Four steps for defining your influencer marketing strategy

Putting together a successful influencer marketing strategy requires intensive research into many different variables. Although objectives may vary according to the brand, the majority of influencer marketing campaigns tend to have a common goal; reaching the brand’s target audience with the right message and encouraging users to carry out certain actions.

There is a wide range of marketing actions that influencers can execute within these types of campaigns and it’s not always easy to know which ones will be the most effective. That’s why, with influencer marketing, KPIs are so important. Measuring campaign results with precision can mean considerable savings and an increase in profitability, since brands will only focus on carrying out actions that offer the best results.

Free download: Influencer marketing KPIs: Metrics for success

To successfully define an influencer marketing strategy, you need to fine tune each of the following steps:

1. Establish campaign objectives
2. Design campaign actions
3. Choose the social network and influencers
4. Execution and analysis

In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at each one of these steps to achieve an optimal influencer marketing strategy.

Steps for success with your influencer marketing strategy

1) Establish campaign objectives

Within every digital strategy, you need to have clearly defined objectives. If we know what we want to achieve, we can put together an effective plan to achieve it, which is a great initial road map for perfecting our strategy.

Influencer marketing strategies can have a range of different objectives, from visibility to branding, to creating a community and increasing customer loyalty. A new brand, for example, will need to present itself on the market before establishing sales objectives, whereas a well-known brand will want their campaign to focus on achieving other metrics.

Whatever the campaign, it’s important to always establish concrete and measurable objectives

By analysing metrics, you’ll be able to clearly define whether or not the campaign has been a hit. In most cases, these metrics will be in the form of likes, followers, visits, sales or downloads. There are, however, other metrics which may not be tangible and which tend to derive from branding objectives related to the following:

• Reputation
• Brand image
• Association of the brand with certain values

These metrics will determine if an influencer marketing campaign has achieved what the brand set out to do.

2) Design campaign actions

It’s normal for a brands to have already decided which marketing actions they want influencers to carry out, but experience shows that flexibility is essential with these types of campaigns. Why?

• Influencers need to feel comfortable with the actions they’re carrying out
• As content creators who know their audience very well, influencers are bound to have a better idea of what will and won’t work.

For that reason, it’s important to always listen to an influencer’s suggestions or present them with a series of alternatives so that they can chose the option with which they feel most comfortable.

There are many different actions within influencer marketing strategies that influencers can execute, therefore there’s no need to limit them to one initial idea.

• Product recommendations or tutorials
• Conversations and mentions on social media
• Interviews
• Reviews
• Events
• Photos and videos
• Etc.

There are many different actions within influencer marketing strategies that influencers can execute

Some influencers will feel more comfortable with certain actions and not so comfortable with others, but the great thing about influencer marketing is that you can combine different protagonist profiles with different campaign actions, a tactic which is more likely to create synergies for your campaign.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget about the campaign budget. When figuring out campaign actions and contracting influencers, the numbers have to add up. The campaign manager will have to find the right balance and measure results in order to obtain valuable data which will come in handy for designing future campaigns with greater profitability. Knowing the cost of each action, and not just the result, is therefore fundamental for optimising the return on investment.

3) Selecting influencers

One of the key points that determines the success of a campaign is selecting the right influencers. To do so, it’s important to evaluate not just the size of their audience (a common misconception), but other data, such as:

• Their audience demographic, to see if it matches that of the brand’s target audience
• The values associated to the influencer (which should match those of the brand)
• The type of content they create
• Their average engagement rate

Find out more: Social Reach vs Engagement: which is more important?

After analysing this data, it’s time to preselect the influencers which seem the most suitable for the campaign and further evaluate their profiles.

Not all influencers that a brand is interested in working with are going to want to sign a collaboration agreement. Sometimes their rates will be out-of-budget, or perhaps the product doesn’t interest them or they don’t have time to participate in a campaign. When working with influencers, it’s important that the approach and the initial proposal be sufficiently appealing to them, as well as the campaign strategy.

A detailed and direct brief which outlines the campaign strategy, provides information about the brand and maps out the desired collaboration with the influencer, including information regarding the economic compensation they’d receive, will be more appealing to an influencer.

4) Execution and analysis

The fourth and final step is to launch the pre-planned campaign actions and analyse the results. It’s important to bear in mind the following when analysing the results:

• The final results will give us an idea of whether or not the objectives have been achieved, but analysing the campaign in real-time will give us an idea of its evolution.

Influencer marketing is therefore not just about influencers carrying out certain actions; the results must be analysed from the very moment the campaign is launched. That way we can see if certain actions work better than others, or if campaign interest is decreasing or increasing. Furthermore, it’s gives us time to react if something does not go as expected.

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• There are many different ways to analyze marketing actions, but the majority are focused on costs and objectives.

Depending on the objectives you set yourself, certain metrics will be more relevant than others. If the aim was to get more clicks on a website, measuring the brand’s reputation isn’t the most important metric.

Reach, engagement rate and earned media are important pieces of data to evaluate to what point a campaign has been successful or if there’s any room for improvement.

In conclusion, influencer marketing strategies have proven to be very beneficial for many brands, as well as a non-intrusive way to promote products and services. Do you want to find out more about how to put together a successful influencer marketing strategy? Download our free eBook about the Influencer Marketing KPIs you should measure and control to get optimal results.