After the Covid-19 pandemic, influencer marketing has become more relevant than ever. With people shopping online, brands are competing with each other for visibility and sales. The biggest gainers from influencer marketing are startups and growing enterprises. They have successfully engaged newer audiences in product awareness and sales.
How to maximize your influencer marketing investment
The essential benefit of influencer marketing is that it is affordable to all businesses, big and small. But finding relevant influencers remains the biggest challenge to brands. Also, creating content that resonates with the audience is quite a feat to achieve. Brands that have championed both these have earned huge profits from their influencer marketing investment.
Let us see how brands can maximize their influencer marketing investment to get profits.
1. Selecting tangible goals
Any brand invests in influencer marketing with a goal. Identifying the purpose gives brands a direction in selecting the influencers and designing campaigns. The brands can even have multiple objectives. But it is better to have one goal if brands are trying out influencer marketing for the first time. The goals can be broadly classified as-
- Brand awareness
- Getting visitors to the website
- Getting visitors to sign for opt-ins such as newsletters and emails.
- Lead generation
- Sales
Careful research and analysis of the target audience make it easy for brands to work on their goals. If it is a real estate agency, lead generation forms will be a good goal. The enterprise can follow up the leads with emails and calls to make them aware of home sales in their location. Brand awareness is a good goal for a company that has just started and is reaching a new audience. An established brand will not need brand awareness. It targets sales because it has already made its name in the business.
2. Picking relevant influencers
Micro-influencers packs a punch when it comes to audience engagement. The macro-influencers and celebrities do not engage with the audience directly. They have managers to look after the social media accounts. But micro-influencers manage their accounts and engage with the audience to build a strong follower base. It is no surprise then that even big brands collaborate with micro-influencers for their campaigns. Established brands like Uber, Zara, and Nike consistently pick micro-influencers to reach the new audience across continents.
Finding relevant influencers is not easy. Hiring the services of influencer marketing platforms simplifies this task. If not, marketers have to study previous campaigns of influencers to measure the engagement and success rate. Identifying relevant influencers, knowing their follower interests, verifying the success of their previous campaigns, and collaborating with them for future campaigns is no mean task. But once done, brands can then start with the content creation for their campaigns.
3. Giving content liberty to influencers
Brands often dictate the terms and content for their campaigns. It is one of the reasons why brands never profit from influencer marketing campaigns. Instead, it is best when brands give content freedom to influencers.
Influencers know the preferences and interests of their followers. They create content by interspersing real-life experiences in the ads. It comes across as natural ads and intrigues the followers. Thus they successfully increase brand awareness and build a community around the brand.
4. Partnering with influencers for the long term
The most frustrating part of influencer marketing is brands working with influencers one time and expecting good profits. No, influencer marketing does not work like this. Brands have to partner with influencers for the long term. Instead of counting ROI in days and weeks, brands have to calculate the outcome for months and years.
Partnership with influencers involves-
- Inviting them for product launch
- Sending them goodies and surprises
- Email them appreciation letters and birthday wishes
- Tagging them on social media posts
- Asking for insight on products & services
- Featuring them in the press release and presentations
Developing a personal relationship with influencers helps the brands in campaigns. When the influencers understand the brand and its culture, they create better content and present it to their followers. It becomes evident to their followers too. The ads do not show up as forced. When the creator delivers genuine content, their followers relate to the brand and consider buying products from them.
5. Boosting user-generated content
Why do brands select influencers for endorsing products? It is because they advertise the brand naturally by engaging with their followers. During a brand’s influencer marketing campaign, the followers engage through likes, shares, and comments. Also, giveaways, contests, and tagging produce an enormous amount of user-generated content.
Brands have to be proactive by responding to the user content. Re-sharing user posts on their stories and commenting on user queries helps to build momentum and gain trust. When users sense trustworthiness in a brand, they do not hesitate to go in for the purchase.
6. Running paid campaigns
Brands need to identify the most successful influencer campaign. They have to boost it on social media and websites through paid marketing. Solely relying on organic growth for brand awareness is challenging and takes consistent efforts and time. Instead, boosting brand awareness with paid campaigns helps brands target new audiences and markets. The ads by popular influencers attract the audience and build brand credibility.
7. Hiring the services of an influencer marketing platform
There are numerous stories of influencer marketing campaigns gone wrong. Brands have failed miserably and lost their effort, time and money. So, what is the best strategy to get a good profit in the influencer marketing campaign? It is where influencer marketing platforms help.
An influencer marketing platform acts as a mediator between interested influencers and brands. It helps the brands find the perfect influencers to collaborate on campaigns. For bands unfamiliar with content creation and campaign processes, the influencer marketing platform comes to their aid by designing and running conversion-optimized campaigns. It is a one-stop solution for all influencer marketing needs, saving time and money for brands. In the long run, it helps in maximizing profits.
Wrap up on how to maximize your influencer marketing investment to get profits
Influencer marketing, when combined with other marketing techniques, gives excellent results. Brands have to be consistent and play it for the long term. A partnership to drive awareness, interest, and brand engagement works in the best interests of both the brand and the influencers.
