In recent years, advertising with social media influencers has become one of the most effective ways to capitalize on word-of-mouth marketing. With influencer marketing, businesses can reach new markets, boost sales, increase followers on social media, and retain customers. So what is influencer marketing and how does it work?
Our influencer marketing guide helps you understand the advantages of influencer marketing. We share best practices, key steps to create a successful campaign, and typical errors to avoid. Now let's dig in!
What Is Influencer Marketing?
The phrase influencer marketing isn’t a novelty anymore. Almost any person can recall at least one brand or product that was endorsed by celebrities on social media. For many years, influencer marketing was synonymous with the promotion of brands by professional athletes, actors, and models. This quality made influencer marketing a privilege for companies with big budgets. It was an additional marketing tool they could take advantage of, but smaller businesses couldn't.
But times have changed and so has influencer marketing. It has become a fundamental element of many brands’ marketing strategies and isn’t only about celebrities anymore. It revolves around content creators who we would never consider famous in the traditional sense of the word. We are talking about people who have gained significant knowledge about a subject and become popular in their community. Working with these experts will raise companies' marketing activities to a new level, regardless of their size or niche.
What is an influencer?
A social media influencer has gained a reputation as a specialist on a topic and regularly interacts with their followers. An influencer’s knowledge and credibility have already earned them a close bond with their followers. Many creators started as average consumers, but became so specialized and experienced in a niche that tens of thousands of people listen to them. They can help businesses retain their credibility and increase their customer base.
Why is influencer marketing important?
Influencer marketing has become mainstream over the last few years due to several factors. First, the pandemic forced people to stay in touch through social media and emails. The increase in the hours spent online affected businesses as well. Companies that didn't start using any social media platform to reach their users were doomed to fall behind.
Daily internet usage per capita worldwide 2011-2021 (Source: statista.com)
The second reason is that young people, especially Generation Z users, have a strong preference for social media. Compared to other age groups, their consumer behavior is significantly different. Traditional TV and radio advertising don’t reach them. Besides, they have a shorter attention span. To gain this group's trust, companies must deploy new channels, content, and the power of influencers.
The third factor is that users are savvy; they read product reviews before making a purchase decision. Unlike in the past, they no longer fall for the self-promotional advertisements of companies. They need proof from a trusted source or community. It’s in this case that influencers can be helpful to brands.
Fourth, online shopping broke unprecedented records in 2020 and has continued to grow since then. The latest trend is social commerce, which allows buyers to search for, rate, and buy products, all on social media. The result is a better shopping experience for consumers and a higher conversion rate for brands.
And who provides a solution for all these changes? You guessed it: influencers. They connect social media users with brands, can successfully address young customers and their content pushes purchases. Knowing all this, it is a huge oversight on the part of many businesses not to include influencers in their digital marketing routine.
The state of influencer marketing
The world of social media is neither static nor boring. Platforms are constantly improving their algorithms and coming up with new features or copying each other to attract more users. With the help of these innovations and trends, creators can raise their content to a new level. This also opens up many opportunities for businesses to maximize their social media and content marketing efforts.
HypeAuditor’s The State of Influencer Marketing 2023 study found that 79% of digital marketing professionals choose Instagram for running influencer marketing campaigns. Due to its versatile features, Instagram is ideal for advertising with stunning images. Influencers on Instagram have successfully challenged traditional advertising and their content result in higher engagement.
TikTok doubled its number of users in the US between 2020 and 2022 years, making it the most popular outlet among the 12-17 age group. With the rise of TikTok, the short video format has also gained ground, and it’s favored by young audiences for its fun, easygoing, less edited characteristics. Although TikTok is now considered an entertainment platform, its new shopping ads feature will provide brands the opportunity for eCommerce integration and growing sales.
Considered the 2nd largest search engine after Google, YouTube maintained its outstanding place among platforms. Since video is more favored than photos and users can access videos much later after their publication, 56% of marketers use it as an essential part of their influencer marketing strategy. YouTube didn't want to lag behind other platforms either, thus announced Shopify integration and shoppable links and QR codes.
The Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Still unsure how your brand can profit from working with creators? Let’s review the most popular benefits of influencer marketing.
It can improve brand awareness and credibility: Out of 8 billion people, 4.9 billion are active on social media, making these platforms ideal places to raise brand recognition and influencers the right intermediary to achieve this. Picking public figures and authentic creators will strengthen customers’ trust and enhance your business’s reputation.
It reaches a narrow audience: With influencer marketing, your brand can efficiently target smaller audiences already involved in your niche, thus growing conversions, and earning engaged followers.
Influencers are considered more authentic: Since influencers have a great understanding of a subject or a brand, they can act as good friends to whom users can turn before engaging with a product. Consumers value their views and place their trust in their suggestions.
Brands can build long-term partnerships with influencers: Teaming up with industry experts can result in good relationships and help your business develop authority in a niche and build brand loyalty.
Influencer marketing is cost-efficient: Compared to traditional television and printed ads, influencer marketing saves significant costs while providing a higher return on your investment.
It’s easy to measure: If enough metrics are tracked, influencer marketing campaigns can be easily measured and adjusted on the fly. Furthermore, you can prove they’re worth and implement them in your online marketing strategy by monitoring ROI.
Influencer marketing can be a valuable complementary method of your overall marketing strategy or a powerful tool in itself to promote your brand widely.
Top platforms for influencer marketing
The top social media channels are Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
The number of monthly active users on Instagram has reached a staggering 1.4 billion. With its stunning, high-quality photos, Instagram continues to lead the way in advertising. Our 2023 State of Influencer Marketing report revealed that 87% of its global user base is under 34, so it’s an excellent platform for targeting this age group. Around 46% of its global users are between the ages of 25 and 34.
As opposed to Instagram's well-edited posts, TikTok's spontaneous, amateur videos have exploded among young people. Even though other platforms have released similar short video features, TikTok remains the most popular short video-sharing platform. According to our report, 63.3% of TikTok users are younger than 24 years old, and 38% of them are between 18 and 24. In general, female users outnumber male users.
YouTube still dominates long-form videos. The platform boasts over 2.5 billion logged-in monthly users who spend almost 11 minutes and 30 seconds on average per day watching content. A long video format is ideal for exploring complex topics. Moreover, the videos remain searchable and accessible for a long time.
How to Build an Influencer Marketing Strategy
Now that you know the benefits of influencer marketing and top social media channels, consider implementing it in your digital marketing strategy. By working with social media influencers, you can attract diverse audiences and extend the reach of your business. Creators’ credibility helps people to trust your brand and products. In the long run, influencer marketing can produce outstanding results for your business if you carefully plan what you want to achieve and choose the right prospects.
Establish your campaign purpose and goal
Consider what drives your business, motivates your employees, and makes your brand unique. Can your service build a sense of community among people? Are you going to revolutionize the industry with your product? Perhaps you’d like to communicate the values you consider important to users on as many channels as possible.
Global brands have missions and visions that their employees, partners, suppliers, and customers share and proudly embrace. A company's mission statement describes its core ideas and what distinguishes it from other businesses. A vision statement serves as a guideline to help companies achieve their goals. They focus their entire marketing activities on maintaining the mission statement and fulfilling their company's vision.
By leveraging the power of influencers, you can achieve several marketing goals. Here are a few:
Increase brand awareness,
Drive more sales,
Find new target markets,
Grow the number of leads,
Boost your conversions,
Gain more social media followers,
Enhance your customer service,
Build your brand’s credibility,
Generate more website traffic,
Improve your audience’s engagement.
Analyze your competitors
The key to ensuring your campaign's success is keeping up with industry developments and what others in your niche are doing. By assessing your competitors' performance, you’ll gain a clear idea of what works in your industry and what doesn't. Examining key market players' content and campaigns lets you get an insight into their marketing strategies. Moreover, you can learn from their mistakes and expand your influencer list.
Start by looking at what social channels your 4-5 competitors are using. Collect statistics about how many followers they have and how often they post. Determine the ER by taking into account the number of posts they publish and the interactions they receive. If you need help with this, you can use HypeAuditor's free marketing tools.
Review their content frequency and quality. Posting relevant and regular content preserves the audience's interest, builds customer trust, and increases the brand’s credibility.
Look for branded hashtags and keywords on social media and analyze your competitors' past influencer marketing campaigns. Based on these, you can determine the type of audience (#nikegirls) and the location (#avenecolombia) they were targeting. You can uncover their industry-specific hashtags as well. When KIA promotes its electric car models, it uses the hashtag #Sustainability.
Identify creators who tagged the brand or were tagged by it. Observe which users mention the names and products of your competitors.
One way to do this is to monitor the social media channels of other industry players. A more efficient and faster solution would be to use an influencer marketing platform, like HypeAuditor. Data-driven suites offer competitor analysis tools to track the marketing activities and crucial stats of your competitors and find out who they've worked with in the past.
Select the campaign type and channel
Your campaign's goal and the previous marketing efforts of your competitors will help you identify what type of collaboration and channel will meet your needs. With each influencer campaign, you can accomplish a different goal. Think about which social media outlet would suit your niche and what content would appeal to your audience. An IT company succeeds on one channel and a cosmetics company on another.
Next, let's look at some of the most popular campaign types:
Giveaways or contests: These are some of the most popular influencer collaborations. Giveaways help you target new audiences and create a huge buzz around your product. Establish clear entry rules before you begin.
Affiliate programs: An affiliate influencer campaign is your best shot at growing sales or generating more website traffic to your online store. Since creators receive commissions after every purchase, you don’t have to pay them a flat fee. In turn, they are motivated to up the number of sales.
Giftings: As part of the gifting, you send a product sample to the creators, who post about it on their channels. Using this method, you can build your brand’s recognition and increase the number of your followers. A one-person business or small company with a limited budget can benefit greatly from this solution.
Brand ambassadors: People who are already familiar with your company and have a positive opinion of your product could be potential brand ambassadors. Developing a successful brand ambassador program requires deep trust and a long-term commitment from both parties. A major advantage of this campaign is that any type of influencer partner can become a loyal brand promoter.
Paid or sponsored posts: Another favorite method of collaborating with social media influencers is through sponsored content. This approach provides a good ROI and allows you to target specific users. Additionally, these ads generate leads and increase brand awareness.
Rachel Martino’s (aka @rachmartino) and Godiva’s collaboration
Event activations: This type of marketing is intended to pique the interest of the audience in a particular event. When partnered with the right influencer, event activations can leave a lasting impression. A niche-specific content creator with authentic audiences is the key to achieving this.
Content whitelisting: The whitelisting of creators allows businesses to advertise via influencers' accounts using paid posts. Brands can gain credibility and reach new audiences through this technique. Whitelisting implies a close working relationship between brands and influencers. Select creators who will truly reflect your company's values.
Identify the right influencers for your brand
Identify carefully the people you want to work with, since they will represent your brand in the future. Authenticity is essential, which means they should be experienced in your niche and have established a close relationship with their followers.
You can start your search among your customers and loyal social media followers, study your competitors’ audience, or use influencer marketplaces and platforms. No matter where you look for them, some tips can help you identify them:
Your target audience: Defining your target audience requires specifying their demographic data and drawing up their interests and likes. Find influencers whose audience matches your target audience.
Relevant industry: It goes without saying that you need to look for creators who are knowledgeable in your niche or industry and have a history of brand collaborations.
Engagement and reach: Check these metrics together. Follower size and the level of audience interactions are equally important. Celebrities with a large audience produce a higher reach but have lower engagement than niche influencers with a smaller but more dedicated audience.
Authenticity: When searching for influencers, besides the topic, take into account values too. Look for prospects who share your brand’s ideas and can genuinely talk about important industry matters.
Content: The influencer’s content, style, and tone have to align with your brand’s image but also need to be relevant and engaging for their audience.
Teaming up with authentic influencers in your niche will get your brand and product in front of the right people.
How to approach and negotiate with influencers?
After digging into the data, you compiled a list of prospective candidates. Now, it's time to get in touch with them. Yet, don’t rush things and consider the following steps before you send your first proposal:
Research influencers: Get familiar with the influencer’s followers and their content. Check if they were involved in campaigns before and start following them and interacting with their posts.
Customize your outreach message: Once you have analyzed their work, you can easily create your first message. Personalization includes mentioning how much you like what they do and what they and their followers can win from a partnership.
Don’t withhold information: Describe the campaign’s goals, target audience, and budget clearly. This way, they’ll understand the collaboration’s message and purpose and can come up with content ideas.
Discuss the details of deliverables: If the potential influencer is interested in working with your brand and fits your budget, draft your content ideas and vision and the timeline of the campaign deliverables.
Create an influencer content brief: After a couple of messages and an exchange of ideas, prepare a content brief. Recap your brand’s and product’s description, the campaign’s message, and vision, and the payment and disclosure terms. Specify the goals, dates, posting timeline, channel, and content format. Besides visual requests, including the dos and don’ts as well.
Outline everything in written format: Communicate every term of your influencer marketing campaign and the negotiation in written format to protect both your brand and the creator and ensure that both parties know their tasks and obligations.
Strive to build relationships with influencers who are comfortable endorsing your products.
With an effective influencer outreach strategy you can make a good impression and earn long-term partners.
Measure the success of your influencer marketing campaigns
You can achieve your marketing goal through a variety of objectives. They serve as milestones or micro-goals that enable you to attain your primary goal. To measure your campaign’s progress and success, you have to track key metrics so that you see whether your influencer campaign is on the right track or if it needs to be adjusted.
Reach: By measuring reach, you’ll see how many people were exposed to the influencer’s content and estimate the overall campaign reach.
Engagement: If the creator’s content has a strong impact on users, they will engage with it. Shares, likes, retweets, and comments all count when calculating engagement.
Traffic: Goals, like generating leads or growing traffic to a brand’s website and social media account require tracking the number of visitors.
Conversion rate: Any desired action, such as subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for a webinar, or purchasing a product, that users complete counts toward your conversion rate. By measuring the conversion rate, you get a better knowledge of how your campaign is performing.
ROI: Make sure you measure the return on investment of your influencer marketing campaign. You can access it on influencer marketing platforms or calculate it by dividing the profit by the campaign’s costs.
The type of metrics you need to measure can vary depending on your goals. Still, it's useful to monitor reach, engagement, and ROI for each influencer collaboration.
The crucial role of influencer marketing analytics and reporting
Influencer marketing analytics and reporting are critical for evaluating your campaign's success and comparing results with initial estimates. This is the only way to identify any areas for improvement in your influencer marketing strategy. In addition, it helps you and your team demonstrate the value of your work to stakeholders.
It’s up to your primary goals what you must measure and how detailed your campaign report will turn out, as well as what tools and methods can help you with influencer marketing analytics. Make sure to assess your success in regards of your goals. Even if your campaign wasn't successful, you can still profit from it. Simply identify the steps where you made a mistake and enhance them in the future.
Learn more about what steps you have to take and what tools and techniques can help you succeed in influencer marketing analytics and efficiently measure your campaign’s performance.
Best Practices for Working with Influencers
Influencers took the world of marketing by storm and if you want your collaborations to turn out a success, you need to follow some best practices.
Share your goals and vision: Your goals and objectives are crucial for your colleagues to remain focused and prioritize procedures. However, they serve as guidance for the influencers and help them come up with relevant content ideas.
Give guidelines not instructions: Of course, you should discuss what message the influencer has to deliver, and share your visual requirements, but don’t force them to articulate things your way. Leave them enough creative freedom! After all, they know what their followers like and enjoy.
Aim for building partnerships: Be transparent and communicate in a professional but relatable manner. Developing a long-term partnership will benefit both parties and result in a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Track and analyze the campaign: The only way to prove your success is by regularly monitoring key metrics like reach, engagement, and conversions and evaluating the outcomes of your marketing efforts.
Listen to influencers’ feedback: Don’t shun creators’ ideas and comments on the campaign and be open to making adjustments.
Considering these tactics and valuing influencers’ opinions and dedicated work will help you build strong working relationships and run winning influencer campaigns.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Influencer Marketing
Many businesses realized that by tapping into influencers’ followers, they can extend their reach and simultaneously grow their conversions. But as with everything in life, you need to plan ahead and not let the follower size dictate your campaign. To avoid a marketing disaster and financial failure, we listed the most common mistakes brands make when starting to work with influencers:
Lack of influencer analysis: Brands regularly fall into the trap of not reviewing influencers’ audience, performance, and content before connecting with them. To avoid confusion and loss of money, research influencers considerably.
Fail to disclose sponsored ads: Users like fun and creative ads but don’t like being tricked. Apart from emerging legal issues, failing to disclose paid ads on social media can lead to a loss of your brand’s good reputation.
Starting a collaboration without goals: Goals will move your campaign forward and serve as guidelines for influencers. By establishing clear goals, your team will remain on track, creators will understand what you expect from them, and you’ll be able to measure your campaign’s impact.
Overlook negotiation: Lack of negotiation will result in misunderstanding and dissatisfaction on both sides. Make sure to discuss every element of your influencer marketing campaign, from deliverables to legal and payment terms.
Not tracking and evaluating your marketing pursuits: Without monitoring your campaign’s progress and assessing its outcomes, you won’t be able to recognize what processes need improvement and what was successful. Campaign measurement helps you optimize your current and future influencer marketing campaigns.
Partnering with influencers will work if you approach them with respect and don't use them only to your advantage.
The Future of Influencer Marketing
In addition to the steady decline of traditional advertising, digital development, and new social media trends are driving the popularity of influencer marketing. So, what can brands expect? Where is influencer marketing headed?
Emphasis on authenticity: Customers expect genuineness and transparency from both influencers and businesses. They want honest reviews and clear ad disclosures and not to be misled for profit.
Micro-influencers are taking off: To stand out from the noise, brands will focus on distinct niches and high engagement. Working with a micro-influencer will ensure they reach a specific and engaged audience and forge tight influencer partnerships.
Automation and AI are implemented into more and more tools: Like many other industries, influencer marketing relies on data. AI and automation help streamline several stages of your influencer marketing workflow, like campaign management and influencer vetting and outreach.
Advertising regulations will become stricter: The way influencers affect consumers’ decisions didn’t go unnoticed by the FTC, and several steps were taken to maintain the trust of customers. The introduction of tighter regulations and guidelines points in the direction of transparency as well.
Influencer marketing is expected to be integrated with other marketing channels: Influencer marketing can be successfully used together with several other marketing practices, like email and social media marketing, and paid advertising to become more comprehensive and reach a larger audience.
Influencers and brands should keep pace with rising technological advancements and new trends and stay genuine and strive for targeted partnerships.
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Final Thoughts
The emphasis in influencer marketing is clearly shifting to maintain authenticity and increase consumers’ trust. It’s still a vital solution to boost sales and reach new audiences. Yet, with so many people spreading the word on social media, it has become an essential tool to enhance customer experience and credibility.
To ace your campaign, you need to thoroughly examine creators and focus on creating a long-lasting partnership with them. In this way, you establish credibility and authority on a topic, but also save valuable time by not having to search for and analyze influencers constantly.
By leveraging best practices and using influencer marketing tools, you’ll be able to speed up procedures, like influencer vetting and outreach, and optimize your campaign strategy.
