What is influencer marketing in 2022?
Influencer marketing has evolved over the years from being primarily endorsements from celebrities to more endorsements from content creators who are power players in a specific niche. These power players have trusted members of a community whom people look to when making decisions about products and services. And just like we talk about with identifying your own target market, with influencers these days bigger is not better. Depth of knowledge and trust from followers in a smaller, specific niche is what makes great influencers today shine.
We can bet that you have made purchases because you saw someone you trusted recommend that product. Even if you don’t know that’s played a role in your decision to purchase it! But, how do you know who to trust with your brand?
1. Choose The Right Influencer For Your Brand
The most important aspect of influencer marketing campaigns is finding the right person for your brand. Someone who will build trust and increase your brand’s authenticity (an important thing users are looking for from brands right now) with an audience that is relevant to your brand and has a high likelihood of overlapping with your own target consumer.
First, we need to define the types of Influencers:
2. Know The Goals For Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
What is your reason for wanting to hire an influencer?
It is very important to know what your goals are as a company and what you want to achieve from influencer marketing. There are several goals you can reach through an influencer marketing campaign, including increasing engagement, reach, brand awareness, or even generating revenue. Remember, increasing your reach and brand awareness is the first step to reaching any other marketing goals. So don’t discount the value of those seemingly non-tangible goals!
Based on your goals, you will be able to plan which metrics you will need in order to assess the performance of each influencer campaign. You can’t measure success without having clear goals and success metrics set up in advance. So this is an important step to get your chosen influencer to align prior to signing the contract (and yes! You should most certainly have a contract.)
3. Track The Results
When launching an influencer marketing campaign, make sure to measure your results throughout the whole process. One great way to do that is through UTM parameters. These are shortcodes that you add to your website URL to help you track where website visitors are coming from. This helps you get a better idea of how effective the campaign is and if it is a good return on your investment.
Another way to track your results is to make sure the influencer has a clear call to action in their content. For example, if the influencer is sending people to follow your profile, sign up for emails, or visit your website, then you can see if they were successful on your end.
Remember, hiring an influencer is NOT a set-it-and-forget-it marketing tactic. There are very few of those, realistically. So, even once the contract is signed it is up to you to keep an eye on how they are bringing the campaigns for your brand to life, provide feedback, and ensure everything they do represents your brand in a way that you feel good about. That being said…
4. Be Authentic & Let Them Be Authentic
As we stated earlier authenticity is something social media users are looking for from brands and influencers alike. According to Sprout Social, 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when choosing the brands they like and support. So, you must allow them to be authentic to their audience as well because they understand their audience better than you do. This is a great example of why choosing the right influencer is the most important aspect of influencer marketing.
So, while you definitely need to ensure they aren’t portraying your brand in a way that is negative or off-brand for you, hiring an influencer to create content that you could and would create yourself will negate the value of the relationship. Give them the important do’s and don’ts but then let them be creative and bring your brand to life authentically for their brand. If you hire a sexy influencer that shows a lot of skin, for example…expect that they will do that for your brand’s posts as well. If that makes you uncomfortable – choose another influencer.
Knowing what you can and should control and what you need to let them freely express is important. For The Crafty Cask one of our important dos is that they only support craft while one of our important don’ts is to never portray drinking in any content related to our brand as the “getting drunk or doing shots” kind of drinking. Again, all of these things should be clearly thought through in advance and outlined in your contract.
Is it scary to hire an influencer for the first time? Yes, it can be. Is it worth it? Yes, most definitely! There are a lot of options available to you, but gathering a list of influencers in your market is the best place to start. If you have any questions about how to go about developing an influencer campaign for your brand, feel free to reach out!
Ready To Start Your Influencer Marketing Campaign?
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