How To Develop A Better Influencer Marketing Strategy?

Influencer marketing was always an integral part of marketing, though, it’s broadly evolved now. Marketers have always been crazy to find ways to get more buyers engaged to their brands. Besides traditional digital marketing methods viz. SEO, paid search and Social media, Marketers found influencer marketing a vetted medium to establish their brand value.

The idea of rounding up influencers for boosting content virality is nothing new, but in the current digital marketing landscape, it's nearly impossible to ignore the idea of Influencers. A successfully content marketer always align his content distribution strategy with the right taste of Influencer marketing. This is the only way to begin with colaborative content creation efforts and conceiving ideas from chatter across a wide online networks.

What is Influencer Marketing?

By the definition, Influencer marketing is a mode of marketing where brands need to bring the influential people at work that could potentially influence their fans and followers to become new customers. Influencer marketing gives brands a way to tap into a consumer network and turns fans into brand advocates.

Being a word of mouth method, influencer marketing helps marketers with improved brand recognition and maximized audience outreach. The medium is proved to be the top rated method for product promotion and audience engagement. The idea of influencer marketing has now grown exponentially across industry verticals and marketing channels. A good reason why brands want to engage the influencers is that they want to have a direct access to the community the influencer belongs to.

How Influencer Marketing Benefits Brands?

Influencer marketing is an excellent way to tap into the specific audiences who are much more likely to respond to the voice of an influencer. Here is how it can benefit brands:

Expand reach

An influencer ideally has a huge fan following who listen to them carefully and respond them. When you get access to such influencers, you usually manage to reach their humongous user base.

Drive sales

An influencer’s follower base is very much connected to his / her views and recommendations. They respond to the recommendations positively. So, if influencer recommends or endorse your product / service to them, customers will more likely buy.

Increase brand awareness:

If an influencer conveys your brand message to the audience, it’s most likely absorbed as a trusted brand. This is because the followers already have a trusted bonding with

Boost brand reputation:

An influencer can help you improve your brand reputation. This is because a personal recommendation from a trusted influencer is an excellent way to influence customer’s opinion.

Drive traffic

Once you’re engaged with an influencer, you can get backlinks from influencer’s social media accounts. This way you can drive huge traffic to your website or business page.

8 Steps to a Better Influencer Marketing Strategy

As you’re now all into the basic of the influencers and the way they impact your brand reach, here are the best practices you can put into the place to see your influencer marketing flourishing. Since being an investor you’re investing huge sum to tapping into influencers, it’s vital that you have a better understand of this fast-growing market. I hope this brief guide on influencer marketing will help you having a better control over your influencer marketing strategy.

1. Produce Viral Content:

In order to ensure a wining influencer marketing strategy, it’s important to produce viral content. A content piece is said to be viral and engaging if triggers positive emotions. While producing content, focus on how your product or service can address your customer’s concerns and can make their lives comfortable. Convince your customers about your products. Tell them the real time benefits your service / product can offer. Validate your claims with real life examples.

2. Find the Right Influencer:

Key to a successful influencer marketing strategy is to find a right influencer. There are two types of influencers you can engage with- Micro influencer and Macro influencer. We have seen a common trend among the marketers that they prefer to go with macro influences. These influencers have massive fan followings that span through millions worldwide. However, it might not be the best feasible influencer marketing strategy.

Instead, go with micro-influencers. They are the people who relatively have smaller number of followers. However, the engagement rate they generate is much higher than macro influencers. It happens because followers relate more to micro-influencers. Customers find them much more trustworthy than people with massive followings.

3. Give Your Influencers Value:

Time and again you should make influencer feel that you care. Thank them frequently for things they have done for you and for the efforts they are putting. To do so, you can offer exclusive preview of your latest product / offers. You can offer free subscription of content specially produced for the. Obliging them with some personalized gifts isn’t a bad idea either.

That will make the influencers you work with feel appreciated and aware of your newest merchandise. Moreover, you can ask your influencers for feedback. That way, before you release a new product, you will be able to make it even better.

This is how you can make them feel special. They will feel appreciated working with you. In case you’ve offered influencer exclusive access to an upcoming product or service, request their feedback. That way, you can work to make your product even better before its final launch.

4. Clearly Define Goal and KPI:

Launching an influencer marketing campaign? Before starting with one, it’s a better practice to prepare a checklist of the goals of the campaign. You should make sure that the strategy you follow must aligns with your goals. It’s noteworthy that strategies of the different campaigns are designed differently. This means, different strategies drive different results. Therefore, it’s important that you have defined the goal and KPI of the campaign and shapes the strategy around that.

In addition to that, keep influencer in mind before creating the influencer campaign. Being on the same page is the key of any collaboration. Delve into details like how you can work collaboratively on the influencer? What are the mutual benefits? How would their content fit into your campaign strategy, and what value can they bring to the campaign?

5. Be Clear With Your Goals :

Influencers indeed could be an asset to your content distribution program. But, reaching out to everyone randomly who may help you isn't a good idea. Before going to some miles with an influencer strategy, you should be ready with a plan defining your goals and objectives. Having a proper long term vision for a strategy would help you in measuring success. Prepare a list of those people who could magnify your content further, and reach out to them one by one.

6. Identify And Organize Influencers :

Influencers have their own worth and repute, thus they can't spare time for every marketer who approach them. The better ideal would be to categorize them into a list as per their availability for your blog. When you finish the list you'll have a clear insight about how many of them may help you. Let's suppose you have ended up with 3 categories A, B and C containing the name of industry experts who can be part of influencer marketing program.

You can't simply get them in who are in category A, as they are the busiest people with massive fan following. So, concentrate on category B and Category C where you can find influencers who may act as subject matter expert for your blog. They will be the right people talking about you online. If you successfully do that, they can draw in an audience that is interested in your services.

7. Build A Relationship With Influencers:

It's annoying to start emailing influencers as soon you're ready with a list. Be courteous and tell them that you’re actually interested in having them at yours. Wait for their response. Start engaging them first with comments on their blog posts or engagements via social media channels. It will help you having deeper connection with influencers. The deeper you convince them, the more they’ll be able to join your content creation program.

8. Personalize Your Communication:

Do keep in mind, it's not about sending random emails to a bunch of people, but an attempt to communicate distinct individuals. When sending a message to the influencers add a personal touch and address them as subject matter experts. Acknowledge them their expertise being the influencer, and tell them how you came across them.

Before approaching them, go through their recent activities on social channels to visualize where they are, what they are doing, and what they are talking about. So that you can gather an idea if this is the right time to interact.

Tarun Gupta

Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.