Have you run influencer marketing campaigns but just cannot get any traction?
You’ve probably read all the influencer marketing statistics of just how effective influencer marketing really is, but your results aren’t anywhere near that.
But there’s a caveat to all the influencer marketing statistics, like with everything. The catch is that while influencer marketing is an extremely powerful and effective marketing tactic, it is only that if you know how to use it and execute it properly.
On paper, influencer marketing seems very simple. You find someone with lots of followers, you pay them, and they promote your products. What can go wrong?
Well, the answer is, everything.
A well-executed influencer marketing campaign is far more well-planned. If you’re struggling with generating results worthwhile, continue reading, because, in this article, I’ll go through the most important aspects of an influencer marketing campaign and what you need to consider to generate better results.
How to improve your influencer marketing campaigns
1. Find the PERFECT influencers
I cannot stress this point enough. Why? Simply because it is the single most important aspect of a successful influencer marketing campaign.
If you think that sending a message to the first influencer with lots of followers is enough, think again.
An important reason why influencer marketing is so effective is that it is a targeted form of marketing. Unlike traditional marketing such as TV commercials, you actually have a huge opportunity to target your campaign to the people who matter the most for you. In other words, your target audience. On the other hand, with television ads, you have little to no power over who gets your message and who don’t.
As a result, you’ll end up paying for exposure from people that have no interest whatsoever in your business, and people who will never buy from you.
Sounds like a crappy deal, right? Well, it is. But this is why influencer marketing can be so effective – if you learn how to use it properly.
When you partner with an influencer, you partner with them because you want them to spread the word about your products to their audience. And this is why you need to make sure that their audience is highly relevant to your brand. And as you can imagine, this has a huge impact on the campaign’s success, far beyond the vanity metrics.
And you do this by carefully selecting the influencers that you partner with.
If your competitors are doing influencer marketing as well, it can be quite difficult finding good influencers that aren’t already “taken”, because most influencers don’t want to market two similar products at the same time because it harms their credibility.
Here are some important tips that you need to keep in mind when choosing relevant influencers to work with:
- Find influencers who share content related to your niche.
- Find influencers who share high-quality content
- Find influencers who have a personality/voice which aligns with yours
- Find the thought leaders in your niche that you think your customers go to for advice, tips, inspiration, and recommendations.
- Find influencers who have an engaged audience which show that they are truly engaged in the content the influencer shares.
These tips should help you get started, but if you need a more in-depth guide on how to find highly targeted influencers, read our article about it.
2. Measure results
This doesn’t just go for influencer marketing. It should go for all marketing efforts that you do – at all times.
If you aren’t measuring the results from your influencer marketing campaigns, it will be impossible to know whether or not it was a success. And if it was a huge success, you can use that information to take the next step, for example, double down on influencer marketing and allocate more of your budget to it. On the other hand, if you didn’t generate very good results, you need to evaluate the campaign and see what didn’t go as planned. You also want to take advantage of this information for future campaigns so you can learn what works and what doesn’t.
No-one will be an expert at influencer marketing right from the bat. It’s about consistently improving and refining your influencer marketing campaign to generate better results.
How to measure influencer marketing results:
So how can you go about measuring the results from your influencer marketing campaign? The most basic step is to look at the vanity metrics. While these don’t provide a very in-depth report of how the campaign went, it does provide you with an overview of the campaign, which is a great start.
If you can’t access the statistics, ask the influencer to send over the statistics of the post to see the results it generated. Since most social media platforms offer in-app analytics tools, doing this is very easy.
Comments
The number of comments is a vanity metric, however, the type of content is certainly not. By looking at the comments on the influencer’s post, you can get a better understanding of how it impacted people, what they thought of it, and what their thoughts of it are. This alone is much more specific and detailed than what the number of likes can tell you.
Sales
This may or may not be relevant to you, but what is important to ask yourself is what your goal with the campaign is. If the purpose of the campaign is to build brand awareness, then you cannot expect that the sales metric will be particularly strong. However, if your goal was to make more people first-time customers since you know that the chances of them returning is much higher, and you ran a 50% sale, then it would make more sense to look at the sales metric.
What is important with all marketing tactics to remember is the fact that they can generate results within a number of different areas. As such, you shouldn’t only stare yourself on the metric that you set as a goal because if you do, there’s a risk that you’ll miss all the incredible results the campaign yielded for the other metrics that maybe weren’t even in the equation.
It’s also worth having in mind that things like brand awareness, brand recognition etc may improve a whole lot with influencer marketing, however, metrics like these are very tricky to measure.
Some common metrics that are worth looking at are:
- Email signups
- Website visitors
- Followers
- Tone of conversation
- Sales.
3. Build genuine connections
Marketers say that identifying suitable influencers is the most difficult part of running an influencer marketing campaign, this is why it does not make sense while many marketers also see influencers as one-time partnerships.
When good influencers are so hard to find, I do not understand why marketers go out looking for a new influencer once a campaign is completed. Especially if they’re in a rather small niche where the number of influencers isn’t huge.
As such, you need to focus on building genuine connections with the influencer and a strong relationship with them. Doing this helps you get better results from it in the long run.
The benefits are many except for the fact that they are hard to find. By building strong relationships with your influencers, you are offering something more than just monetary payment in exchange for the exposure, you’re also giving each other value which will go a long way.
Furthermore, when you partner with the same influencer over and over, what they are saying about you will become more trustworthy. And as you probably know, it takes more than one time to convince people to buy from you. This is also why the audience of an influencer needs to be exposed to your brand and products time and time over as this will dramatically increase the chances of them becoming customers.
Also, just like a real-life relationship, when you build a strong relationship with your influencers, they’ll be more inclined to help you, and they’ll work harder because they want to help you succeed.
4. Make the partnership mutually beneficial
This ties together with the point above in many ways, but it is so important that it deserves its own point. It’s also a sneaky yet effective way to improve your influencer marketing campaigns. Why? Well, the thing is that many brands are trying to suck out the most out of every influencer they work with and try to get the most out of them.
This, however, is never long-lived.
A partnership between influencer and brand should mutually beneficial. In fact, all relationships need to be mutually beneficial.
An influencer can sense when they are being taken advantage of and as a result of that, they might do a bad job until the campaign is over. I can assure you that some of your competitors are committing this mistake and by doing the opposite, you’ll immediately get a head start. Plus, if you treat your influencers well, and focus on making it a win-win relationship, you’ll be able to take advantage of the benefits which I talked about in the point above.
5. Don’t be too pushy when trying to sell
This is something that doesn’t just go for influencer marketing. It’s something that goes for all aspects of marketing. The way you sell more is often by trying to sell less. It’s true!
Whether it is you who write the captions and supply the influencer with all content, or the influencer that is doing all the work, you have to make sure that you are not too pushy in your promotion.
I see this a lot of times where brands have partnered up with influencers and the whole campaign just come off as desperate, where the brand tries to get the most out of every influencer marketing campaign. And yes, it makes sense that you want bang for your buck as a company, but remember that people’s bullshit detectors are more fine-tuned than ever now that we’re bombarded with ads all day long. People trust marketing when it comes off as authentic, true, and transparent.
And if you want to improve your influencer marketing campaigns and sell more, the best way is to ask your influencer to speak from their heart, tell a story, and be authentic. People appreciate this, and they’ll reward the influencers who do with their wallet.
The bottom line is that it is absolutely crucial that you tone down anything that may come across as overly promotional, but instead ask yourself (and the influencer) how you can run an authentic and genuine campaign that impacts people.
6. Be consistent
Everything worth working for demand consistency, and Influencer marketing is no exception. By only running one single marketing campaign, you won’t see very much success. I’ve seen so many examples of this where a business team up with an influencer once, have them share one single post, and then sit there waiting for the results to roll in. Yes, this may work if you partner with an influencer who have millions of followers, but the reality is that with one single post one single time, you won’t make a huge impact with your campaign.
By being consistent with your influencer marketing efforts, you remind people about your brand time and time over which will not only help build brand awareness but also increase the chances of selling more products. And the reality is that studies have found that most people need to see things and hear a marketing message multiple times in order to be convinced to buy. As such, you shouldn’t just run one marketing campaign and call it a day, you should also build a long-term partnership with influencers and have them become ambassadors of your brand because this is who you truly make a mark.
Another tip is to use a consistent hashtag. A consistent hashtag will allow your audience to recognize your campaign, making them more likely to engage with it. Consistency is what builds trust and keeps the communication going between a brand and its audience.
Conclusion
If executed on, all of these steps will contribute to a more effective influencer marketing campaign that generates better results. Don’t just satisfy with following the basic steps of setting up an influencer marketing campaign, because if you do, you should expect basic results.
While influencer marketing has proven to be able to drive incredible results, it is just like a tool, where, if you don’t use it properly, it won’t do much good for you.
