As digital marketing continues to evolve, so does the role of influencers and social media influencer marketing. Influencer marketing has rapidly become a critical part of many brands’ marketing mix. In 2023, brands need to employ more sophisticated influencer marketing strategies in order to make the most of their influencer marketing plan, increase brand awareness, and reach consumers.
Gone are the days of using a single celebrity or social media star to endorse a product or service. Instead, businesses will need to identify and work with different types of influencers who can reach different segments of the business.
Before we dive into the strategies, let’s see what exactly influencer marketing means.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on using key influencers to drive the message of a brand to the larger market.
What sets influencer marketing programs apart from other forms of marketing is the way it uses trust and credibility to reach consumers. In many cases, consumers are more likely to trust influencer advertising than an ad from a brand.
The success of influencer marketing campaigns relies on what influencer marketing plan and influencer marketing strategy you choose for your business.
Do you wonder what influencer marketing strategies can help you most? Here are the best influencer marketing tips. Read on!
15 Best Influencer Marketing Strategies
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 in a more creative way.
So one of your essential influencer marketing objectives is finding a type of 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 is an influencer marketplace that makes Instagram influencer marketing much easier with its AI engine. It connects brands with influencers 100% FREE with no hidden fees. You can explore, filter your search based on language, engagement rate, follower count, hashtags, etc., and invite thousands of influencers related to your brand via Ainfluencer.
You can also streamline your campaign workflow, get real-time analytics, and measure the ROI of your campaigns with this smart influencer marketplace.
2- Define Your Goal
In order 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, the kind of content you should create for effective influencer collaboration, and more importantly, the metrics you are going to measure at the end of your campaign.
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 influencer content strategy 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 like:
- 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 of much use. Instead, you need to develop an interesting narrative around your brand to grab the attention of your target audience.
63% of consumers trust influencer messaging more than brand messaging to solve their problems. You need to trust the influencer you work with in order to publish the content that his/her audience finds best.
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.
5- Consider The Three Rs Of Influence
One of the most important influencer marketing tips is considering the three Rs of influence. Three components make up influence:
- Relevance: A relevant influencer promotes content that is relevant to your business and industry. Their audience must be compatible with your target demographic.
- Reach: Reach is the whole people that you might be able to influence through the influencer’s follower base. 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 influencer will have with an audience that is relevant to your brand. Not to belabor the point, but bigger isn’t always better. 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- Leverage Micro Influencers
Micro influencers are social media content creators with a small but engaged following of between 1,000 and 100,000 users.
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 campaigns 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 for Daniel Wellington 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 since 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 already feels a personal connection to.
In turn, you have to trust them and leave the rest to them to communicate with that audience. Let influencers choose their angle, give them time to get to know your brand, and encourage variety and creativity since creativity and innovation are 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.
Before running influencer marketing campaigns with a new platform, 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
When you want to increase the visibility of your brand, what can be better than using relevant hashtags?
If your brand is not visible enough on social media, how do you expect followers to engage with you?
Using relevant hashtags plays an important role in a successful Influencer marketing strategy. Hashtags are a great way to connect with other people who are also interested in the topic or product being promoted.
You can generate high engagement rates when your hashtags are more specific to your brand or products. You also need to ensure that your hashtags are relatable to your target audiences.
Use a specific hashtag on all your social media platforms and encourage influencers to use them in their posts. Many brands leverage relevant and engaging hashtags as one of their influencer marketing tactics to boost campaign results.
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. Employees 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, and conversions.
15- Be Genuine, Accessible, And Responsive
People expect to be able to directly access the people they follow and respect. It doesn’t mean you must respond to every single comment, mention, direct message, etc. Avoid becoming the kind of influencer who only tweets links to their content and never interacts with their followers.
Making an effort to appear accessible will help you get respect and become more visible in your field. Even while social media is a remarkably effective tool for influencer marketing, don’t ignore the “social” component of social media. Engage in conversation with your followers and participate in the community.
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 ideas 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. Tutorial videos are 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
#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 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.
Dunkin’ Donuts SnapChat channel was taken over by eight influencers on National Donut Day to run an influencer marketing campaign. 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 wanted 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.
Often, brands will send influencers free products in exchange for unboxing videos and/or honest reviews on their platforms.
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.
Conclusion
There are many different ways to use influencer marketing to reach consumers in 2023. Whether you are looking to work with micro influencers or celebrities, make sure you target the right people and take advantage of influencer marketing tactics.
By using the best influencer marketing strategies, you can create long-lasting relationships with your audience and increase sales.
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.
