Influencer marketing is when an enterprise collaborates with an influential person on social media to advertise a product, service, or campaign. These people, known as “social media influencers,” have dedicated and engaged followings.
Celebrity endorsements were the original type of influencer marketing. However, in today’s digital world, regular content material creators with niche audiences can usually provide more value to brands.
Here are some tips for Influencer marketing to help your strategies more effective.
Follow the rules
Before you dive into influencer marketing, it’s necessary to know the rules set out by the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC takes disclosure very seriously. Ensure you construct disclosure guidelines into your agreements with influencers. Although influencers are required to identify sponsored posts, a survey from Zine found that 41 % only label content material with tags like #ad or #sponsored. And that’s only when they’re requested to do so.
Here are some key points from the FTC:
- Video reviews should embody both written and verbal disclosure of the partnership in the video itself (not just the description).
- The built-in tools on social media platforms aren’t enough.
- #advert and #sponsored are nice hashtags to use for disclosure, however, ensure that they’re highly visible and not just tacked on to the necessity of a long string of tags.
That last point is an important one since some influencers could also be wary about putting the #advert or #sponsored hashtag right up front. However, it didn’t limit engagement on this sponsored publish for 1850 Coffee by Daniella Monet, which garnered more than 28,000 likes in the first 12 hours after it was posted.
Be willing to give up some creative control
A social media influencer who has worked hard to construct a following won’t accept a deal that makes their own private brand seem inconsistent. And, after all, influencers are content material creation experts—you’ll get the best worth from their work by permitting them to showcase those skills.
Busabout launched a seek for 4 influencers to be the “ultimate travel squad,” touring around Europe and posting on social. While all worked on the same marketing campaign, the content material was varied and showed each person’s unique style.
good idea to offer some tips about what you’re looking for, of course, however, don’t expect to stage-manage the entire marketing campaign.
Boost credibility with influencer messaging on your own channels
You may also recruit share or cross-post content material from influencers on your own channels. This helps highlight the collaboration and offers advantages to both the brand and the influencer.
When the travel firm Wish to Travel partnered with Jonathan Kubben Quiñonez of
Mom I’m Fine fame, they shared his posts on their own Instagram channels.
Kubben Quiñonez has greater than 300,000 Instagram followers and received tens of thousands of likes for the posts on his channels. Want to Travel, on the other hand, is just getting began on Instagram, and at the time of the marketing campaign had only a few hundred followers themselves. However, when they shared a @momimfine post, they received an impressive 23 % engagement rate.
You also need to request that the influencer send you detailed reports on the attain and engagement levels of their posts.
Measure your results
If you launch your influencer marketing campaign, it may be tempting to concentrate on vanity metrics like likes and comments. If your influencer has a much bigger following than your own, you may feel a little dazzled by the sheer number of likes that may rack up.
To measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, you must understand its worth in terms of return on investment. According to a survey by Linqia, 76 % of marketers mentioned measuring influencer marketing campaign ROI was their top challenge for 2018.
UTM parameters are one method to track the guests an influencer sends to your website, as well as how much engagement the marketing campaign receives.
Once you assign each influencer their own unique hyperlinks with UTM codes, you’ll get a clear image of the results. And that permits you to calculate the influence on your bottom line.
For instance, when Instagrammer Christopher Chung labored with Ted Baker Menswear, he directed followers to the Ted Baker hyperlink in his bio.
The hyperlink contained UTM source and content material parameters, which showed Ted Baker Menswear how much visitors came from Chung’s posts.
You also need to request that the influencer send you detailed reports on the attain and engagement levels of their posts. That is especially necessary for channels like Snapchat and Instagram Stories, where engagement happens out of the public view.