Influencer marketing has seen a huge boost in recent years and has quickly proven itself a highly effective online marketing method.
One quick scroll through your Instagram feed will likely show you there’s no shortage of #sponcon. And honestly? Not all of it works. A savvy audience sees right through content that’s staged, unplanned and inauthentic.
In order to effectively use Instagram influencers in marketing to boost your brand’s authenticity, help drive engagement, web traffic and conversions and build a relevant audience, there’s one thing you really need – and that’s a strategy.
For those who are new to the game, influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing where brands collaborate with influencers (people who have built a dedicated following online) to promote and endorse products or services.
Typically, many influencers have established themselves as experts in their fields – whether that be in fashion, beauty, travel, food or fitness. They have amassed an engaged audience that cares about their posts and pays attention to their opinions. This is how brands are able to leverage off influencers for their own campaign success.
This has created the perfect set of circumstances for influencer marketing to skyrocket as the demand for brands to connect with consumers increases. With no signs of slowing down,
Business Insider Intelligence predicts brands will spend $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022.
“More than 80% of marketers find influencer marketing effective. Collaborating with influencers helps companies create content that rises above the noise and resonates with their target groups. It also helps them build trust, establish brand ideals, and circumvent ad-blockers.”
—Media Planet
How to strategically use Instagram influencers to achieve the best result
Just like any other marketing campaign, the best Instagram influencer marketing requires deliberate thought and planning. It’s not nearly as simple as picking any influencer with thousands of followers and paying them to post a picture posing with your product. A successful influencer marketing campaign is strategic, authentic and measurable.
Have clear objectives
The first step is to define your goals. What do you want to achieve with this campaign? Typically, companies are looking to build brand awareness, build their audience, generate leads or get more sales. Once these goals have been defined in the early stages of planning, you’ll be able to better monitor your success at the end of the campaign.
Define your audience
Before you find the right influencer for your brand, you need to determine who your target audience is. This involves looking at things like their demographics, what their interests are, why they’d use your products and what don’t they know about your brand. Once you know who you’re talking to, it’ll be much easier to pick a suitable influencer. If you have a business Instagram page, the audience insights page is a great starting point for understanding what demographic your audience sits in.
Tactically select your influencer
Once you know your target audience, you’ll understand the kind of influencer that will feel authentic for your brand. In order to ensure the best results for your campaign, you need to carefully research relevant influencers that are on brand and align with your company’s values. For example, Melbourne influencer
Stef Jung curates content around holistic health and mindful eating, so her collaboration with Ninja Kitchen (a kitchen appliance store) comes across very authentically and would appeal to her key audience.
It’s also important to ensure the influencer’s audience demographics are suited to the campaign’s requirements and that their engagement rates are high enough to achieve traction.
Influencers typically fall into a few categories – micro, mid-tier, macro and celebrity. While celebrity status is fairly obvious, the other three categories can be broken down based on the number of followers they have.
Micro influencers usually have a following of 2,000 – 50,000, mid-tier have 50,000 – 500,000 and macro have a social media following of 500,000 and over. As a general rule, influencers will charge approximately $1,000 for every 100,000 followers. Your specific campaign and budget will determine what type of influencer is right for you, but don’t be fooled by micro influencers’ modest followings – they can be just as effective for a brand. Not only are micro influencers more cost effective, their audience is also usually super engaged, loyal and likely to believe in the authenticity of the collaboration.
Brief your influencer
The secret to getting your influencer marketing campaign to go off without a hitch is all in the brief. By providing a detailed and thorough briefing document to your influencer, you can ensure they are aligned with your brand’s key messaging and that they create content and copy that adheres to your vision.
The briefing documents are also where you would outline key regulations required for the post. For example, the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) requires influencers and brands
to clearly distinguish sponsored content. This can be easily adhered to by adding a hashtag such as #ad, #sponsored or #collab to the post.
Obtain measurable results
Once your influencer campaign has gone live, it’s important to track and measure all results in order to identify the campaign’s effectiveness. Results might include engagement rates achieved, cost per engagement, reach generated and the quality of content created. There are many great tools out there that can help with this, but we’d recommend using the social media analytics platform
Klear to track the success of your influencer marketing campaign.
As you can see, there’s a lot more to influencer marketing than meets the eye. By having a clear strategy in place, you’ll be able to ensure your brand gets the most out of its influencer marketing campaign.
Tash Rothnagel, account manager
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