Influencer Marketing Guide: What is it / How to do it

Influencer Marketing: What is it / How to do it

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing where a person or organization provides a brand or product endorsement. These high-value relationships drive awareness, engagement, deliver customer conversions and are a major force in digital marketing, increasing in importance as the buyer journey becomes more fragmented and consumers grow an immunity to traditional advertising.

How Is Influencer Marketing Different From Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an arrangement by which an online retailer pays commission to a partner for performance-driven action from its referrals. Affiliate enables advertisers to subsidize the cost of their primary sales and marketing channels to gain necessary operating leverage through scale and automation on a pay-for-outcome model. With flexibility to find, recruit and optimize diverse, right-fit partnerships, the affiliate channel makes omnipresence possible for marketers at a cost they can control.

In comparison, influencer marketing acts as a modern-day word of mouth for advertisers to expand their reach to like-minded, engaged audiences. Social media influencers play a crucial role in this by impacting the buying decisions of their followers with curated social posts, blog content, or product reviews. They engage with their audience through comments and the sharing of personalized content to create digital friendships — connections that transform their content from promoting a product to recommendations from a friend. The evolution of influencer marketing across various social media platforms has further amplified its impact.

What Is an Influencer?

An influencer is one who exerts influence: A person who inspires or guides the actions of others.

Why Have I Not Heard of Influencer Marketing Before?

Word of mouth advertising has become increasingly well-orchestrated: with individuals or groups, acting on a brands’ behalf to promote a product or service in exchange for an agreed-upon commission.

How Effective Is Influencer Marketing?

The right influencer can produce content that is 11 times more effective than banner ads. Influencers have an ability to build value and trust with their audience. Affinity for advertising, comes directly from those they know and trust, like a digital friendship. Influencers build trust by using Instagram and social, their own blog or as a guest blogger and brand collaborations.

Why Use Influencer Marketing?

Affinity for advertising (and in turn, affinity for a brand or product), comes directly from those they know and trust. Influencers are effective at building this trust in a variety of ways: online via Instagram and social, their own blog or as a guest blogger, vlogs and brand collaborations.

What is an Influencer Network

An influencer network, sometimes called an influencer platform, is a technology platform that helps brands find influencers who they can partner for their marketing campaigns. Influencer networks are designed to bring everything necessary to manage an influencer campaign into one easy to use technology platform. They allow brand managers to manage their campaigns, communicate directly with influencers, share content seamlessly, and track campaign results in real-time.

How Do I Take Control of the Cost of Influencer Marketing Campaigns?

With different influencer payment models to choose from including flat fees, pay-per-acquisition, set monthly fees, pay-per-click, pay-per-post and product or service gifting, brands who work with influencers can exercise control over their return on marketing investment (ROI) with influencers depending on their goals.

What Can an Influencer Do for My Brand?

Influencers can build brand awareness and are trusted by their following—fans who see them as authorities on a given subject. They are dedicated to engagement and know how to communicate to their audiences in ways that inspire action—and this is measured by reach, impressions, comments, likes and shares.

What Is a Nano Influencer?

A nano influencer that has less than 1K followers.

What Is a Micro Influencer?

A micro influencer typically has between 1K-100K followers.

What Is a Macro Influencer?

A macro influencer has between 100K-1M followers.

What Is a Mega Influencer?

A mega influencer has 1M+ followers.

How Do You Find the Right Type Of Influencer for Your Brand?

A micro influencer can provide a 47% increase in engagement rates compared to the macro variety. Brands trust the micro-influencer to be a genuine advocate and one that will be influential with their audience on the subject matter that brought the audience to them in the first place.

What Does It Take To Be an Influencer?

An influencer needs to develop consistent content across varied mediums and connect and engage with their audience, resulting in likes, comments and shares.

As a Brand, What Should You Expect When Working With Influencers?

Brands should clearly define their expectations to influencers such as: preferred channels for promotion, payment and payment terms, the duration of the campaign, number of posts and mentions to be deployed, if contests or giveaways are included, which products to review, creative assets and copy to be used while not inhibiting influencer’s creative freedom.

What Makes an Influencer Marketing Campaign Successful?

Measuring influencer marketing campaigns is tricky and varies based on the brand’s goals. Measuring success should start with the brand giving indication of what their vision for a successful campaign looks like. Success may mean a certain number of likes, reshares, uses of a specific hashtag, etc. For other brands, a direct correlation to revenue or return on investment (ROI) driven may be defined as success.

What Should Brands Consider Before Working With an Influencer?

Their marketing budget and how they intend to compensate the influencer.
Will they be paying a flat fee, per-acquisition, per-click, per-post, gifted product, etc.?
Will their relationship with the influencer be one-off or long-term?
Does the brand intend to cross-promote the influencer, use the content the influencer generates in their own campaigns?
What “success” looks like. It may be social media engagement, including likes, shares, follows and comments or traffic lift, revenue or conversion generation.
If and how their audience may respond to an influencer or validate their credibility.
The credibility of the influencer and how it might impact your brand.
Often it is a matter of trial and error to determine the most effective influencer.
The value of testing—see opportunity in learning through partnerships rather than focusing on issues of high cost without an immediate return.

What Expectations Should Brands Discuss With Influencers Upfront?

It is also important to manage your expectations as a brand. Brands will want to clearly define their expectations upfront to influencers about the following items:

Channels the brand prefers to be advertised on
Total duration of the campaign
Number of posts and mentions to be shared
Contest/giveaways and what is included
Product reviews
Creative assets and copy used that gives clear instruction while not inhibiting the influencer’s authenticity
Payment model and terms

What Is the Predicted Influencer Growth Rate?

BI intelligence predicts influencer marketing will have a five-year compounded growth rate (CAGR) of 38%.

As a Brand, How Can You Make Sure You’re Able To Get Everything You Need From an Influence?

Start small and see if the relationship has value before committing to more projects. Payment, long-term partnership benefits, gifted product and cross-promotion are all collaboration bargaining chips when working with influencers.

As a Brand, How Do I Get Influencers To Relay the Information I Need Them To Relate?

Give them a script to use. It’s the best way to ensure the message you are expecting then to deliver. However, be cautious not to dictate the entire sentiment to ensure that their authenticity shines through.

How Do I Ensure That an Influencer I’m Partnered With Doesn’t Post Something Inappropriate?

As a brand, you must monitor your influencer relationships to ensure the content your influencer posts is aligned to your brand, campaign and the law. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting more involved in influencer marketing. Partnering with an influencer means the onus is on the brand to ensure full compliance with FTC Endorsement guidelines.

Should Influencers Disclose Their Sponsored Posts or Campaigns?

Yes, according to FTC guidelines, influencers must disclose when they have been compensated for a post, whether it be monetary, gifted product or services or some other exchange of value.

Where Should Influencers Place Disclosures?

If influencers bury #ad in the middle of the post, they are not in compliance with FTC guidelines. The disclosure must be easy to see. A good practice is to place the disclosure statement at the beginning of the post or use a hashtag, so the reader sees the disclosure first.

How Should You Talk to Influencers?

Get Personable

The goal of any influencer program is to build a long-standing relationship where Influencers are encouraged to promote the brand organically, even when a collaboration isn’t it place.

Sharing is Caring

Don’t leave your influencers hanging! Let them know about that cool product you are launching.

Recognize and Reward

For many influencers, this is their business and their passion. It's also important to reward them with something monetary or with a product or service.

What Types of Disclosure Terms Should Influencers Avoid?

Influencers should use language that is clear to everyone and avoid using confusing terms like #SP, #Brand, and #Partner.

What Influencer Marketing Challenges Do Brands Face?

Influencer marketing does not come without challenges. How does the brand know their influencer is following both the FTC guidelines and brand expectations, for example?

How Can Brands Measure Success With Influencer Marketing?

Measuring influencer marketing campaigns is tricky, though, and varies based on the brand’s goals. Critically, brands need to measure what their vision for success looks like for a campaign.