Albert Einstein once said, “If you want different results, do not do the same things.” And he wasn’t wrong. There are many different factors that affect how an Influencer Marketing campaign functions, but creating a strategy based on a set objective is without a doubt a fundamental and essential step that very marketer should take.
In fact, the smaller the number of objectives and the more concrete they are, the more effective your strategy will be. Ideally, an Influencer Marketing campaign should focus on one or two objectives.
Every brand is a world in its own and every Influencer Marketing strategy ought to be, too. A campaign’s marketing strategy and each operation should be defined individually in order to achieve certain metrics. But how can we achieve said metrics? Let’s explore the possibilities.
This tends to be the objective of choice for brands which have recently launched or have only been around for a few months. They look to make a name for themselves on social networks, gain visibility and make an impact on users. These types of campaigns tend to involve a great number of influencers who are perfectly aligned with the brand or the service being offered and the particularly interesting metrics for campaigns of this character are the reach and the engagement levels, which help to measure the response from potential clients.
These types of campaigns aim to build a brand’s image or associate a certain concept or characteristic with a brand. In doing so, brands become easily recognisable and are associated to a series of attributes and values. A good example of this is Reebok, a sports brand like many others, but marketed in such a way that the brand is directly linked to the idea of strength as a lifestyle.
When campaigns have these types of objectives, brands tend to collaborate with influencers with very niche profiles. In such cases, the size of the community is not as important as the profile’s adeptness.
Another thing that can be very beneficial for brands, is maintaining long-term relationships with influencers who eventually become ambassadors; that way the brand’s identity is reinforced through these very niche and polished profiles.
Brands that wish to position themselves in the market tend to be those that strive to be “top of mind” in their particular sector. After all, who wants to be just another brand? With this objective in mind, brands are pursuing notoriety; they want to be the first company that pops into the consumer’s mind when they think of a certain sector. But, how can brands achieve this? By providing consumers with information and by explaining the prominent characteristics of their brand. In an Influencer Marketing campaign, this should be done with influencers who have already made a name for themselves in the same sector.
Brands often seek to generate traffic for their websites in order to contribute to their visibility and their positioning. This is achieved with campaigns launched on Youtube, Twitter and Instagram Stories (nowadays, predominantly via the latter) with commercial competitions and giveaways. These operations also generate traffic for brands’ social network profiles and increase their public.
Traffic is also obtained through mentions in channels such as Instagram Stories, which allows influencers to add direct links to brand profiles. These mentions may not necessarily lead to a purchase, but the seed will have been planted in the consumer’s mind. This particular kind of traffic is measured by the number of clicks on the URL.
Conversion is a direct result from increased traffic and is one of the most common campaign objectives. An example of this, is giving influencers discount codes to share with their followers, which they then use upon checkout.
With this particular operation, it’s important that the payment process be user-friendly and optimal, so that potential sales achieved through influencers are not lost.
In any case, by reinforcing the visibility, branding and the positioning of a brand, this will always (yes, always!) lead to more sales.
This particular objective is quite often forgotten. Sometimes, too much time is dedicated to engaging new andbrands end up neglecting the current ones. So, how does this objective work?
One option is using brand ambassadors. If you continue to work with a particular influencer, you will retain their followers.
Another option is carrying out competitions, encouraging the community to share their experience with the brand and rewarding them for doing so.
Ultimately, our recommendation is to never put the cart before the horse, or in other words, never draw up an influencer marketing strategy without previously determining the objectives, so that each operation is coherente and will have the highest possibility of obtaining good results.
If your goals are clear, all that’s left to figure out is how to achieve them.