I’ve seen many influencer marketing campaigns over the years. Many of which have been excellent in all aspects – from the way they’re set up, to mediating messages that come off as authentic and that people trust.
There is, however, a simple mistake that can make a lot of harm to your brand, in influencer marketing.
I am talking about running an influencer marketing campaign that doesn’t resonate with your brand.
Unfortunately, this is a fairly common mistake that brands make which has huge negative effects on the way the influencer marketing campaigns perform and the results they generate.
You’ve spent a ton of time developing your marketing strategy, as well as defined your brand personality, brand voice, brand message, and so on, yet still, you’re falling short on following your own strategy when it comes to influencer campaigns.
A simple explanation of why brands are running influencer campaigns that aren’t resonating with their brands is that they think it is enough if the campaign resonates with the influencer and their followers, and this is true because what is most important is that the message of the influencer comes off as authentic and resonates with their followers, however, in order to generate even better results, you also want to make sure the campaign also resonates with your brand.
Here’s why:
We all know that it is crucial that an influencer campaign resonates with the influencer that is running it and ultimately comes off as authentic. When a campaign isn’t authentic, the followers will sense it. And when that happens, they will quickly notice that the words that are coming from the influencer isn’t really their words, but rather the words of the brand. As a result of this, they will lose trust in the influencer and lose trust in the campaign. The result will be an influencer marketing campaign that performs really poorly.
However, what’s often forgotten is that brands also need to make sure their influencer campaignsr resonate with their own brand, and the reason is that it allows for a seamless experience for the audience. If the influencer runs a campaign in their own style, and then people click through to your page, only to find themselves lost because they can’t recognize themselves in your style, brand personality, and message.
In other words, the contrast from the influencer to you will feel huge, and as you know, people are always skeptical about things that are new. And on the same token, people like things that feels familiar
However, on the other hand, if your brand resonates with the campaign that the influencer runs, the audience will come to you, and the transfer from influencer to brand will be seamless, making the audience much more likely to resonate with you, and ultimately convert, because they feel safe.
Now, this isn’t your ordinary article with 5 basic tips on how you can run a successful influencer marketing campaign. This article focuses on little-known and little-discussed tips for how you can run effective influencer marketing campaigns.
1. Find an influencer who resonates with your brand
My first advice in doing this is obviously the most basic and foundational: partnering with an influencer that resonates and aligns with your brand. Obviously, selecting influencer is the first step to any influencer campaign, but tends to be quite common is that many marketers focus on finding the influencer with the most followers, while some focus on the single most important metric: looking for the influencers with the most engaged audience.
But in that process, the vast majority of marketers and brands forget about looking for influencers that actually resonate with your brand. Looking for influencers that have an engaged audience is a great first step, but at the same time, you also need to make sure that they also align with your brand.
You’ven developed your brand personality, and therefore, you want to keep it consistent. This goes for all your marketing efforts – even though they are promoted by a third-party. If your brand is portrayed in different ways all over the place, ultimately, people will have a hard time resonating with you, getting to know you, and building relationships with you.
When you’ve selected an influencer, you have already come a long way to running an influencer campaign that resonates with your brand, however, there’s still lots to be done.
I will start by saying this:
Finding influencers who resonate with your brand isn’t easy.
There are so many things that have to be right in order for you to be able to reach the best possible results, and then on top of that, you need to find one that resonates with your brand. Ouch.
But don’t fret! With our influencer directory, you can filter among 3K+hand-picked influencers in a matter of seconds and find the one that matches your brand’s needs.
Or, you can use Veloce influencer list, which means that you click on your preferred criteria, choose the number of influencers you are looking for, and then our team will go out and carefully hand-pick influencers that match your brand’s criteria and present a list of them within 72 hours.
Now enough of self-promotion. If you want to find your influencers yourself, you are more than welcome to read our complete guide on finding the perfect influencers.
2. Give the influencer freedom but review the content
This one is crucial to influencer marketing success.
Far too many brands have the misconception that the more they manage the campaign and have control over it, the better results they’ll get.
The sad truth?
It is far from the truth.
The best results in influencer marketing are generated when the influencer comes off as trustworthy and authentic. People look up to the influencer and have learnt how they express themselves, what language they use, etc., but if all of that changes when they are promoting a product, not only will people have a hard time resonating with the message, but the whole promotion will also come off as inauthentic, and people won’t listen to it.
When an influencer promotes your brand, it is important that they speak from the heart and use their very own language, as well as create their own content for the post.
The more authentic an influencer campaign is, the more people will trust it and ultimately convert.
This is why it is crucial that you give the influencer a lot of freedom in the creation process. After all, who knows the audience of the influencer best?
The influencer or the brand?
It’s obvious, right?
This means that the influencer knows what type of content that their audience will resonate with, and therefore, they will go out and create it. If the brand creates content for the influencer, it will be awkwardly squeezed in between the rest of the influencer’s posts, and it will stand out like a black sheep that screams promotion from miles away.
While you should give the influencer creative freedom, you should also review the content before they post. You are going to do this to ensure that the content the influencer wants to promote your brand with aligns with your own brand values and personality. Remember that your goal here is to make the campaign resonate with your brand and the most important part of that is making sure that the influencer isn’t promoting your brand, and portraying it in a way that makes your branding strategy pull in different directions.
3. Make them ambassadors of your brand
This is the most effective way to make your influencer campaigns resonate with your brand, however, the method tends to cost a lot more than regular campaigns.
Essentially, what you’re going to do is make the influencers ambassadors of your brand.
Rather than just partnering with an influence once or twice, you’re going to create a long-term partnership with the influencers, and doing this has many benefits.
The main benefit of this is that you “have the influencer all by yourself”. At least when it comes to them promoting your competitors. For example, if you partner with an influencer who don’t have a long-term contract, and you partner with them once, chances are that they’ve promoted several of your competitors previously. The problem with this is that the influencer has probably said a lot of good about each band. Or, even worse, which I have seen influencers do, they might have said: “this is the best brand on the market” to each brand they’re promoting, and then one week later, they promote the competitor and says the same thing.
Can you imagine what happens with the trust of the influencer?
When influencers aren’t having any long-term contracts, they have to hop between partnership deals that are thrown at them, and this might mean that they promote different brands that are all competitors.
But the benefit of partnering with an influencer long-term is that you integrate the influencer into your brand, and really make them embrace your brand and the culture you have. What’s more, when the influencer promotes your brand over and over, the audience will start thinking “wait a second, he/she is talking awfully much about how awesome your brand is, there must be some truth to it”.
In other words, the messages the influencer have will come off as more authentic, but more importantly, the messages will resonate a lot better with your brand because the influencer is a part of your brand rather than a 3rd party.
3. Give content creation guidelines
Rules and guidelines are important – no matter what marketing efforts you jump into.
Obviously, if the influencer doesn’t know the guidelines for the influencer campaign, how should they be able to follow them?
How can they possibly know if you don’t tell them?
Of course, you can create a mile long list of guideline rules for the influencer, but that isn’t necessary because the points above take care of a lot of that.
Create a few guidelines for the influencer to follow that allows the influencer campaign to be created in a way that it resonates with your brand.
You can, obviously create guidelines for the whole campaign, but now, we’re focusing mainly on making the campaign resonate better with your brand.
The best way to come up with guidelines that support this mission is to look at your marketing strategy and your plan on how you want to portray and market your brand. If you’ve set it up correctly, you should have written down goals, objectives, and things you’re going to work towards to present your brand in the way you want it to be presented.
For the list of guidelines you’re going to present to the influencer, you just need to add your goals of your branding strategy to make sure that the influencer is on the same page as you and that you and they are working towards the same goal.
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that!
4.Look at the language they use
This is important both when it comes to reviewing the content of the influencer, but also when you’re going to choose influencer to work with.
Obviously, when choosing influencer to work with, you want to find an influencer that uses a similar language as you, because this will help make the user experience more seamless when going from influencer to brand, but also in helping make the message come off as more impactful.
Therefore, begin by looking at the tone and voice they’re using in their existing posts.
Do they have an edgy tone and personality like Wendy’s:
Or do they have a positive and fun tone like Skittles?
Or do they have something completely different?
Once you’ve got a clear picture of their voice, you want to look at yourself. What voice does your brand have? Does it resonate with the influencer?
Obviously, you don’t want to partner with influencers that are far too different from you in their tone, but you also don’t want to ask the influencer to change their voice, because that will only make them come off as inauthentic.
If you’ve selected an influencer that resonates with your brand, you then want to take a look at the voice they use in the post they’re planning on promoting you with, as per point number 2. Even if you have seen that they had a similar personality as you in their previous posts, you still need to make sure that they are keeping a consistent tone even when promoting you.
5.Look at the visual content
Most of the time, the visual content is the most important part of an influencer campaign. This means that you need to focus a lot on visual content when partnering with an influencer. And just like the point above, this goes both when identifying influencer, but also when reviewing their content.
As mentioned earlier, it is important that the transfer between influencer and brand is seamless because the more seamless it is, the safer and familiar the environment will feel, thus, the more they’ll trust your brand from the recommendations of the influencer.
First, begin by taking a look at the influencer’s content and visual theme. If you’ve taken social media seriously, you should also have developed a content strategy that tells you what visual theme and style you’re going to keep.
Now, compare your own feed and content with the content of the influencer. Are they alike? Or are they completely different?
The more alike they are, the more seamless the experience will be, and the higher chances of more conversions.
Needless to say, when you are going to review the content of the influencer before posting, you should look at the content and see both how well it aligns with their own visual theme, because your goal is to make the post fit seamlessly into their own feed as it helps make the campaign both more seamless but also more authentic, you also want to look at the content and see how well it would fit into your own feed if you were to post it.
If you can conclude that the themes of you and the influencer are very similar, you are good to go.
Conclusion
If you’ve followed all of these points, you’ll run an influencer campaign that resonates with your brand and comes off as more authentic.
When running influencer campaigns, it is important that they are seamless so they don’t come off as inauthentic.
You want to make the transition between influencer and brand as smooth as possible, as it will, in the end, lead to higher a conversion rate as a result of more trust and familiarity.
