market has not existed for much time yet. Thus, further increases are likely.
However, companies interested in influencer marketing still have some hurdles to overcome. Influencer fraud, scandals, and low engagement rates are some of the challenges firms face. If the persons responsible do not develop a goal-driven approach, campaigns will fail.
Eight key components decide the fate of your influencer marketing campaigns. These factors are:
- A suitable strategy
- Reputable influencers with proven success
- The message
- The product or service
- A call-to-action
- A campaign analysis
- Software tools
- The perfect pitch
Suitable Strategy
Without an appropriate influencer strategy, you will not achieve your marketing aims. Initially, it is necessary to figure out what you would like to achieve. Do you want to increase your revenue, augment your name recognition or promote a particular offer?
You need to decide on your primary goal.
After that, you need to determine your ideal audience. Do you have a particular audience in mind or intend to reach new target groups?
For example, let’s say you own a hotel with a focus on 30 to 50-year-old business travelers. Between June and August, the hotel is nearly empty. In the summer months, it might, then, make sense to focus on families instead. As a consequence, Instagram might be a better choice when targeting families. LinkedIn is beneficial for getting in contact with business travelers.
You notice:
Your target group has an enormous impact on your channels, content, and cooperation partners.
Reputable Influencers With Proven Success
Doubtlessly, an influencer’s quality is the most crucial key factor for success. However, checking the follower count and engagement rates does not suffice.
Many marketing professionals have had the same experience. 61% of marketers view finding appropriate influencers as their biggest challenge. (source: augure.com)
Three Rs lead to influencer selection success.
You should focus on reach, resonance, and relevance.
Reach refers to an influencer’s popularity and the number of people who view their content. In general, the more followers someone has, the more people see your content. However, this is not always the case. Thus, it is unwise to single-mindedly focus on this metric.
Low engagement rates should deter you from working with influencers. If an influencer has 1,000,000 followers and only 100 likes on his content, it should set off alarm bells.
In addition, an influencer’s relevance matters. If you sell kitchen appliances, a gaming influencer is likely not the best fit.
Some ideas for finding influencers are:
- Using influencer databases
- Researching influencers via a hashtag search
- Letting social networks display similar profiles (e.g. Instagram via the blue button on the profile page)
The Proper Message
An influencer’s message is like the gasoline for your car’s engine. If your message fits your offer and the audience, it will be a hit. Thus, ensure your message:
- Creates emotions
- Aids in bonding with the community
- Is adjusted according to your target group
Maybe you work with influencers from several industries. Then, you should emphasize the different benefits of each collaboration.
Let’s say you are the provider of a cash-back app. It might make sense to focus on food shops while working with a food influencer. During a collaboration with a fashion influencer, you should mention the cash-back opportunities while purchasing fashion items.
Product or Service
An amazing product should be taken for granted. However, some companies fail at this endeavor. If you want to have long-term success via influencer marketing, you need to offer a high-quality product or service. Influencer marketing is, basically, online word-of-mouth marketing.
To keep a good reputation, you need to offer your potential customer base clear advantages. If you only sell mediocre products, you will not distinguish yourself in the mass of companies.
The long-term consequence is: You will not sell your product due to a bad reputation in the market.
An Easy-to-Understand Call to Action (CTA)
KISS: keep it simple stupid. This concept applies to the call to action as well. The call to action suggests the action users should take.
Hence, it is quite important to make it easy to understand. Users should take action immediately. If they have to ponder what you want them to do, you will fail. The bounce rate will increase. Your marketing goals become a dream instead of a reality.
Ensure that your CTA is short, direct, and actionable.
The Perfect Pitch
A well-done pitch matters. Without the appropriate, persuasive text, your campaign will fail at the initial stage. Thus, it is necessary to ponder the right words and arguments to persuade influencers to collaborate with you.
Most influencer pitches occur via email. Thus, the email’s subject is the first step. You need to catch the attention of the reader. Otherwise, they will not open your email and your inquiry will be ignored. Hence, a well-crafted email includes the subject, body, and end of an email.
Questions or attention-grabbing topics are useful for the subject of an email. For instance, you could utilize email subjects like:
Would you like to collaborate, Anna?
Let’s work together, Alex!
As you can see a personable approach is beneficial. The more targeted an email is, the better the chances of a response. In my experience, including the name in the email’s subject increases the likelihood of an answer.
Hint: A compliment or two might be useful, too.
In addition, you should describe the benefits for the influencers.
Furthermore, using bulleted lists, text in bold print, as well as questions, leads to more positive answers.
Campaign Analysis
After the campaign is just before the next campaign.
You will probably not stop your efforts after finally achieving the first results. To improve your success in future campaigns, you should analyze past performances.
This review will help you draw conclusions to improve future campaigns.
Software Tools
Software tools might deliver the first insight into an influencer’s account quality. However, responsible people should check the profiles as well. For example, it could be beneficial to check the profile after the influencer signals interest.
Thus, you only review accounts that are interested in collaborating.
Influencer Marketing 101: Conclusion
Eight key factors decide the success or failure of your campaign. You need to master these components to realize successful influencer campaigns. As you can see, a proper plan and strategy are crucial to realize your aims.
If you realize the above-mentioned key factors, you will achieve your influencer marketing aims. Have you thought about additional key factors necessary for a successful influencer campaign?
