Influencer marketing is a must for brands looking to boost their online presence. The right strategies can significantly increase brand awareness, customer engagement, and return on investment (ROI). But how do you find the best influencers and run your campaigns smoothly?
That’s where influencer marketing platforms like Ainfluencer come in. Ainfluencer makes it easy with its smart tools and a large list of influencers. Plus, it’s free to join, so you can start successful campaigns without spending a lot.
Now, let’s start from the very beginning: the definition of influencer marketing. Shall we?
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Social media has changed the way people decide to buy something. According to recent studies, 63% of customers trust influencer messages more than brand messages. This trust translates into higher engagement and conversion rates for brands.
So, following celebrities and top influencers on social media have impacted their purchasing decision. That makes influencers great choices for brands and businesses to create brand awareness and promote their products.
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on using key influencers to drive a brand’s message to the larger market.
What sets influencer marketing programs apart from other marketing forms is how they use trust and credibility to reach consumers. Generally, people have trust in influencers. For example, they believe that beauty influencers always use the best makeup products or that fitness influencers always wear high-quality clothes.
That’s why they follow their lives to see what they buy or where they go. Accordingly, in many cases, consumers are more likely to trust influencer advertising than an ad from a brand.
The success of influencer marketing campaigns mainly relies on how well you can find and connect to influencers. That’s the main thing you should put in your influencer marketing strategy.
Do you wonder what influencer marketing strategies can help you most? Understanding the meaning of marketing strategy and seeing some examples can help you have a brighter preview of what you should do and which strategy might perform well for your business.
To make it easier, we’ve gathered some of the best influencer marketing tips here. Read on!
15 Best Influencer Marketing Strategies
Like any other type of marketing, influencer marketing requires plans and strategies. Without them, you can’t run a successful campaign. Here are some strategies you can incorporate into your marketing plans for better social media performance.
1. Find Influencers In Your Niche
Influencers are key to any influencer marketing strategy. Using influencers in marketing is a great way to help you promote your product or service more creatively.
So one of your essential influencer marketing objectives is finding an influencer that matches your business goals and can be game-changing. Your influencer marketing plan won’t be a success without making use of an influencer marketplace.
Ainfluencer: The Best Influencer Marketing Platform
Ainfluencer is an influencer marketplace that connects brands and businesses and makes Instagram influencer marketing much easier with its AI engine. The best part is that this platform is 100% FREE. So you can join and check out its features without having concerns about the fees.
As a brand, you can create a campaign for free and invite influencers that seem suitable for your project. Furthermore, you can search for those influencers by filtering different criteria such as their category, language, location, number of followers, and hashtags they use. Therefore, you can only see the list of influencers that align with your preferences, making it even easier to find the right influencer to collaborate with.
This platform allows you to streamline your campaign workflow, get real-time analytics, and measure the ROI of your campaigns with this smart influencer marketplace.
Join Ainfluencer today for free and discover how our platform can simplify your search for the perfect influencers, optimize campaign management, and drive outstanding results for your brand.
2- Define Your Goal
To execute successful influencer marketing campaigns, it is important to outline your influencer marketing goals in the early stages of planning your collaboration with influencers.
Being clear on your desired outcome will dictate your influencer advertising campaign, including:
- The kind of content you should create for effective influencer collaboration,
- The metrics you are going to measure at the end of your campaign.
- and more importantly, the type of influencer you need to find.
Here are some goals to consider for your influencer marketing strategy:
- Brand Awareness,
- Building Brand Identity,
- Audience Building,
- Engagement,
- Lead Generation,
- Sales,
- Customer Loyalty,
- Link Building.
3- Decide The Content Strategy Of Your Campaign
Every social media platform allows you to present content in unique ways. One of the influencer marketing best practices is creating a content strategy depending on the social media platform you choose.
In the picture below, you can see what type of content works best and can be more effective in your campaign.
There are many different content strategies you can opt to meet your brand influencer marketing objectives:
- Hosting giveaways,
- Guest blogs,
- Online contests,
- Giving discount codes,
- Creating content in collaboration with influencers,
- Curating video strategies,
- Brand account takeover by influencers.
Video is an extremely effective and engaging way to communicate valuable information with users. However, creating a video that goes on and on about how awesome your product or service is won’t be effective and useful. Instead, you need to develop an interesting narrative around your brand to grab the attention of your target audience.
Furthermore, creating an engaging video can help you with viral marketing. Therefore, it is essential to take your time and create a great story for your video ad. In this step, you can enjoy the influencers’ ideas to attract their followers. Then, ask them to repost your video to help it go viral.
63% of consumers trust influencer messaging more than brand messaging to solve their problems. You need to trust the influencer you work with to publish content that is more appealing to their audience.
4- Understand The Rules
Before you implement your influencer marketing plan, it’s important to understand the rules. In the United States, those rules come from the Federal Trade Commission.
Apart from the rules of the country you live in, the rules and regulations of the social media you choose are crucial too. Therefore, ensure that your content is not against Instagram rules.
5- Consider The Three Rs Of Influence
One of the most important influencer marketing tips is considering the three Rs of influence which are:
- Relevance: The influencers you choose for collaboration should be relevant to your business. So, you can ensure that their followers and audience are more likely to become your target customers. For example, collaborating with travel influencers will be a more effective influencer marketing strategy if you are in the traveling industry.
- Reach: The people that you might be able to influence through the influencer’s followers are considered your reach. It’s important to keep in mind that a small audience can still be beneficial if it has a strong enough following to support your objectives.
- Resonance: This is the potential level of engagement the influencers have with the audience that is relevant to your brand. However, it should be mentioned that having a large number of followers is useless if they are not drawn to your offer. On the other hand, niche influencers may have incredibly devoted and engaged followers.
6- Work with Micro-Influencers
Social media content creators with engaged followers of between 10K to 100K are called Micro-influencers.
These influencers are often young, tech-savvy people who are passionate about their niche topic and share quality content. They are an important part of influencer marketing strategies since they can promote your business to a more diverse audience than traditional influencers can.
Daniel Wellington, a world-famous watch brand, takes advantage of various micro influencers to increase brand engagement.
They partner with different types of influencers such as fashion and lifestyle influencers and even beyond. Micro-influencers often include discount codes in their posts to help the brand drive sales and track ROI.
7- Focus On The Right Platforms
There are many different platforms to choose from for your influencer marketing program, but which one is the right fit for your business?
According to Mediakix’s survey, the top five most strategically important social media channels for influencer marketing are Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter.
Each has its own set of features and benefits that may be the perfect fit for influencer targeting.
Some factors to consider when choosing a platform include:
- The audience of the influencer,
- The type of content they produce,
- The platform’s capabilities,
- and the Growth potential; some platforms have a larger potential audience than others.
8- Give Influencers Creative Control
Once you’ve found an influencer to work with, it might be tempting to tell them exactly what kind of content you want them to produce.
The advantage of influencer marketing is that you’re advertising your brand through a trusted source; someone your audience feel more connected with.
In turn, you have to trust them and leave the rest to them. Since they know what can attract their followers, they can come with creative ideas to communicate with them.
Let influencers choose their angle, give them time to get to know your brand, and encourage them to be creative because that’s key to staying ahead of the competition in the world of influencer advertising.
9- Be Aware Of New Platforms
With new platforms popping up all the time, it can be hard to keep track of which ones are worth your time and money.
There are several new platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Clubhouse, Discord, and many more platforms available that allow influencers to connect with brands and create content.
However, all of them might not be the right place for your influencer marketing plans. Therefore, before running influencer marketing campaigns on a new platform, make sure your target audience are available there. Otherwise, you will waste your time and money promoting your brand on a platform that its users are not your target.
Above all, if you decide that the new social media platform is right for your presence, be sure to start with a great influencer marketing strategy that fits the channel the best.
For example, Clubhouse is a social audio app that leverages synchronous, audio-only connectivity between the audience and the speakers. It’s not quite a podcast, but a more personal way to share information with your audience in groups who can talk back to you in real time. The app was launched in 2020 and has 10 million active weekly users.
10- Turn Influencers Into Brand Ambassadors
A brand ambassador is a professional who represents a brand in the community or industry. They help spread the message of the company to new audiences by engaging in promotional activities, such as attending events and speaking on panels.
Brand ambassadors also serve as role models for consumers and can help increase sales by promoting positive associations with the brand. They can be independent contractors or paid promoters responsible for promoting the brand across different platforms.
However, influencer advertising can be expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to manage. Turning influencers into brand ambassadors can help reduce these costs, make the process easier, and increase the reach of a brand’s message.
11- Use Relevant Hashtags
What can be better than using relevant hashtags to increase your brand’s visibility?
If your brand is not visible enough on social media, how do you expect followers to engage with you?
Hashtags are a great way to connect with people who are also interested in the topic or product being promoted. Therefore, using relevant hashtags plays an important role in a successful Influencer marketing strategy.
The more relevant the hashtags are; the more views you will get on your posts. For example, if your business is in the field of fitness and health, you can benefit from using fitness hashtags on your posts to grab people who like this subject.
You can generate high engagement rates when your hashtags are more specific to your brand or products. You can also create a branded hashtag and use it on all your social media platforms and encourage influencers to use them in their posts. If you find it difficult to select hashtags for your posts, you can use hashtag generators. Since using hashtags is essential, read more about the best hashtag strategies on Instagram.
12- Make The Most Of Influencer Partnerships
Once you’ve established a relationship with an influencer, don’t miss out on any opportunity to collaborate. Rather than just sticking to the typical format where they post a photo to promote your product, have them record a video of it, post a Story about it, or incorporate it into an interactive poll.
If you’re planning to host an event (in person or online), invite the influencer to attend and create content about it. You can even ask them to collaborate on future projects, eventually transforming them into loyal brand ambassadors and a long-term association.
13- Use Employees As Influencers
Employees can be powerful assets of your influencer marketing strategy. They can have a significant impact on their organizations through their actions and words in case they understand the company’s culture and values, know how to communicate effectively, and be persuasive.
They can improve your organization’s performance by aligning their goals with the company’s mission and vision, setting an example for others, influencing team members, and promoting constructive communication.
14- Measure Your Campaign Results
It’s time to see how your influencer marketing strategy turned out.
Did you achieve the goals you set for your campaign?
How effective was your influencer marketing strategy?
Once you measure your influencer campaign results, you can improve upon what worked and tweak your approach for future campaigns. Measuring the success of an influencer marketing program is essential to determine whether or not it was worth investing time and money into.
Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you track how well your influencers are performing and whether your campaign is meeting its objectives.
Some of the most important KPIs to track in an influencer marketing campaign include:
- Follower Count,
- Total Reach,
- Engagement Rate,
- Click-Through Rate (CTR),
- Lead Generation,
- Conversions.
15- Be Genuine, Accessible, And Responsive
Although it might be hard to reply to all the comments or direct messages, as a brand, you should be able to become more responsive to your followers. They may ask you a question about a specific product or pricing. If you don’t answer them, you will lose a customer. On the other hand, if they see you respond to them in a timely manner, they will feel respected. As a result, they will feel better about your brand and may become more loyal to your name.
Top Influencer Marketing Ideas
Your Influencer marketing strategy wouldn’t work without keeping the following influencer marketing ideas in mind. Here are some influencer marketing best practices that can lead you to more sales.
1- Create Fun Scenarios
Visual content is so popular on the net, especially entertaining videos. You can leave the video content and its scenario to the influencer or become a part of it.
2- Give Influencers Discount Codes
You can also give influencers a discount code for their followers, so it will become easier for you to track the sales from their network.
3- Create A Tutorial Video
One of the best influencer marketing ideas is creating tutorial videos. This type of content is so valuable; because they help people learn new things. You only need to find out how you can put your brand’s name on that video, apart from being a sponsor.
4- Create Contests
Gamification is a method to make more conversions between your brand and people who might become your clients. Thus, think about a fun and appealing game relevant to your business, and choose a prize for the winner, such as a discount or a free product. Influencers can then promote this contest on their pages.
5- Launch Your Product With An Influencer
Do you want to make your new product so unique? Don’t miss out on any opportunity to collaborate with influencers. If you have already chosen an ambassador for your brand, use their channel to present your new product or services with an exciting video.
6- Don’t Ask For A Favor; Offer A Favor
Influencers are bombarded with messages from people asking them for a favor. If they help everyone, they wouldn’t have time for anything else! So that’s why you need the opposite approach: do a favor for them first.
7- Get Influencers To Write Honest Reviews
To further strengthen and support your customer acquisition strategy, ask your influencers to write and share honest reviews about your products. Genuine feedback never fails to attract new customers.
8- Get Influencers And Common Users To Leverage UGC
Leveraging user-generated content and, of course, influencer-generated content is one of the most successful and powerful tactics to gain new customers.
6 Influencer Marketing Examples
Now it’s time to check out which influencer marketing strategy brands have used to succeed. Here are some examples:
#1 The Pepsi Emoji Product-Line At Walgreens Stores
The Pepsi Emoji Product-line at Walgreens Stores is one of the best influencer marketing examples. Pepsi used limited edition packaging and the slogan #SayItWithPepsi in an effort to boost sales at Walgreens. They believed social media involvement would be the best marketing, even for in-store purchases, because they wanted to reach out to millennials.
The goal of the campaign was to show that adding the specially packaged Pepsi emoji bottles—available only at Walgreens—to your summertime activities made them all more enjoyable.
#2 Dunkin’ Donuts On National Donut Day
This is one of the best influencer marketing strategy examples by Dunkin’ Donuts. National Donut Day was a holiday that Dunkin’ Donuts and their agency, Trilia, wanted to promote. They collaborated with Collab, a digital talent network and entertainment studio, to develop a national Snapchat campaign with visually appealing original content.
The Dunkin’ Donuts SnapChat channel was taken over by eight influencers on National Donut Day. The influencers used their content to entice their followers to visit the Dunkin’ Donut locations and take advantage of the promotion.
#3 Sun Peaks Resort
A ski resort in British Columbia, Sun Peaks influencer marketing strategy was to increase awareness about several of their top winter attractions, including crowd-free ski runs, seasonal festivals, and the region’s jaw-dropping natural beauty.
Travel Mindset designed a campaign targeting adventure-seekers in the Pacific Northwest that involved Canada’s top adventure photographer and Instagram influencer, Callum Snape (@CalSnape).
#4 HelloFresh
HelloFresh with its bright-green box, delightful pre-packaged ingredients, and tasty finished meals is a great fit for Instagram influencer marketing.
Also, Instagram micro influencers with genres holding a range of different fields are what HelloFresh uses the most for its influencer marketing strategy.
The brand partners with thousands of such micro influencers to promote its products within its target audience. So you are likely to see the #hellofreshpartner hashtag as you scroll your Instagram timeline.
#5 Guess
In September 2018, lifestyle and denim brand, Guess, launched a code challenge based around the hashtag #InMyDenim. This included a takeover ad, where users who opened the app were directed to the sponsored #InMyDenim challenge.
They launched their hashtag challenge by working with influencers who uploaded their look transformation videos. Once fans saw these videos on the influencers’ profiles, the hashtag got viral since they started making and sharing their own transformation videos, using the #InMyDenim hashtag.
#6 Sony Playstation
When PlayStation released the new PS5, the brand collaborated with Justine Ezarik (iJustine), a tech, travel, and gaming influencer on YouTube, for the following video.
One of the best influencer marketing strategies for announcing a new products is to send it to influencers for free in exchange for unboxing videos and/or honest reviews on their platforms. That’s the strategy Sony had for its PS5.
Justine’s channel was the best choice to promote this new product since her channel is focused on gaming and her subscribers fit PlayStation’s target audience.
In the video, she comments on the product’s futuristic look and lightweight controllers while adding B-roll footage for close-up shots of the PS5.
Influencer Marketing Stats
You may think, is influencer marketing effective?
To answer this question, let’s see some of the influencer marketing stats.
- At this moment, Instagram is the second-largest social media after Facebook. In contrast, influencer marketing is more popular on Instagram than on other social media channels. That’s why this platform can be the number one place for your influencer marketing tactics.
- Did you know that out of 10 brands in the world, nine of them are using influencer marketing tactics to introduce and present themselves? Since more people are joining social media channels, especially Instagram, you can see how influencer marketing has grown in just a few years, and it’s growing faster each day. Hence, being a part of this growth can also lead to better results.
- More than 75% of brand marketers have dedicated more budget to influencer marketing in 2022.
- Over 67% of brands are now using different influencer marketing ideas to promote themselves on Instagram. Therefore, these numbers and stats say influencer marketing is an effective way of advertising. People are using social media, and they should be able to find you much easier than before. Influencer marketing is the bridge between your business and clients.
- Almost 75% of consumers trust an influencer recommendation.
- A survey shows the ROI of influencer marketing is 11x more than banner ads. The stats indicate that almost 89% of marketers believe ROI from influencer marketing is much better than other marketing methods. On average, a brand will earn nearly $5.20 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. However, that will also depend on finding the right influencer for your market.
Are You Looking for Influencers to Start Influencer Marketing? Join Ainfluencer Now!
Knowing how effective influencer marketing is, it’s time to take the first step to creating a great influencer marketing strategy. Find influencers on Ainfluencer and run several campaigns in the quickest time.
Ainfluencer makes it much easier for you to connect with the right influencer and start social media campaigns without spending hours searching for them on the internet. You only need to sign up on Ainfluencer as a brand and get access to the list of thousands of influencers on Instagram and TikTok.
Use the filters to narrow down the list based on your preferences, such as category, language, location, gender, number of followers, and hashtags.
And the best part is that it’s all free to join and use the search tool on this platform to find influencers. You can also create a campaign for free and invite influencers to participate.
So, what are you waiting for?
Conclusion
There are many different ways to use influencer marketing to boost brand awareness and bring more customers to your business. Whether you are looking to work with micro-influencers or celebrities, make sure you target the right people and have the best influencer marketing strategy.
By using the best ideas for influencer marketing, you can create long-lasting relationships with your audience and increase sales.
FAQs
The effectiveness of influencer marketing relies on three factors:
– The quality of the influencer’s message,
– The relevance of the influencer’s audience to the brand,
– And how well the influencer engages with their audience.
All three require careful planning and execution for brands to achieve success.
An influencer is someone who has a large social media following and can promote a product or service to their followers. They can be people who are famous or well-known, or they can be regular people who have a lot of influence on other people.
First, define your goal because you can’t take the second step if you don’t know what you will reach with this strategy. After setting the goal and defining your budget, you should search for influencers in your niche to find the right person for collaboration.
This step is the most important part of your influencer marketing plan because the influencers can make you win this marketing plan. To make your job easier and speed up the process of finding influencers, join Ainfluencer for free and search for influencers for your campaigns.
