Influencer marketing: checklist
1. Establish strategy.
The first step in any company's communication is to establish the communication strategy. With influencer marketing, there are three questions in particular to answer:
What are the objectives of the campaign?
Influencer campaigns are particularly well suited to achieving the following four objectives:
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Increase reach and brand awareness.
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Increase engagement and build trust between the brand and its customers.
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Conversion, both in terms of sales and new followers for the company's social media page
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Create credibility and authenticity for the company: influencers have built credibility that reflects on the brand.
What is the target audience of the campaign?
To determine the target audience of your campaign, three components are the most important: location of the target audience, age and interests.
What is the budget of the campaign?
It is important to set a budget in advance and decide what you will spend on what. In doing so, take into account not only influencer fees, but also other campaign costs, such as the cost of promoting influencer content. There's still a lot of uncertainty about what a post should cost, but several influencer tools, such as Stellar, report an expected cost that you can base your decision on.
2. Influencer marketing tools
Choosing the right influencer, is the hardest part of influencer collaboration. As mentioned earlier, there are four aspects to consider, namely number of followers, authenticity of the influencer, audience engagement and the product or topic of the campaign.
A good knowledge of the influencer landscape is required to make the right choice, although it is also possible to use tools that provide an influencer database, such as Stellar or Upfluence.
3. Contact intake + briefing document.
Influencer marketing is all about relationships and email templates are therefore not suitable for contacting the influencer.
Instead, write a personalized email each time in which you make clear who you are (if the influencer doesn't already know you), what product you would like to collaborate on and the type of campaign, what's special about the product and why you think it's a match for the influencer.
In the attachment to the contact e-mail, you also provide a briefing document that elaborates on the product, the company, the campaign strategy and the goal of the campaign. In addition, the briefing document also goes into more detail about the publications: what content is expected? How many publications? What are the do's and don'ts and what key words should definitely appear in the communication? What is the budget for the collaboration? This way, the influencer has all the information available.
4. Draw up a contract
After an influencer has been chosen, negotiations have been completed and a certain collaboration has been agreed upon, it is important to always enter into a contract that defines the agreed upon collaboration.
This contract should include the following items:
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fee
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number of social posts
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stories that will be published
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On which channels
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expected publication date
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exclusivity
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Duration of the exclusivity for the product
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Possible boosting on own social media channels of the brand
5. Reporting
To report an influencer campaign, it is tempting to use the number of views, likes and comments as reporting tools.
While this data is very interesting, it can be biased: the larger the number of followers of an influencer, the larger the number of views, but this says little about the return-on-investment.
Tip: give influencers their own discount code
To get a clear picture of the success of the campaign, engagement and swipe-ups are therefore more interesting to measure the conversion. Another way to measure the success of influencers is by giving them a unique discount code. This allows you to measure the direct effect of the specific influencer on sales.
Influencer marketing risks
While an influencer collaboration can have many benefits, it is also not according to risks. Because not only the internal marketing team of the product is involved in the content creation, but also one or more external people, very clear communication about the guidelines and corporate goals must be made to avoid confusion among consumers. Moreover, partnering with a mega- or celebrity-influencer can have a negative effect on brands because they can lower audience uniqueness and brand attitudes.
An ambassador who becomes embroiled in a scandal can also transfer that deteriorating image onto a brand. Finally, there are unfortunately also influencers who work with fake followers to increase their reach.
Wondering if influencer marketing is a good choice for your company? Contact us now!
Sources
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Ahmad, I. (2018, 16 February). The Influencer Marketing Revolution. Social Media Today
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Bevilacqua, Jessica, and Elizabeth Del Giudice (2018), “Why Brands Need to Utilize Influencer Marketing in 2018,” St. Joseph Communications
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Campbell, C. & Farrell, J. (2020). More than meets the eye: The functional components underlying influencer marketing. Business Horizons. 63. 10.1016/j.bushor.2020.03.003
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Kohli, C.; Suri, R.; Kapoor, A. (2015). Will social media kill branding? Business Horizons, 58, 35-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.08.004
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De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2016). Marketing through instagram influencers: impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. 15th International Conference on Research in Advertising. Presented at the 15th International Conference on Research in Advertising
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Lou, C. & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer Marketing: How Message Value and Credibility Affect Consumer Trust of Branded Content on Social Media. Journal of Interactive Advertising. 19:1. 58-73. DOI: 10.1080/15252019.2018.1533501
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Wissman, B. (2018, 2 March). Micro-Influencers: The Marketing Force Of The Future? Forbes
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Wong, K. (2014, september). The explosive growth of influencer marketing and what it means for you. Forbes