Influencer Marketing: From "What's Up Guys!" to ROI

mattheweswain
Dec 14, 2022
3 min read

It’s no secret that influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach target audiences. Influencers have a huge following, which makes them a great way for businesses to spread their message. With so many options and platofrms, it’s not always clear how to get started or what steps you need to take in order to make it work for your business. So, let's take a look at an influencer marketing strategy: what it is, why you should use it when planning your next campaign, and how you can implement one in practice.

What it Is

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that uses influential people to endorse brands, services, or products. Influencers have a large following on social media or within their ciricle of influence who want to hear from them, They are known for their ability to drive word of mouth—and that's something that companies want in today's marketplace.

In your marketing strategy, remember that while a large audience is important from your influencer, it is more important that an infuencer's following matches your target audience with a high level of engagement.

Types of Influence Marketing Campaigns

Affiliate Marketing Campaigns – These involve working with influencers that have large followings on social media platforms such as Instagram or YouTube. These influencers promote your products and/or services in their posts and videos in exchange for a commission or fee. You can also pay them to create content based on specific guidelines you provide them with.

Organic Social Media Campaigns - This type of campaign involves working directly with the influencer to create content for your business which will then be shared by the influencer across his/her own social channels (Facebook, Twitter etc). The goal is that this organic sharing increases the visibility of your product or service at no cost whatsoever!

Micro-Influencers vs. Celebrity Influencers

Micro-influencers are more likely to be authentic and engaged, which means they will be more effective in creating content that resonates with their audience.
Micro-influencers are also much more affordable than celebrity influencers, which makes them ideal for smaller companies and startups that don't have the funds for celebrity endorsements.

Selecting the Right Ones

Selecting the right influencers to work with is the most important part. Use these questions to guide your decision:

Does their brand, views, and followers match up with your company mission and goals?
Have they partnered with a company before?
What are examples of past work?
What is their engagement rate - likes, views, minutes viewed, comments, shares, etc.
Will you get copies of their videos to use in your marketing?
Are they easy work with?
What are the demographics and ages of thier followers?

How to Measure Influencer Marketing Success

Setting measurable business KPIs (key performance indicators) at the outset helps ensure that an influencer campaign is achieving its desired outcome. It also means you won't waste time or money on strategies that aren't working for you – which means more savings for your business!

You can measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign in several ways. First, you should track the number of engagements and conversions that result from your outreach efforts. Engagements are any actions taken by an audience member as a result of an influencer's post or recommendation, including likes, shares, comments, and clicks on links shared in their content. These are considered "owned" by you because they happened as a direct result of your relationship with that particular influencer—so this is where you get credit for impressions and conversions (e.g., purchases made by site visitors after clicking through from an influencer's post).

Additionally, it helps to evaluate how well your campaign performed against other campaigns or brand initiatives in terms of ROI (return on investment) over time; this allows brands to determine whether investing more time or money into such initiatives would be wise for future endeavors.

Additional key metrics to measure include:

The number of followers gained from the campaign
The number of likes, comments and shares each post received
The amount of traffic generated from each post (e.g., organic search traffic, direct traffic)
Sales, new customers, return customers, meeting bookings, etc., whatever the goal and call to action was for your influencers.