How to Get Your Influencer Marketing Strategy Right
Influencer marketing is exploding. Learn the dos and don’ts to getting your strategy on the right track for the most return on your investment.
Get Influencer Marketing Right
The industry for influencer marketing is set to grow to $16.4 Billion in 2022 and social media purchasing power is huge, with almost half of respondents in an ION study reporting that they rely on influencers for product recommendations.
With social media having such a high influence on where people put their money, businesses small and large should be paying attention and creating a strategy to get involved. But since this marketing tactic is so new, there is no ‘influencer marketing playbook’ to ensure you are getting the best bang for your buck.
Read on to discover tips for how to get your influencer marketing strategy right.
Influencer Marketing Don’ts
Don’t mass outreach
After talking to a handful of business owners and perusing open jobs on Upwork, I was surprised to see a common ask: business executives looking to create a list of 100+ content creators and do mass outreach. It might seem like a great idea to get in front of as many influencers as possible, but this influencer marketing strategy often leads to weak ROIs.
Plus, mass outreach is difficult to manage. What happens when more creators are interested than you have the budget for? Reaching out to then say ‘never mind’ can taint relationships between businesses and content creators if the relationship is not established professionally or is suddenly dropped due to over-reaching.
Another common influencer marketing strategy I have seen is sending products to a ton of content creators, hoping someone will pick the product up, try it out, and love it so much that they rave about it on their platforms at no charge to the business. This sounds like an excellent strategy to get free advertisement, right?
In reality, sending product usually ends up to be a waste of resources and is less likely to make any returns compared to other, more strategic outreach methods. Think about it - if all businesses were to send content creators product without initiating contact, creators would receive tons of unsolicited packages all the time (and they do). On the receiving end, they might not know if the package is reliable or a scam, and the odds that they post about the product for free are very small.
That leads us to…
Don’t expect free work
There is a common expectation in the art and creative world that creators and artists need “exposure” in order to ignite their careers. Unfortunately, exposure does not pay the bills.
Content creation is a job. The creators and influencers working behind the accounts on social media put in hours of their time and spend plenty of money on resources. If content creators do accept unpaid work, it creates an expectation that free work is okay, which lowers rate averages and makes it harder for great creators to land jobs and to be paid what they are worth.
And you want great creators compensated to do great work because if done well, you can make some serious ROI. The creators deserve some of that cut. So avoid any ‘free work’ as part of your influencer marketing strategy.
Don’t be unprofessional
Here are some unprofessional habits to beware of:
Poor communication and delayed responses
Not setting expectations early or providing campaign direction
Failing to create equitable, fair contracts that protect all parties involved
Influencer Marketing Dos
So what should you do if you want to include content creators as part of your influencer marketing strategy?
Do your research
Before beginning outreach, know your objectives for your influencer marketing strategy, who your audience is, and what they like.
You can start your research by looking into what your competitors are doing - what kind of content are they posting? Who are they working with? It is never a good idea to copy, but researching what is working for similar brands might give you a good idea of the type of creators you want to work with yourself.
After you have done your research, you can start thinking about creators who fit your brand well.
Do pay the creators
As mentioned before and worth saying again, content creation is a job and a demanding one at that. The creators are spending time and resources on a task for you and deserve compensation.
When creating your strategy and preparing outreach, make sure to know your budget. That way you can strategize how many creators you will be able to pay and what tier of creator to reach out to. Decide if you want to spend all budget on one larger creator or break it up and pay smaller creators. Perhaps a combination of both.
Do be very organized
You don’t need to buy an expensive tool to source and organize content creators. By knowing your brand well and the type of person you want to work with, you can use hashtags, search terms, and community building directly on Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms to find the right content creators for your business.
As you are sourcing, keep a tracker to stay organized and know the status of each contact.
Do build meaningful relationships
As you start outreach, build a good relationship with creators so they want to work with you and your brand again. Be professional and make this easy for them so they want to work with you. That means being punctual and timely, preparing schedules and meetings, setting expectations, and remaining respectful and organized.
One way to set clear expectations and show impressive organization is by providing your own creative brief to the creator. Let them know what your goals are, what has worked and hasn’t worked for your brand, any keywords you want them to include in voiceover or copy, design elements, etc.
You can ask them for ideas and to provide a few concepts (make sure to compensate them for each concept and work it into a contract, as well as expected revision rounds), but give them the pertinent information about what you are expecting.
The bottom line: treat the creators you work with well - if they do well, you do well and that’s a win-win. And if they ask for more opportunities to work with you or give you additional ideas for your brand, this is a great sign of a potential start to a positive, mutually-beneficial relationship.
Don’t miss out
Overall, influencer marketing is a great way to achieve brand awareness and even drive sales. But your strategy matters. By sending out mass product, not paying creators, or being unprofessional, you might be missing out on great opportunity potential.
If you are ready to kick off your influencer marketing strategy, schedule a consult today.