How to run an influencer marketing campaign?

How to run an influencer marketing campaign?

The interest in influencer marketing has been growing steadily over the past few years and more and more people are seeking its help to improve the brand and reach out to their target audience now more than ever before. With effective influencer marketing campaigns and engaging content, you are making your audience more receptive to the brand’s message. But before you begin drafting your strategy, make sure you know what you are getting into. To help you out, we’ve listed a few things that will help you run a successful influencer marketing campaign. 

1. Define your goals, plan and strategize 

The first and foremost step is to set your goals and then plan and strategize accordingly. Depending on your goals and objectives, you will choose your influencers and then collaborate with them and further your selected metrics will help you assess the success of your campaign towards the end of it. Below discussed are some goals and metrics that you could consider when planning an influencer marketing campaign for your business or brand:

• Brand awareness – Reach of the campaign, growth in social media following, number of social media mentions, etc.
• Increased sales – growth in sales, amount of sales through a designated coupon code given to the influencer, etc.
• Engagement and customer retention – Engagement generated during the campaign, number of repeat customers during the campaign, etc.
• Increased social media following – Growth in the social media following

Once you have selected your metrics,next is to record the current stats before running the campaign. This will help you compare the results with the stats at the end of your influencer marketing campaign.

1. Find your target audience

Before you begin looking for social media influencers to collaborate with, you should determine your target audience. While defining your target audience, you should focus on locations, demographics, and interest areas as these factors will help you understand your target audience’s profiles. You can also use tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to get a better understanding of your target audience.This helps you find the right influencers for your campaign. 

1. Find suitable influencers for your campaign

Once the target audience has been defined, the next step is to shortlist influencers with whom you want to collaborate with. Make sure that your audience must trust and respect the opinions of the influencers you partner with. Without the trust component, any results will be superficial. Check for the engagement rates of the influencers by determining the number of views, likes, comments, and shares.

1. Reach out to your target influencers

Start contacting potential influencers. Begin the communication slowly by interacting organically with their posts. Like their content, comment when appropriate and be appreciative. Followed by this, when you are ready to suggest a partnership, direct message is a great place to start. If you can find an email address, try that too. But refrain from sending a mass email or generic DM. It may take a little longer to write a personal message to each influencer. But,in the long run it will be beneficial as you’re serious about the potential partnership. This will in turn increase your chances of striking a deal.

Make sure to provide as much information as you can about your brand and ensure that your message is loud and clear as to what you hope to accomplish with your Instagram campaign and how will the influencer benefit from it beyond the paycheck.

1. Collaborate with the influencer and coordinate the campaign

Next, collaborate with the influencer and look forward to coordinating the campaign. It’s a good idea to provide some guidelines about what you’re looking for, of course but don’t expect to stage-manage the entire campaign.

1. Measure the results

Once the campaign has been launched measure the effectiveness of the campaign by understanding its value in terms of ROI besides just focusing on the vanity metrics like likes and comments. If the influencer has a larger following than you do then you are surely going to be dazzled by the sheer number of likes that can rack up.

We hope that the above guide will help you in running a result driven and profitable influencer marketing campaign that will help your business grow manifolds and reach its target audience.