“A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising -” Mark Zuckerberg
Advertising world is rolling around the influencers.
We are in a digital age, but one thing that has not changed during the course of time is relying on others’ verdict when it comes to purchasing an item.
From the very beginning we humans have a tendency of asking to more than one relevant source, even when we are buying a pin. With the evolution of influencer marketing, there is no looking back for the brands who are wanting to invest in their business marketing tactics.
There was a time when people used to wait for their morning newspapers. Now, all are glued to social media platforms for latest news & updates, from the trusted online sources or individuals.
According to a report from Statista, the influencer marketing is on the verge of growth and is expected to expand from 6.5 billion in 2019 to 13.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, which is a time period of only three years.
This expansion is for real, as the online audience engagement is also on an increase as of January 2021. As per the global age group engagement ratio, there are 33% of Instagram followers between the age group of 18 years and 34 years.
Such an insane growth statistics are a win-win situation for both the parties, the audience and the brands. Influencers are the only way to reach out for Gen Z’s, as they are our constant active group on social media.
Now, being a brand, you might be in a dilemma of how to pull off an influencer marketing campaign successfully in the online branding world. Herein there are some tactics that might help you in a winning campaign.
3 tactics to create a successful influencer marketing campaign
#1 Finding a right influencer with a correct pay criteria
Researching is a constant when we gear up for online marketing campaigns. Now, before you find an influencer, it is very much necessary to choose a relevant platform.
Choosing an apt platform will narrow down your research. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, there are influencers everywhere but their reach varies a lot. Being a brand, you need to look at your target audience and their engagement.
After you choose one platform, it will be easy to look for influencers. Through social listening, you will easily figure out the most popular creative individual in your genre.
This is also majorly influenced by the industry you are in. For instance, beauty and cosmetic brands reach effectively to the audience on Instagram & YouTube. Whereas, other technology oriented gadget brands use Facebook to reach their potential customers. Thus, this is how your profession will make a difference in the choice of influencers.
After deciding the platform and influencer, make sure you set an apt pay criteria. It can be a barter system, percentage on sales, flat charges for one campaign, or free merchandise throughout the marketing campaign.
#2 Make a budget and manage your influencer’s activity
Social media platform done.
Influencer collaboration done.
Payment criteria set.
Now, the next big step is to set the overall online branding budget. Irrespective of whether you are a startup or an entrepreneur, every business needs to set a figure for marketing as it is a very broad and expensive field. Depending on that particular number, you will easily plan your future strategies with the influencer.
The most important thing for a brand is to monitor their influencer’s work. It might happen to be a human error in typing, placing hashtags, or late posting. The influencers are creative people with a bunch of projects going simultaneously at a time, so there are possibilities of such small errors. Thus, as a business you need to come up with a management strategy which consists of minute details of performing online work from a month’s post to hashtags to type of posts, everything should be at your disposal. This will also help in avoiding miscommunication and the influencers will meet the deadlines with apt branding gist from your firm.
#3 Reach out to an influencer
There are multiple things that can go wrong in an online campaign, one of which is collaboration with influencers. Now, this tactic is specifically for brands who are still in search of one or are dissatisfied with the outcome of their current collaboration.
One has to be careful when selecting an influencer for making the influencer marketing winning strategy. The ship of online branding has only one sailor in the name of influencer, so a hasty decision will never help in succeeding digitally. After researching, you must look at these three points.
- Similar posts on the page: Before approaching for collaboration, a brand should see to it that his page consists of similar conceptualized posts. This shows that the influencer is friendly with the item or product before and has relevant knowledge of it.
- Run through the page for obtaining reliability: Make a thorough examination on each post which should consist of views, spam comments, likes-dislikes, to know its reliability or fraudulent status online.
- Similar brand association in the past: See to it that the influencer has collaborated or not with your niche’s brand. This will also help in running a competitive analysis and you will rope into a relevant influencer.
After bifurcating, think of reaching out to them. Most of the influencers meet through private messaging or emails for collaboration. Other than that you can also find one without any pain on websites specially designed for brands to meet their desired influencers. The creative heads are usually signed onto such collaboration platforms.
Conclusion
Influencers are here to stay for long, there is absolutely no denial on this statement. These three tactics will surely help you in starting your own influencer marketing strategy. Eventually you will get a knack of strategizing online influencer campaigns with necessary steps to be taken at the required time. Thus, experiment and innovate your branding tactics with these creative souls online.
