12 Actionable Ways to a Great Influencer Marketing Strategy

Influencer marketing is an integral part of building successful brands. In 2023, the global value of influencer marketing reached 21.1 billion dollars, proving it’s a profitable strategy.

Creating an effective influencer marketing strategy is more than just advertisements. It requires careful planning, thought, and a deep understanding of your target audience. 

Many brands find influencer marketing challenging, but this article aims to simplify it. We’ll provide a step-by-step guide to harness its potential effectively. Here, we outline twelve actionable steps to create a powerful influencer marketing strategy.

But before diving into these practical steps, let’s take a closer look at what influencer marketing really means and explore the different types of influencers.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is when businesses use popular people or “influencers” to get more attention for their brand.

Imagine working with someone who has tons of followers online to talk about what you sell. People usually trust these popular figures, so when they recommend your brand, it can really help you sell more.

Types of Influencers

These influencers can be further categorized according to their follower base. And usually, the bigger the influencer’s followers are, the higher they are paid.

Mega or Celebrity Influencers

These are very famous people, like actors or athletes, with millions of followers. Think of Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez, or Cristiano Ronaldo with literally hundreds of millions of followers on Instagram alone.

While they’re perfect for showing your brand to a lot of people at once, they can be really expensive to collaborate with.

Macro-Influencers

They have 100,000 to 1 million followers and are known for their expertise in certain topics. They’ve built trust with their followers over time.

Micro-Influencers

With 10,000 to 100,000 followers, they focus on specific subjects their followers love, from fashion to fitness. They’re becoming more popular because they have a high engagement rate with their audience.

Nano-Influencers

Even though they have less than 10,000 followers, their recommendations are powerful. They come across as genuine and down-to-earth, making their advice feel like it’s from a friend.

Why Use Influencer Marketing?

Now that you have a better understanding of what influencer marketing is, why should you even consider it as part of your marketing strategy?

First, influencer marketing is a flexible and powerful way to connect with different audiences. It can be a big campaign to get your brand known or a smaller effort aimed at people interested in specific things.

Second, influencer marketing can boost your brand’s credibility. People tend to trust recommendations from individuals they admire or follow more than traditional advertising.

If an influencer uses your product and shares their genuine experience, it can add a layer of trust and authenticity to your brand that’s hard to achieve through other means.

Lastly, it’s highly targeted. Influencers usually have specific niches or areas they are known for, such as beauty, fitness, or technology. This means you can collaborate with influencers who align with your brand.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at twelve practical steps to develop an outstanding influencer marketing strategy.

1. Define Clear Objectives

The first step in influencer marketing is to start with clear objectives. These goals act as your guide, influencing every decision from choosing the right influencers to measuring your campaign’s success.

Common Goals of Influencer Marketing

• Brand Awareness: A major goal is often to make more people know about what you’re offering. Influencer marketing introduces your brand to new people through influencers.
  
• Engagement: It’s also important to see how people interact with what’s posted. When an audience engages a lot with content, it means they’re paying attention and care about it. High engagement shows that an influencer’s followers are genuinely interested in what’s shared, which is exactly what you need.
  
• Sales: Obviously, sales are a big objective. Working with influencers who can actually get their followers to buy something is crucial.
  
• Tracking Success: Keeping track of things like how much you sell and how much people interact with your content is essential. By monitoring these metrics, you can tweak your influencer marketing strategy to get even better results over time.

2. Understand Your Audience

Getting to know your audience is a must to build a solid influencer marketing strategy. It ensures your content always strikes the right chord. This knowledge helps you create content that’s not just engaging but also valuable.

Plus, it’s crucial for tweaking and enhancing your marketing moves. Without these insights, you’re just guessing, never really sure if your campaigns are making an impact

Demographics & Psychographics

The two easiest ways to understand your audience are through demographics and psychographics.

Demographics refers to the basic details about people, like age, gender, and where they live. Psychographics, on the other hand, goes deeper, looking into what people value, what interests them, and how they live their lives.

Together, these details paint a full picture of who your ideal customers are. This info helps you find influencers who effectively resonate with your audience.

How to Segment Audience

The first step is understanding your audience. The second one is to efficiently segment them. 

Segmenting your audience by demographics is pretty direct. For instance, If your audience is mostly young adults, find influencers they can relate to.

Psychographics takes more effort. Look at what influencers post and how they interact with followers. This tells you about their values and interests. Matching these with your brand’s vibe helps you find influencers who truly represent what you stand for.

Lastly, figuring out where your audience hangs out online is equally important. Check your website’s analytics to see where your visitors come from. This info hints at the best social platforms for your influencer campaigns.

3. Identify the Right Influencers

Choosing the right influencers means more than just looking for those with lots of followers. Sure, having a large audience is good, but you also have to make sure that their followers are legitimate and not troll or dummy accounts.

Most importantly, find influencers who fit well with your brand image. This is crucial for a strong influencer marketing plan. Here are some factors that you need to take into consideration when looking for the right influencer.

Look for Relevance

Start by finding influencers whose posts match your brand’s values and will appeal to your target audience. This ensures your message reaches the people most likely to be interested in your products or services.

Check Engagement Rates

Next, check how much people interact with the influencer’s content. An engagement rate of 1-5% is pretty standard, but anything above that shows the influencer really knows how to engage their audience and spark real conversations.

Evaluate Post Frequency

Consider how often an influencer shares content. Whether it’s daily posts or less frequent but regular updates, consistent engagement keeps your brand fresh in its audience’s minds.

Prioritize Authenticity

Authenticity is key because trust is essential in the digital space. Work with influencers who have real, genuine connections with their followers.

4. Leverage Tools for Influencer Identification

We’ve repeatedly mentioned that you need to find the right influencer for your brand, but how do you do it? Luckily, we have powerful tools to make this process easier. With these tools, influencer marketing becomes much more manageable.

Here’s a quick look at some of them:

BuzzSumo

This tool helps you find the content that’s getting the most attention and the people behind it. You can search using topics, keywords, or domains and adjust the filters to suit your brand. It’s excellent for identifying influencers who are already hitting the mark with your target audience.

Upfluence

Broaden your search across social media with Upfluence. It allows for in-depth searches based on different criteria, giving you access to influencer profiles and their analytics. Ideal for overseeing your campaigns from beginning to end, Upfluence ensures everything lines up with your objectives.

AspireIQ

Aimed at growing your influencer marketing efforts, AspireIQ matches you with influencers who reflect your brand’s principles. It also provides tools to make working together smoother, leading to more effective campaigns and easier ROI tracking.

Klear

For a wider perspective, Klear lets you search by niche, location, or skill. It offers detailed profiles for a thorough analysis. This helps you choose influencers in a data-driven approach to optimize your influencer marketing further.

Grin

Focused on genuine connections, Grin digs into influencers’ social media performance and content, aiding in the creation of impactful campaigns. It’s centered on developing lasting relationships that help your brand grow.

5. Craft a Compelling Pitch

Creating a pitch that captures an influencer’s interest is crucial in influencer marketing. The trick is to personalize your approach. Skip the one-size-fits-all messages.

Begin with their name and offer genuine praise for their work. Demonstrate you’ve done your research. Explain why your brand is a good fit for their style and how their followers would benefit. Personal touches make your pitch stand out.

Highlight the benefits for them clearly, whether it’s free products, unique discounts, or increased exposure. Be upfront about the advantages.

Your pitch should also be brief but include all vital information. Conclude with a clear call to action, guiding them on what to do next.

Once an influencer is interested, clarify mutual expectations. Discuss your objectives, budget, and the content creation process together.

Having a Written Agreement

This step solidifies the partnership’s foundation. Ensure both parties are clear on expectations and how success will be assessed.

A written agreement is vital, as it outlines the collaboration terms and prevents future misunderstandings. This agreement should detail the campaign’s extent, creative directions, and methods for measuring success.

It acts as protection for both you and the influencer, keeping everyone aligned.

6. Work Together on Content Creation

Teaming up with influencers to make content is a big part of doing well in influencer marketing. After you both agree on how to team up, the next thing to do is create content together.

It’s key to give influencers a clear plan or outline.

This outline should explain your goals, what you expect from them, how you want things to look, when things need to be done, and what the final result should be. However, it’s also important to give influencers the creative freedom to do their own thing.

After all, they know their audience the most and can make content that talks to them, all while sticking to your plan.

Ways to Work with Influencers

Here are some of the most common approaches to collaborating with your influencer.

Influencer Gifting

A simple way to work together is by giving influencers your products. This can lead to honest reviews and the start of longer partnerships. This is a smart move, especially for brands that don’t have a lot of money but want to build strong, lasting connections.

Picking influencers who genuinely like your products makes the team-up more authentic and engaging.

Sponsored Posts

Another method is paying for posts, which might be a set fee or based on how well the post does.

Content Collaboration

Teaming up on content is more than just ads. It could be having an influencer on your podcast or writing on a well-known blog. This is great for getting good backlinks to your site or letting your brand’s story be told through someone else’s words.

Product Collaborations

Working closely with an influencer to create a new product or line can make your brand shine. Influencers who stand behind your brand as ambassadors share your values and back your brand for a long time.

Let Influencers Distribute Your Content

The dynamics of your collaboration with influencers depend on the nature of your relationship. Engaging directly with influencers allows for more personal and formal interaction, setting the stage for detailed campaign agreements, including posts, scheduling, payments, and strategies.

On the contrary, finding influencers through platforms or agencies might not offer the same level of depth but provides structure and clarity to the campaign setup.

Direct partnerships enable tailored agreements, ensuring a clear understanding of campaign expectations and compensation. However, without formal contracts, navigating the campaign’s direction might become challenging.

The approach you choose matters. A close, organic relationship with an influencer can be beneficial. It allows for more flexible and possibly cost-effective content distribution, including arrangements like product exchanges.

7. Establish Clear Communication and Expectations

There are many things to do in influencer marketing, so setting clear expectations is key for a good partnership and strategy.

Mutually agreeing on your main goals helps your campaign succeed. It’s important to discuss what you aim to do and what you expect right from the start.

It’s also vital to maintain constant communication with one another. This means sharing news, brainstorming ideas, and addressing any problems as they come up. Being open and honest builds trust and makes sure the partnership runs smoothly.

Finally, always respond quickly. Marketing is a fast-paced industry, so waiting too long can mean missing out on opportunities or causing misunderstandings.

Quick communication keeps the campaign on track and leads to a successful relationship with your influencer.

8. Implement a Tracking System

Putting a tracking system in place is key to figuring out if your strategy for influencer marketing campaigns are working well. This method lets brands find valuable information and make their future plans even better.

Here’s how you can keep tabs and analyze your campaigns effectively:

• Trackable Links: Allows the use of unique web addresses for each influencer campaign to monitor where traffic originates and user interaction.
  
• Promo Codes: Distributes unique discount codes via influencers, driving sales and enabling performance tracking.
  
• Specific Hashtags: Employs campaign-specific tags to track reach and audience engagement.

Tracking Key Metrics and Performance Indicators

The success of a campaign can be further quantified through these key metrics:

• Impressions: Reveals the number of views on your campaign, indicating its visibility.
  
• Click-through Rates (CTR): Measures the percentage of viewers who click on your content. It shows the campaign’s overall effectiveness in encouraging engagement.
  
• Conversion Rates: Indicates the percentage of clicks that result in desired actions (like purchases), assessing the campaign’s success in driving outcomes.
  
• Return on Investment (ROI): Compares earnings from the campaign against expenses. This is very crucial for evaluating the financial effectiveness of influencer marketing. Significant net earnings are highly desired.

Brands can get a full picture of how well their influencer marketing campaigns are doing just by keeping an eye on these metrics. Tracking these data also helps you make informed choices for your future plans.

9. Analyze and Optimize

After wrapping up a campaign, take time to review its performance against your initial goals. The main areas you need to focus on are:

Return on Investment (ROI)

• Measure the profit versus the expenditure of your campaign.
• In general, aim for the highest profit with minimal spending.
• Understanding your ROI is essential to gauge the success of your influencer marketing and guides your future budget allocation.

Audience Engagement

• Examine which aspects of your campaign resonated with your audience.
• Identify what excited them and why.
• This insight offers a comprehensive view of your campaign’s impact and is invaluable for future planning.

Making Improvements

The main purpose of collecting all this data is to refine your campaigns. Making improvements involves evaluating what worked, including assessing the successful elements and identifying areas that fell short, as well as determining if specific types of content or certain influencers had a better connection with your audience. 

Continuous optimization is critical since influencer marketing is an ongoing process of learning and adapting. Use these insights from each campaign to refine your strategies and always seek new ways to engage your audience.

This way, you can enhance campaign outcomes. 

This cycle of analysis and optimization ensures that your strategy for influencer marketing efforts remain robust and adapt to meet your brand’s evolving needs.

10. Foster Long-Term Relationships

Collaborating with influencers isn’t a one-time deal. In fact, building ongoing relationships with them can lead to more authentic and effective promotions. Consider partnerships beyond one-off posts to deepen the collaboration.

Here’s how to build a long-term collaboration that’s beyond one-time engagements:

Treat Creators as Trusted Partners

Acknowledge that influencers know their audience best. Value their expertise by incorporating their ideas and feedback into your campaign for better results.

To further build collaborative relationships, you have to work together as equals. This fosters a positive working environment.

Reciprocity in the Relationship

Support their content by engaging with influencers’ posts, even those not related to your brand. Mutual support strengthens your relationship.

It’s also best to recognize and appreciate the influencers’ efforts publicly by giving them shout-outs. This not only boosts their morale but also encourages a deeper commitment to your brand.

Show Your Appreciation

Beyond contractual obligations, send personalized thank-you notes or small gifts as a token of appreciation. These gestures should exceed what’s expected in the contract to genuinely show your gratitude.

Plan for the Future

Think long-term and approach each collaboration with the future in mind, aiming for partnerships that go beyond a single campaign.

Furthermore, focus on influencers who truly believe in your brand and its mission. Their genuine enthusiasm will translate into more authentic promotions.

Maintain Open Communication

Be available and ensure influencers can easily reach you for questions or guidance. In addition, you should encourage honest feedback. Open lines of communication allow for the exchange of ideas and constructive feedback, which is crucial for the success of long-term collaborations.

Establish an Influencer Community

Create networking opportunities by organizing virtual happy hours or in-person events to allow influencers to connect, share ideas, and potentially collaborate on organic content.

It’s also best practice to keep them informed by sharing updates about your brand through newsletters or social media.

11. Keep Up with Industry Trends in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is an ever-changing industry, with new trends and updates popping up all the time. To keep your plans effective, you need to be up-to-date with the latest changes on social platforms, popular content, and the best ways to do things.

Here are some easy ways to stay ahead of the industry trends:

Content Curation

Keep an eye on social media to spot new trends and find influential people. By following brands and influencers that share your brand’s look or values, you can keep up with what’s happening.

Paying attention to the hashtags these influencers use can also clue you into what’s trending.

Brainstorm with Influencers

Your influencer friends are always online, so they know what’s hot right now. Talking ideas through with them can give you fresh insights and cool new ideas for your projects. This teamwork can create content that really speaks to your audience.

Use Monitoring Tools

Tools like Google Alerts make it easy to follow trends. Set alerts for keywords related to your field, and get updates directly. This lets you quickly adjust your plans to fit in with the newest trends or steer clear of things that are out of date.

12. Legal Compliance and Transparency

Even in influencer marketing, rules and regulations need to be legally followed to go along with your strategy. This is all about making sure everyone plays fair and square, especially when it comes to letting people know about ads or paid promotions.

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has rules to make sure ads are not misleading. If these rules aren’t followed, it could lead to big fines and people not trusting your brand anymore.

In addition, influencers need to clearly state if they’re getting paid or have gotten free stuff when they talk about a product. This means using easy-to-understand hashtags like #ad or #sponsored on their posts.

Best Practices for Influencer Marketing Legal Compliance

Here’s how you can keep things clear and stay on the right side of these legal compliances:

• Educate Influencers: Make sure they know the rules. Give them the info and tools they need to stick to the guidelines.
• Check Their Posts: Regularly look at what they’re posting to make sure they’re being upfront and clear.
• Make It Easy: Provide simple ways for them to disclose partnerships, like ready-to-use phrases or hashtags.
• Reward Honesty: Give perks or bonuses to influencers who always follow the rules. This can motivate them to keep being transparent.
• Set Clear Consequences: If someone doesn’t follow the rules, there should be penalties. This helps everyone understand the importance of compliance.

By following these steps, your influencer marketing efforts can be both effective and trustworthy. Transparency not only builds trust with your audience but also ensures that your campaigns are successful and legally sound.

FAQs about Influencer Marketing

Wrapping Up

Armed with the insights and strategies outlined above, you’re now ready to create a strategy for your influencer marketing campaigns.

Just remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to influencer marketing. It’s about blending creativity with strategy, and insight with innovation.

How will you leverage these insights to forge connections that matter? What unique approaches will you employ to ensure your brand stands out in a crowded digital landscape?

Now is your moment. Take the leap, start building those relationships, and watch as your brand reaches new heights. Let’s hear your thoughts and plans in the comments below. Your next influencer marketing campaign could be the game-changer your brand has been waiting for.