How to build an Influencer Marketing strategy

Influencer Marketing strategy you must know (2020)

An effective marketing strategy for influencers helps you boost brand exposure, build authority and connect to new audiences. It drives traffic to your site and leads your products and services to new customers.

There are many advantages of influencer marketing agency Malaysia but setting up, launching and managing can be a confusing and complicated strategy. It is a project that takes time to complete. And the hurdles of getting started lead to many markers stopping before they actually begin.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing is a combination of old and new marketing tools, taking up the idea of celebrity endorsement and putting it into a marketing campaign driven by content in the modern-day. In the case of influencer marketing, the main differentiator is that the campaign results are collaborations between brands and influencers.

Influencers typically have a broad and active audience so when an influencer posts or references their content or advertising, brands profit. The publicity helps the brand to get in a positive, normal and meaningful way in front of its target audience.

While a certain celebrity is used in this definition of influencer marketing strategy, influencer campaigns do not always have to rely on celebrities. In a recent post, we shared examples of influencer marketing not needing celebrities. For promoting successful campaigns, the examples in this post use niche market influencers, industry experts, and non-competent brand influence.

Influencer marketing is about gaining exposure, but working with people who have the largest audience is not always about it. It’s about working with people who have the right audience so you’re more likely to connect with your brand to make connections with people. So, how do you find a suitable influencer and create a successful marketing campaign?

What are the Benefits of having Influencer Marketing?

#1 Reach out to the audience where they spend most of their time

Many people spend their time on social media, and that amount of time continues to rise. Most people spend hours a day on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. It’s how influencers help brands with this. When influencers mention or feature a brand on one of these social media platforms, they allow the brand to reach audiences on the sites where it they spend most of the time.

“ Influencer marketing cuts through banner ads blindness by placing your brand where audiences notice it –

in natural, native content.”

#2 Limitless space for networking

The reason why influencer marketing can have such a high ROI is that campaigns have unlimited networking. With most paid media strategies, there’s a cap to your reach. You’re paying for a variety of perceptions. But with influencer marketing, a campaign has the ability to be spread and even viral, giving the message more exposure than you paid for. Content that is shareable which is promoted by an influencer will easily raise brand awareness and attract attention over and over again.

#3 Close The Advertisement Gap

Tactics far outweigh other promotional options is one of the benefits of having effective marketing. Banner ads have once been a device used by advertisers to promote their products and services but this advertising method has limitation such as ad blocker tools whereas this ad blocker doesn’t affect on influencers advertising medium.

#4 Influence decisions to purchase

One of the benefits of online influencers mentioning the brand is that it can simply drive profits. Users also seek advice from influencers on what products and services to purchase. Approximately 40% of respondents in the study said they made a purchase after seeing a social media influencer use the product or service. A further study found that nearly 85 percent of Gen Z are using social media to look for new goods. So if one of your marketing goals is to boost sales, influencer marketing is able to help you achieve that goal.

#5 Make your brand go Viral

Influences are often the leading force behind the latest trends and campaigns. We also introduce people to new ideas, brands, and products. One of the benefits of influencer marketing is to be viewed as the latest trend. By aligning your brand with a trendsetting influencer, you demonstrate the business as a creative leader.

How to develop your strategy?

To build and execute a marketing strategy for your company, go through the steps below and access our free marketing strategy template to help you through the process.

Define the goals and message

Raising brand awareness and increasing sales are the two most common reasons for using influencer marketing. Instead of setting such specific objectives as your two goals, however, it will be more successful to kick off your approach by tailoring on what the needs of your brand are. You might want to expand your customer base to a younger demographic. Or you wish to expand with a new product into a new user group. Or you want to skip the trends and use influencers to discuss your brand values.

The potential of the influencers to target very specific audiences. Rather than relying on thousands of followers, influencers would help you create a very targeted audience that is likely to be interested in reading your product and engaging with its material.

Below is example of influencer, the conversational style and personal narrative that tie in with Cindy’s recent posts and stories help differentiate this from the type of features or sales-driven post that a brand could do on its own feed for the same product.

Your message is just as important to your objective. Although you don’t want to disrupt the creativity and uniqueness of an influencer, you don’t want them to post something unrelated to your campaign, either. Determine how you want your marketing campaign and message influencer to structure, so you can stick to it later.

Find the right influencers and contact them

With a plan set around your network, goals and what types of influencers you want to target, we go back to researching to actually find the right influencers to work with.

Explore the following types of influencer, as you consider your options:

Bloggers
Social Media Stars
Celebrities
Industry Experts
Thought Leaders
Customers
Non-competing Brands

When you determine the type of influencer you plan to use, start researching in that space with individuals or brands. Yet remember to keep these things in mind:

Has the influencer already posted similar stuff about your service? For starters, if you’re a skincare brand and want to promote a new product, you would look for influencers who regularly post about skincare and the product they’re using.
Have they previously worked with similar brands? A professional one will be able to show you a press kit that includes a portfolio of their work, depending on what sort of influencer you’re looking for. The more that you believe in an influencer, the more that you want to screen them.
Are they actually real? This means scrolling through their feed and clicking on posts. Signs of a fake account are a high commitment ratio to follower counts and spam-like comments.

How to Get Influencers to Promote Your Brand

Look into the influencer’s engagement, not audience size

If you come to a point where you need to check for the right influencers low and high, you’ll look like a detective in some way. There’s a lot of influencers out there with fake followers and low public engagement. To some people, it’s a pleasure to be featured on the Instagram page with a million followers, but their interaction with the audience is more important when it comes to sales.

Don’t stick to one post

When you’re sure about your influencer option, you can try on maximizing everything. Once we start to talk to an influencer, we will be blasting off ideas about what they can do with us. For instance, having exclusive giveaways and other fun ways on content creation. It is not just a matter of getting a single post on their page. We want our influencers to support our brand and also see their interest in it.

One large part of influencers gaining interest is reaching their audiences for paid ads. You can try negotiating access to their Facebook-ad audiences so that you can add paid ads to influencer campaigns supporting your products.

Next, you’ll need to decide on how you’ll find and pay them.

How to find and pay social media influencers

First, pick the network you want to concentrate on. You can always extend later on to other networks but if you just start, stick to one. Ideally your brand should already have a presence on or seek to expand into this network.

Remember, as you intend to execute an influencer marketing strategy, the industry you are in matters. Instagram and YouTube, beauty and fashion brands shine mostly.

Explore the sort of influencers you’re interested in during your research phase. Are you going for wide follow-up celebrities? Perhaps micro-influencers with under 5000 followers? In the 5–10k follower range maybe something in between is more your style. What you choose to concentrate on will set your budget.

You may reach out directly to micro-influencers in a private message on the same site. Click around their profile for more established ones, and they may list the contact information in their bio for business inquiries. We may also lead to a website indicating brand partnerships.

Reward also varies wildly so be sure to look at common rates for these types of influencers. Micro-Influencers tend to focus on just a couple of topics and accept products. Some micro-influencers work independently while others may have an agency or network representation. Whereas bigger accounts and actors are going to need the money and may even go through a talent agency.

Set a guideline on budget and management

Now you have an idea what influencers should be paid, you need to build your budget. Also be sure that the strategy is prepared, implemented and checked on time. Running a successful marketing influencer campaign is not a kind of set-it – and-go strategy. It will require thorough monitoring and follow-up.

In contrast to a more automated ad strategy, influencers are human and often balancing multiple partnerships, so some may fall behind in their commitments to post on time or make mistakes in the tags or calls to action your request. You will need the time to be more realistic with these relationships to cultivate them and to refine your approach through knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work in your specialty.

Consider setting up a formal Ambassador Program if you have the time and money. Canon uses its ambassadors in launching new products and in adding to their content. With a range of photographers and videographers available, the company is able to diversify its feed and demonstrate what equipment can do.

For companies seeking a wider pool of influencers, it’s a good bet to employ an influencer marketing firm to do the work and coordination for you.

Track your progress

Even if your marketing campaign for influencers is ongoing, you should still have to assess their success. The next section of this guide will look at how to track your outcomes. You don’t want to lose chances of working with influencers because your process has been annoying or unprofessional.

For instance, you don’t want multiple people in your team to contact the same influencer, and you don’t want to send the same email over and over again.

Develop a tracking and follow-up program. Creating a record which will track :

When they reached out
Who they contacted
Notes about the communication
Plans for follow-up communication
Status of the outreach

Analyze and track the performance

Once you complete an influencer marketing strategy campaign, just seeing the brand listed or shouted out on social media can feel like a win ! Yet having an influencer just isn’t a sign of success to spread your material or advertising.

The real success will be determined by whether you have accomplished your goals.

To find out if you have achieved your targets, chart your performance and calculate them. Using metrics to determine your success according to the initial marketing goals you set for your campaign.

Brand Awareness Metrics: website traffic, page views, social mentions, time on site, site users
Building Brand Identity Metrics: social mentions, PR coverage (number of articles or links)
Audience Building Metrics: opt-ins, follows
Engagement Metrics: shares, comments, and likes
Link Building Metrics: number of links, quality of links

Track the data for each of the marketing influencer strategies so you can look back and think about what succeeded and what didn’t. Use the data to direct the marketing strategy for other influencers. Repeat your achievements, and avoid actions that do not yield results.

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