Influencer marketing has grown tremendously in the last decade, giving brands a fresh way to reach even the most niche audiences. Let’s talk about the fundamentals of running a successful influencer marketing campaign and ways to approach it for the most optimal results.
It’s undeniable: influencers are… influential. From the “TikTok Made Me Buy It” trend to shopping haul videos to discount codes, content creators have built what can only be perceived as their own media channels. They range in size, from nano influencers to mega influencers who boast audiences into the millions. Their audiences trust them and their opinions. And brands are cashing in.
Have you ever watched a recipe reel on Instagram and then found yourself craving that food? We capitalized on the love of food for a successful influencer marketing campaign with Alberta Beef Producers (ABP). In the early stages of the campaign, we engaged content partners for one or two posts over the course of a month. We quickly realized that our influencers were ABP’s biggest fans, which led to the creation of the Alberta Beef Ambassador Program.
The program created longer partnerships with the influencers we had been working with. Each influencer signed quarterly agreements, agreeing to make four posts per month about beef as a delicious, budget-friendly ingredient and about specific ABP campaigns, such as How Do You Burger?
Our amazing ambassadors went above and beyond. We saw them post much more about beef than their agreements required and regularly tag Alberta Beef. They shared recipes, tips, tricks, and more.
The campaign kept beef front and centre. The Ambassador Program structure meant that audiences were exposed to beef-related messages over a longer period of time, and the agency’s time (and budget) was eaten up by constantly looking for, vetting, engaging, and singing influencers.
The success of your influencer marketing campaign is directly related to the content creator. When choosing an influencer, the three key factors you should consider are audience type, size, and the influencer’s online persona.
The influencer’s audience has to be interested in what you’ve got to offer. Typically, influencers have a pretty solid understanding of their audience’s preferences, but there are still numbers you’ll need to verify. For starters, establish where the audience is from. Just because an influencer is based in Vancouver doesn’t mean that’s where their followers are.
Engagement rates compared to the number of followers is also important. Request analytics screenshots over different time periods to understand how active an audience is. Another crucial aspect of analytics is gathering data on additional insights such as the audience’s age, gender, and types of content they most engage with. You can also use tools such as Influencer Marketing Hub’s calculators to research average pricing based on audience sizes and engagements.
There are four size-based influencer categories:
A-list mega influencers aren’t always the best choice, even though they might seem exciting to work with. Especially when working in niche markets, a nano-influencer with a highly engaged audience can often deliver better ROI and – as an added bonus – may be easier to deal with.
And, of course, you’ve got to do a background check. It’s essential to make sure the influencer has not been engaging in something that doesn’t align with the client’s values. If you do find something, be honest.
For example, we once came across an influencer that was perfect for a campaign based on their content and audience. But years earlier, they had done work that might be appear controversial to some audiences. We presented the influencer, and their work history, to the client, who felt that it was far enough in the past to not be an issue. The conversation was important to have – even if it had its awkward moments.
Measurement is one of the biggest challenges of influencer marketing campaigns. Every influencer has a different understanding of how to work with analytics, what they mean, and what to look for. There are a few ways in which we usually address this.
The first one is ensuring that the influencer is using any in-platform branded content tools that are available. This allows us to access all the necessary data from within the client’s analytics on partnership posts.
In some cases, we would let the client know that we were making projections based on the influencer’s audience and their typical engagement rates. There are tools that allow us to make data-backed guesstimations, and those can work as well.
Another way is to assign unique UTMs to influencers that will link to a campaign page or a site. That way, you will see specific traffic coming from each influencer. Promo and discount codes unique to each influencer work in a similar way.
Depending on the local regulations, the level of disclosure required for a paid partnership varies. However, it’s a good rule of thumb to ensure that your influencers are always disclosing that their post, reel, blog, or other content is a paid partnership – and not just buried in the hashtags! Help build on the trust their audience has for them by requiring disclosures to be in the main body of captions.
While influencer marketing is popular and highly effective when done right, it’s not an absolute necessity for every campaign. Influencer marketing works best with a specific product or tactic rather than with generic brand awareness messaging. Simply because it is easier to quantify success. But that doesn’t mean that awareness-based influencer content can’t help inform audiences (for example, cause-based marketing campaigns) or simply remind them how yummy beef is. 😉
Connect with us to leverage the skills and knowledge Stephanie and the rest of the WS team offer for the marketing success of your project.
Stephanie has eight years of experience in content strategy across all channels; specializing in content creation, execution and deployment, social media scheduling and community management. She holds her Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication from Royal Roads University. Stephanie wonders how communities define and redefine themselves both on and offline. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
