Influencer Marketing Strategy: How Do You Build a Strategy That Yields?

Today, there are many ways to promote a business. From organic tactics like SEO to paid ads on social media and search engines — all these approaches are still here, and they work. However, they don’t have the same impact on people anymore. This shift has led many brands to explore influencer marketing as a more authentic and relatable way to connect with their audiences.

Modern consumers dislike traditional ads. To them, they look repetitive and intrusive. All it does is disrupt their online experience, but it doesn’t really resonate.

On the other hand, we’ve been observing a sharp rise of TikTok and Instagram influencers in the last few years. These media personas tell their stories to large audiences and…yeah, they market products. And they now do it better than many other marketing approaches.

Understanding The Power of Influencer Marketing

So, why do modern consumers buy into ads from influencers more than ads they see elsewhere? The thing is that influencer branding is built around trust.

Media personas, whether big or small, are just regular people like any of their subscribers. They tell people their stories and share their opinions. Or they are established experts in their field who share valuable knowledge. This creates an enormous level of trust.

To users, social media personas are similar to their friends or family members and are very not like faceless corporations. That’s why, in consumer surveys, 69% of people report they are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend, family member, or influencer, rather than a direct ad from a brand. Furthermore, 81% of consumers have either purchased or considered purchasing something after seeing a post of someone they know (including media personas) about it.

These stats clearly show that having a strong influencer strategy is now an opportunity that businesses can’t miss out on. It brings tangible benefits for businesses from small to large. And we’re about to tell you how to create a successful influencer marketing campaign that brings results.

Step 1: Think About Objectives

An influencer marketing plan with clear objectives is easier to develop and analyze. So, start by defining yours.

Your aim might be to:

• Grow awareness.
• Reach new, well-targeted audiences.
• Generate engagement.
• Elevate traffic.
• Amplify content creation.
• Build trust with the audience.
• Drive conversions.

While the goal defines the general direction, you also need well-defined KPIs to measure the results. Needless to say, they must align.

Here are some tips on how to tie KPIs to objectives:

• Your goal is to reach broader audiences and create awareness. In this case, you should monitor impressions and how many people saw your sponsored content. Also, benchmark your initial number of followers to track their growth.
• Your goal is to engage. Then keep an eye on the number of social signals. These include likes, shares, comments, etc.
• Your goal is to drive traffic and conversions. Then watch the total amount of referral traffic in the first place. Also, measure the click-through rate and the conversion rate.
• Regardless of your goal, campaign effectiveness. Track baseline campaign metrics like Return on Investment (ROI), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and others.

Step 2: Identify the Right Partners

First of all, you need the right type of media persona. Basically, every social media influencer falls into one of these categories:

• Mega: 1M+ followers
• Macro: 100k-1M
• Micro: 10k-100k
• Nano: 1-10k

The category you need should be identified based on your goals. Hence, Mega and macro-influencers are your best bets for awareness campaigns. They let you get in front of hundreds of thousands of people at once. On the other hand, working with them is quite costly. Personas with a huge following often lack authenticity and niche targeting. And they often have a big share of inactive or underengaged followers.

The micro and nano categories won’t give you such a massive outreach. However, their pages are often better targeted and they have higher authenticity, engagement, and trust. They are more cost-effective, too. Not without a reason, working with them is a big trend among brands.

The best way to choose is to align your objectives and budget with the partner’s:

• Niche.
• Audience size and demographics — it should align with your brand’s buyer personas.
• Content style — it should align with your voice and values.
• Engagement rate.

Step 3: Develop Your Collaboration Strategy

Before you launch collaboration, carefully plan the technical aspects of your influencer marketing strategy, such as:

• Timeline—Define the exact stages your campaign will include. Most often, the campaign arc consists of a teaser, launch, peak, and wrap-up. Plan the timeline of every stage. And consider any time restrictions, such as special events, seasonal demand, and product lifecycle.
• Creative direction—Formulate the main theme or message of your campaign. Depending on your objectives, it can be anything from a seasonal campaign or product launch to evergreen, brand-focused storytelling.
• Platforms—Analyze your audience’s habits to see where they spend their time most. Based on this, outline the social media platforms that your campaign will cover.
• Budget—Plan the total budget per campaign. Then, detail it to strategically allocate the available resources to cover content production, partner fees, tools, and other expenses.

Step 4: Craft the Campaign Approach

Now, it’s time to define how your brand will collaborate with the chosen partner. There are 5 collaboration formats popular today:

• Sponsored posts
• Product seeding
• Affiliate partnerships
• Giveaways
• Long-term brand ambassadorships

After choosing the structure of collaboration, you also need to outline the desired content formats and narrative. You also need to agree on a suitable compensation model with the chosen partner. It can be a performance-based compensation or a flat fee.

Lastly and most importantly, you have to decide whether you’ll go for the partner’s creative freedom or set strict brand guidelines. This is a tricky question because influencer branding may not 100% align with your brand’s voice. At the same time, content that doesn’t look authentic to the media persona’s style may cause distrust. Probably the best tip is to balance brand guidelines and the persona’s authenticity.

Step 5: Work Through the Matters of Compliance and Transparency

Compliance and transparency details are among the most important elements of influencer marketing campaigns. They matter primarily for securing your brand’s legal and reputational safety. Here are practical tips to handle these matters the right way:

• Consider any relevant global and local laws and transparency regulations.
• Decide how you’ll handle FTC disclosure requirements. The easiest ways to do this are by adding relevant hashtags or tags that notify users about an ad (e.g., #sponsored, #ad, etc.).
• Prepare lawful agreements or contracts that specify timelines, content rights, exclusivity, etc.
• Set clear guidelines on boundaries in language, sensitive topics, and other things that can cause a reputational backlash. 

Step 6: Amplify Influencer Content

Here comes one of the most important influencer marketing tips for success—after you launch your collaboration, don’t leave it all to chance. You can undertake proactive steps to further amplify the outcomes of your campaign, beyond the influencer’s zone of responsibility.

How do you do that? There are three major tips:

• Cross-promote: Don’t build your campaign only around one platform. Agree on publications across different channels, let’s say Instagram and TikTok, with social media influencers and share their content on your official channels.
• Repurpose: Use the content created for the campaign in other marketing approaches. For example, you can feature it on product pages, in paid ads, marketing emails, etc.
• Capture the UGC momentum: When the surge starts, encourage regular users to create organic user-generated content, for example, by offering incentives.

Step 7: Track and Improve

Use social media analytics to measure your primary engagement and reach KPIs. This will help you see how well the message resonates with the audience and make timely adjustments to amplify the results. But don’t stop there.

Take extra steps to analyze how your campaign affects your business as a whole. In particular, watch new trends in your traffic and conversions. Also, leverage an AI mode tracking tool to see if greater outreach and trust help you get into generative results.

The more all-encompassing your analytics will be, the more data you will be able to harvest. This is a crucial point for your future marketing efforts. And it’s also one more beauty of influencer marketing—it can unlock access to deep analysis of your audience and performance. So don’t miss this opportunity!

Step 8: Build Long-Term Relationships

This is more of a bonus tip, but it matters. When you get on the route of influencer marketing, don’t approach it as a one-off campaign. Even if you don’t see similar opportunities in the near future, building lasting relationships makes sense. The trend for partnerships with media personas will likely persist. And lasting relationships will help you leave an opportunity for fruitful collaborations in the future!

Conclusion

Media personas are authentic and trustworthy. When you partner with them, you gain a chance to use these qualities to promote your brand and also gain trust. Not to mention the huge, well-targeted audience you can reach through such partnerships. 

Now, you have a complete guide for building an influencer strategy that works. Use the tips we shared here to launch a campaign that drives your business forward!