Influencer marketing on Instagram has become the hot topic on many marketer’s lips, and when you consider the potential, it’s not difficult to understand why.
With its community of over 600 million active users, including many incredible content material creators, Instagram has grown to be a top visual marketing platform for all types of companies—start-ups and large global brands alike.
The newest algorithm update by Instagram (posts are now shown based on engagement rather than in chronological order) means that paid advertising and influencer marketing on Instagram have just grown to be more essential than ever before.
What’s Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing isn’t a new phenomenon. It is constructed on the foundation of word-of-mouth recommendations. Social media has simply revitalized the ability of this marketing method.
Brands can use influencer marketing on Instagram to collaborate with a relevant online influencer, tapping into both their creativity and engaged viewers to construct brand awareness in an authentic and organic method.
It isn’t much different from when a friend recommends a holiday destination. You appreciate their suggestion since you trust their judgment. Influencer marketing works a similar method, permitting you to target viewers of like-minded people that follow an influencer they trust.
Who’re these Influencers?
One of the most exciting features of influencer marketing on Instagram is the incredible combination of people represented, covering all kinds of niches, from all around the world.
Personal trainers are utilizing Instagram to share their workouts, fashion bloggers to show off their style, interior designers to show their portfolio, travel photographers to catalog their adventures, and even chefs to publish their recipes.
While a few of these influencers have follower counts exceeding these of traditional celebrities, they’re seen quite differently. An influencers life will usually feel more relatable. If they decide to collaborate with a brand, the majority of the time, their opinion isn’t only genuine however will also be taken more seriously by their followers.
Influencer Marketing on Instagram in 5 Steps
Discovering an influencer and agreeing on a collaboration with them could be a time-consuming exercise that’s difficult to scale. For greatest outcomes, use this 5 step process to stay on track.
1. Do Your Homework
There’s so much that you could learn from other brands. Uncover what works for them, get inspiration from the different types of content material they publish, and take a look at what kinds of content material get the most engagement.
An obvious place to begin your analysis is by what your competitors are doing. We use the tool, Whalar Labs, which lets you see metrics on your Instagram account and then compare it with up to three others.
It’s additionally a great idea to analysis other brands, which aren’t your competitors, however maybe share a similar demographic. At Shore Projects, we keep an eye on what Herschel does as we feel Herschel buyer is quite likely to be a Shore Projects buyer too.
If your brand has a story behind it, an analysis that too. Our roots are drawn from the British seaside, so we spend lots of time keeping an eye on seaside and nautical based accounts.
Lastly, a great reference point is the Instagram for Business blog. They regularly post case studies and announce new options and tools. It’s a terrific place to learn content material particular to how brands can get the most out of Instagram.
2. Set a Clear Brief
Your marketing campaign will be more profitable when you permit the influencer the creative freedom to provide content material that they know their viewers will love. While it is equally essential to mock up a brief with the goals you want to achieve, allowing for creative freedom is one of the key methods to make influencer marketing on Instagram successful. Trust them to create an authentic and interesting marketing campaign for you.
One document you can provide with a brief is a mood board. Here are examples of mood boards we share for Shore Projects. They help give influencers an thought of the general aesthetic we wish to have.
3. Choose Relevant Influencers
When you’ve got a clear idea of what you wish to achieve, the next important step is to seek out relevant influencers. Getting this wrong could be expensive so it is worth investing a bit more time to make the best decision.
There are influencers within basically every market. Whether it is fashion, lifestyle, journey, health, you will likely discover more than a few good choices. One of the main methods to find people is by looking out hashtags and discovering posts that had a high engagement (a lot of likes and comments). You may also quite often find influencers on the accounts of other brands. Look for posts where they tag someone else as the content material creator.
It may be quite hard to seek out relevant influencers without spending a long time trawling via hundreds of Instagram accounts, which is where tools like Whalar come into play. You may search a database of influencers by topic, location, engagement, rates, and so on.—all of whom are keen to collaborate with relevant brands.
4. Agree On a Collaboration Structure
When you’ve discovered the influencers you wish to work with you’ll need to reach out to them and agree on a collaboration structure. There are typically 5 key aspects you’ll wish to negotiate around:
Timeframe – Be upfront about the deadline and highlight that it’s crucial they meet it.
Output – Be clear with what you need them to produce. For instance, two pieces of content material, one to be published on the influencer’s account with a mention of your brand, and one that you will use at your discretion.
Content material Usage – Allow them to know what content material utilization rights you want. The influencer will always retain the ownership as the creator, however, we usually ask for a two-year full content material utilization right.
Payment – Nearly all the greatest influencers will require a fee for their services. Sometimes, they could be willing to negotiate or take a free product/service/experience as a part of that fee; nevertheless, you need to expect to make some payment to them. If you’re negotiating a price, remember that you are paying for multiple services: content material creation, utilization rights, and access to their viewers.
Sponsored Hashtag – Regulations on the sponsored content material are varied all over the world and changing all the time. I suggest erring on the side caution and at all times using #spon or #advert. We’ve discovered it makes absolutely no difference to the efficiency or response to the post.
5. Maximize the Content Value
Get further worth out of sponsored Instagram content material by repurposing it for other channels. Listed here are three examples of ways we maximize the content material worth for Shore Projects:
1. Publish It on Product Page
We use the Shopify App called TagTray to publish the influencer content material on our product pages. Not only does this make our product pages look good, it provides positive social proof, and has even lead to real clients now submitting their content material as well.
Since embedding Instagram content material, we have seen a 23% improvement in page conversion, and an impressive 40% improvement in time spent on page.
2. Publish It as Facebook Adverts
At a Facebook marketing occasion, we learned that it is essential to maintain your advert units refreshed with the new content material. Initially, we were utilizing our product and lifestyle photography and found it very challenging to maintain creating new graphics all the time.
By utilizing influencer content material, we are now capable of refresh our advert units regularly. On top of that, utilizing influencer content material has improved our conversion rate by 19%.
3. Publish It on Social Media
We additionally share content material created by influencers on our social media accounts. Around 80% of the creative we post on the Shore Projects social media accounts comes from influencers and real customers.
Note: Always be sure you have permission to use other people’s photos.
Influencer marketing on Instagram could be a cost-effective method for your brand to source highly creative content material, grow brand advocacy, and tap into other people’s engaged audiences.