How to Launch Your Influencer Marketing Campaign and Get Results

So you would like to get into influencer marketing and run a successful campaign to increase brand awareness? That is amazing! How do you launch an effective influencer marketing campaign that yields results? If you have not launched an influencer campaign before, this may sound scary and you may feel confused as to what you have to do to get started.

You may have clear business objectives and goals, such as awareness, or engagement, and you may know the target audience inside out. However, not that many digital marketers have developed and launched successful influencer marketing campaigns with the desired results.

What would be scarier and more overwhelming than launching a new initiative? There is always a risk that it will fail. Also, humans tend to stick to past methods that have been proven to produce results.

You can get some inspiration from influencer marketing campaign examples. If you work in digital marketing or social media marketing, you probably know that influencer marketing is growing in popularity among companies and businesses of different sizes and in all industries.

Creative influencer marketing campaigns have become an important part of many social media marketing strategies. It is not surprising that so many marketers are eager to learn how to create and launch a successful influencer marketing campaign.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is an effective marketing and advertising strategy. Influencer marketing uses athletes, celebrities, bloggers, and other influential people to market and promote brands. It involves companies finding influential figures and content creators and working with them on a marketing campaign.

According to some estimates, there are about 42 million influencers in the world. Also, this number is expected to increase in the future. Influencer marketing has proven itself as a leading digital marketing method.

You should know that its unique combination of creativity, authenticity, ingenuity, and audience reach catapulted influencer marketing from a modest $1.7 billion industry in 2016 to a whopping $13.8 billion industry in 2021, and it reached $16.4 billion in 2022. So, if you are a business owner, you must develop and implement an influencer marketing campaign or risk getting left behind in this dynamic and rapidly changing digital age.

Why it Matters

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve brand awareness, get authentic and engaging content, and get people to love your brand.  Here are a few key things that a fruitful partnership with an influencer can bring.

Engagement and Reach

Note that the right influencer for your brand will be naturally engaging and have considerable pull or traction with their audience.

Authority

Influencers and celebrities that are popular in their fields tend to bring even more sway and clout with them. This is because you can be sure they know and understand what they are talking about and that their target audiences are listening.

However, brands must collaborate with the right influencers and media personalities to launch a successful and efficient influencer marketing campaign. However, you may have many doubts, such as:

• How much will the campaign cost?
• How to find and connect with the right influencers?
• Does it help increase sales?

Developing an influencer marketing campaign that generates results starts with your organization and its needs. This is why you should always start by defining your goals and what you would like to achieve.

Some common goals to focus on include increasing brand awareness and strengthening the brand, building a strong social media presence, or improving conversion rates.

So, let’s look at the steps to launch a successful influencer campaign.

1.    Define Your Influencer Campaign’s Budget

Whether you run and manage a small business or a huge enterprise, you have to keep track of your expenses. This will help you understand whether the influencer campaign met your goals or not. An influencer marketing budget should ideally be based on various factors, such as your overall marketing budget and marketing objectives and goals.

It is important to consider how much money you can afford to spend on the campaign and the kind of investment return you expect to generate. Your choice of influencer may also depend on your budget. However, you shouldn’t restrict your choices based on this criterion.

If you’re new to influencer marketing, it is prudent to start small and see whether influencer marketing is best for your business or not.

2.    Set Goals

Before devising a roadmap to success, you have to define what success looks like for your brand. Some common objectives and goals for influencer marketing campaigns and programs include the following.

Awareness

Building awareness is a key goal in many successful influencer marketing campaigns. Increasing brand awareness means getting your brand in front of as many individuals as possible and inspiring and promoting meaningful interactions. The aim is to showcase your brand to the world and turn people into fans.

Conversions

Increasing revenue is one of the most common conversion goals. Other conversion goals may include form submissions, email sign-ups, and eBook downloads.

Here are some other marketing goals and objectives that influencers will help you achieve:

• User-generated content
• Better website SEO
• Increased brand sentiment

3.    Choose Your KPIs

After setting your goals, you should choose Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This is because KPIs will help you determine if you’ve successfully achieved your marketing goals. For each goal, assign a KPI, i.e. a data point that you can easily measure during and after the influencer marketing campaign to determine and evaluate your success. For example, KPIs for awareness may include impressions and views.

4.    Identify the Audience

The more precisely you can describe your ideal customer, the more equipped you will be to find the right content creators for your service or product. Developing audience personas is an excellent way to make sure that you understand who you are trying to reach. This is what the best influencer marketing campaigns in 2023 will have in common.

Key demographics generally include location, age, gender, socioeconomic status, level of education, and marital status. However, it’s the interests of your target customers that really make influencer marketing powerful.

Once you have decided, you should create a matching set of influencer personas. It will help you get an idea of the qualities you are looking for in potential influencers.

5.    Choosing a Suitable Campaign Type

The next and most important decision to make is what kind of campaign you would like to run. It is important to consider content formats, influencer compensation, and social media channels. Some of the most popular types of campaigns include the following:

• Sponsored influencer posts
• Giveaway competitions
• Unboxing and product gifting
• Affiliate marketing
• Product collaborations

6.    Connect With the Right Influencers

With your campaign strategy set, now the action can start! Now is the time to identify creators for your influencer campaign. You should do this after considering your brand’s target audience demographics as well as analyzing creator performance metrics. This will help you choose the influencers most suited to your needs and preferences.

Finding the right influencers for your campaign can be a tricky and challenging task. However, there are several steps you can take to increase your chances of success. Here are some tips:

Consider Influencers in Your Niche:

You want to find influencers who are relevant to your industry or niche. You can use tools like Google, social media platforms, influencer marketing platforms, or industry-specific directories to find influencers who are relevant to your niche.

Analyze their Social Media Channels

Once you’ve found potential influencers, take a closer look at their social media channels. Check their followers, engagement rate, content, and authenticity. This will give you a better understanding of their audience and whether they align with your brand’s values.

Check Their Past Collaborations

Check the influencers’ past collaborations and projects with other brands. This will give you an idea of the type of content they produce and the type of brands they work with.

Once you’ve a shortlist of suitable influencers for your brand, outreach can begin! It is important to introduce your brand, services, or products, put forward a convincing and persuasive value proposition, and provide details of your compensation offer.

7.    Content Production

Once you have ironed out the details of your influencer campaign planning and contract, it is time for your influencers to leverage their creativity! For marketers running and managing the campaign, it is important to make sure that influencers have everything they need in order to start making content for the campaign. And this means sharing campaign guidelines, shipping product samples, and generating promo codes if needed.

8.    Determine the Best Social Media Platforms

You may run an influencer marketing campaign for your brand on any social media site, such as Facebook, or even a creator’s blog. However, the best influencer marketing campaigns choose the social platforms that are likely to generate the best results. You should base your channel choice on your goals and the target audience.

9.    Create a Campaign Brief

It is essential to create a proper campaign brief to get the desired results. It will help you disseminate the right information to the content creators and prevent confusion and back-and-forth conversations. You can start your campaign brief by briefly introducing your brand, including key issues and pain points that you would like the creator to focus on.

Another key element of your influencer campaign brief is content guidelines. And as a marketer, you must ensure that the influencer-created content is engaging and aligns with your brand’s message and overall campaign strategy.

10. Leverage Influencer Marketing Tools

Now that you are ready to launch an influencer marketing campaign, here are some amazing tools to make it simpler.

Hootsuite

Did you know that Hootsuite search streams will help you discover influencers? You can do this by monitoring conversations pertinent to your industry or niche across multiple channels.

Once you’ve a preliminary set of influencers in mind, you can add them to a stream in order to track what they share and the people they engage with.

Collabstr

Collabstr is an excellent free marketplace where brands and businesses can search for influencers on the basis of platform, location, niche, and more.

11. Campaign Measurement and Reporting

When your influencer marketing campaign concludes, you will have to measure your KPIs to assess and analyze your campaign’s performance. It is important to track the KPIs and metrics that correspond to your campaign objectives and goals and evaluate whether the campaign has successfully reached its goals.

Short-Term ROI

Generally, your short-term ROI varies based on the sales generated by your influencer marketing campaign.

Long-Term ROI

Studies indicate that increased user-generated content and brand awareness generate more sales in the longer term.

However, campaign measurement and analysis shouldn’t just happen at the end of the campaign. Tracking results is crucial to help you calculate ROI and earned media value.

Also, analyzing individual influencers’ performance will help you determine which influencers to collaborate with in the future. Also, you should nurture and foster long-term partnerships with your best-performing influencers. This will ensure your ROI remains high across any future influencer marketing campaigns.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, setting up and managing your influencer campaigns the right way takes time, resources, and careful planning and monitoring. After your influencer campaign ends, you should measure your results against the initial goal. This will help you determine whether it is suitable to work with current influencers again and continue the collaboration.

If your influencer marketing campaign didn’t bring you the type of results you were looking for, try working with different influencers or change your content strategy.

For a FREE influencer marketing consultation – please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help.