15 Tips For Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns

When con­sid­er­ing an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign for your brand, how do you iden­ti­fy the right influ­encer? And where do you go from there?

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Influ­encers offer sev­er­al dis­tinct advan­tages to brands. Influ­encers enable brands to poten­tial­ly speak to con­sumers more authen­ti­cal­ly. They also open oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to con­nect with con­sumers in ways they are more open to than tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing tac­tics. And this, in turn, allows brands to reclaim some of the pow­er they lost in sway­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing deci­sions with the rise of social.


As influ­encer mar­ket­ing has evolved from sim­ply find­ing the influ­encer with the widest reach to iden­ti­fy­ing the one spe­cif­ic influ­encer with­in a sea of influ­encers that is the exact right fit, how is a brand to know which influ­encer is right? And what comes next?

Here are 15 tips from dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts on how to get the most out of an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

1. Think About The Audience Your Brand Is Trying To Reach

Eric Brown, vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at social net­work engage­ment com­pa­ny Lithi­um Tech­nolo­gies, which acquired online exper­tise man­age­ment firm Klout last year, calls it “old hat mar­ket­ing,” but said brands have to first think about their tar­get and how they are going to engage it.

Katie Pater­son, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing direc­tor of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Traackr, agrees it helps to first under­stand who is buy­ing a brand’s prod­ucts.

The more you under­stand the buy­er, the more you are able to dis­sect who is influ­enc­ing them,” Pater­son said.

And, for her part, dig­i­tal indus­try con­sul­tant Hol­lis Thomases notes an influ­encer is only as valu­able as his or her audi­ence and no mar­keter can scale an influ­encer, which can some­times be a deter­rent to mar­keters who want assur­ance of scale. Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is a pow­er­ful and effec­tive way to con­duct mar­ket­ing, but it has some lim­i­ta­tions, she said.

2. Identify Influencers With Laser Focus

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is no longer about uti­liz­ing social media pow­er­hous­es, but about find­ing the ones with the best fans/followers for a giv­en brand.

That means that instead of just look­ing for mom­my blog­gers, for exam­ple, brands need to drill down and find the 35-year-old moth­er of two who lives in Los Ange­les and is pas­sion­ate about healthy fast food, Brown said.

This, in turn, leads to bet­ter con­nec­tions and con­tent.

Good influ­encer mar­ket­ing is about earned media. It should not be about paid media. If you have to bribe [influ­encers] overt­ly or covert­ly to love your prod­uct, it’s not real influ­ence,” Brown said.

3. Use Tools & Big Data To Find Influencers That Will Activate Buyers

Pater­son said brands should seek influ­encers that are going to inspire buy­ers to take action and notes the mar­ket now has many tools that make these influ­encers eas­i­er to find.

These tools help brands pin­point those very pre­cise influ­encers, Brown adds.

And this may be some­thing of a David/Goliath sit­u­a­tion in which some larg­er agen­cies are at a bit of a dis­ad­van­tage.

Tra­di­tion­al demo­graph­ics are what ad agen­cies are good at sell­ing,” Brown said. “The inter­est and pas­sion points of influ­encers I think is hard­er, but the returns are greater and good mar­keters will start shift­ing more time and effort toward those.”

4. Make Sure That ‘Influencer’ Is Actually An Influencer

At the same time, Thomases points out that tools like Klout, which can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly mea­sure and iden­ti­fy influ­encers, can be gamed, so “mar­keters need to be wary and do their own due dili­gence to ver­i­fy that some­one who appears to be influ­en­tial in their cat­e­go­ry real­ly is.”

5. Consider Communities When Looking For Influencers

Dig­i­tal mar­keters need to look at com­mu­ni­ties much more close­ly than they have in the past because com­mu­ni­ties are a pow­er­ful and over­looked tool, Brown said. But this is where con­sumers are engag­ing around prod­ucts, ser­vices and pas­sion points. And it’s where they are cre­at­ing and shar­ing con­tent and expe­ri­ences.

It’s not some­thing eas­i­ly sold by an agency. There is no IAB stan­dard for­mat for a com­mu­ni­ty,” Brown said. “It’s high­ly cus­tomized, high­ly per­son­al­ized, high­ly tai­lored for an audi­ence.”

And tools and big data can help tap into these com­mu­ni­ties as well, Brown adds.

6. Look At The Quality Of Content & Audience Engagement

Engage­ment is a crit­i­cal met­ric. Some influ­encers may have small­er reach, but have audi­ences that are super-engaged and very loy­al and that are on the influencer’s site every day and are act­ing on the rec­om­men­da­tions of that influ­encer, said Hol­ly Hamann, CMO of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Tap­In­flu­ence.

It’s the engage­ment that will move the nee­dle – not nec­es­sar­i­ly the dig­i­tal foot­print. Real­ly scru­ti­niz­ing influ­encers for active com­mu­ni­ties is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant,” adds Mar­cy Mas­sura, senior vice pres­i­dent and dig­i­tal prac­tice lead at PR firm MSLGroup. “It’s not just about how pop­u­lar they are any more. It’s about how pop­u­lar they are and what is the qual­i­ty of the con­tent they create…That’s a shift in 2015. I see it grow­ing. It will be a big year for the influ­encer.”

7. Interact With Consumers How They Want To Be Interacted With

That means brand should take the mes­sage they want to share and put it into the hands of peo­ple con­sumers know and trust, Pater­son said. Con­sumers don’t want mes­sages shoved down their throats.

Influ­encers can share prod­ucts with some­one, but it doesn’t feel like they are being sold to,” Pater­son adds. “If you do it right, that’s the poten­tial that you have. You can enter con­ver­sa­tions with the buy­er and it’s a two-way street and buy­ers can learn from you as well and make sure the prod­uct works for them.”

8. Utilize Influencers Who Produce Personal, Relevant Content

Because shar­ing on social net­works is so focused on per­son­al con­tent, there is an expec­ta­tion among con­sumers for com­pa­ra­ble con­tent from brands. There­fore, influ­encer mar­ket­ing requires a high­er lev­el of author­i­ty, and, sub­se­quent­ly, more per­son­al and rel­e­vant con­tent, which is in part why celebri­ties are less pow­er­ful here than cit­i­zens who like­ly have more per­ti­nent expe­ri­ence with a giv­en prod­uct, Brown said.

9. Tap Influencers Who Will Help Your Brand Create More Compelling Content

Face­book con­tin­ues to change the way it dis­plays con­tent because it is try­ing to find bet­ter ways to inte­grate dis­play ads into the News Feed. But con­sumers can still tell they are dis­play ads, Brown said.

I think dis­play fatigue will lead mar­keters to think of new ways to reach audi­ences,” he said. “Dis­play fatigue online is like what’s hap­pened on TV.”

Adver­tis­ers have learned they must cre­ate more com­pelling TV con­tent if they want to cap­ture the atten­tion of view­ers that can eas­i­ly skip ads. “Some things are so bizarre, I see it on fast for­ward and have to stop to see it in real time,” Brown said.

Adver­tis­ers also know that con­sumers’ eyes are focused on the mid­dle of the screen as they fast for­ward and so even if view­ers are not pay­ing atten­tion to an ad per se, some­thing like Target’s logo in the mid­dle of the screen will still stick out.

This trend toward more engag­ing con­tent and ways to think out­side the box to cap­ture con­sumer atten­tion is one Brown expects to extend to influ­encer mar­ket­ing.

10. Work Collaboratively With Influencers

Influ­encers are influ­en­tial because they are good at cre­at­ing con­tent and they know their audi­ences well. Ergo, brands should work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with them and let them have some cre­ative free­dom with con­tent, Hamann said.

We’ve found over and over again, when brands work with influ­encers and give up some con­trol, they cre­ate con­tent that is bet­ter than they cre­ate on their own,” Hamann added.

11. Establish Some Limitations With Influencers

Mas­sura said MSLGroup puts “pret­ty wild­ly acceptable…brand guard rails” with stip­u­la­tions about top­ics and lan­guage to avoid into its agree­ments with influ­encers, but, at the same time, wants its influ­encers “to be cre­ative and do what is going to make their com­mu­ni­ties hap­py.”

We want them to cre­ate stuff that will make sense for their com­mu­ni­ties,” Mas­sura said. “They have cre­ative con­trol with­in a guid­ed process.”

12. Define Success, Make Expectations & Objectives Clear To Influencers

When work­ing with influ­encers, brands must be very orga­nized, respon­sive and clear about their objec­tives and when they expect posts, etc., Hamann said.

They have to be real­ly, real­ly clear with their expec­ta­tions so influ­encers are set up to suc­ceed,” Hamann said. “Fuzzy goals and objec­tives lead to unmet expec­ta­tions.”

Also, brands should make sure objec­tives are aligned through­out an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign so that they can track whether the cam­paign is suc­cess­ful or not, Pater­son said.

13. Compensate Influencers

Influ­encers are cre­at­ing con­tent like blog posts and pho­tos and that takes time and effort, Hamann said.

A lot of times, brands assume influ­encers will cre­ate con­tent for free, but…as more influ­encers real­ize how valu­able their con­tent real­ly is, less will tol­er­ate that. It’s a well-accept­ed part of the ecosys­tem to com­pen­sate,” Hamann said.

14. Don’t Be Afraid To Modify A Campaign

If a path isn’t work­ing out, if the influ­encer isn’t quite right, if you’re not see­ing move­ment in sales, change,” Mas­sura said. “It’s a very flex­i­ble mar­ket­ing approach.”

15. Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Influencer’s Basket

I don’t know many adver­tis­ers who only adver­tise in a sin­gle chan­nel and on/through a sin­gle pub­lish­er or net­work these days, pri­mar­i­ly because the adver­tis­er wants to reach as many rel­e­vant peo­ple as it can,” Thomases said. “So although the influ­encer may be very valu­able in terms of reach­ing his/her present audi­ence, there’s dimin­ish­ing returns on that audi­ence over time because it’s the same peo­ple receiv­ing the mar­keter’s mes­sage over and over again.”

In oth­er words, as Brown said, influ­encer mar­ket­ing is best as part of an inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that includes oth­er ele­ments as well.

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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