The Dos and Don’ts of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is your golden ticket to success. It’s the ultimate word-of-mouth exposure fueled by the world of social media. In 2022, the influencer market had a value of $16.4 billion in the US alone. It remains a growing marketing trend, year after year. It can engage broader audiences and skyrocket your brand like never before.

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that features product placements and endorsements by an influencer. The power of influencer marketing lies in the credibility and trust an influencer has earned with their followers. 

Brands can tap into this trust, which can help you reach audiences you can’t get with traditional marketing. It is a highly effective way to increase credibility and visibility, raise brand awareness, and ultimately improve sales.

However, before you start your influencer campaign, you need to know what to do to make it work for you. Here are a few tips and tricks to pave your success with influencer marketing.

Dos of Influencer Marketing

1. Researching and Selecting the Right Influencer

Cristiano Ronaldo, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Dwayne Johnson (The Rock). Everybody has heard about these celebrity influencers. But don’t forget an influencer can be anyone who has garnered a certain level of following due to their expert knowledge or social influence in a specific field.

Like any area of your business, you need to do your research to work with the right people. The same goes for selecting the right influencer. Be realistic. Engaging Ronaldo to market your pots and pans might not be as effective as you hoped to be!

2. Creating a Clear Brief for an Influencer Campaign 

Everything starts with a plan. Without a plan, your campaign will be like going to battle without a strategy. You can eliminate all of the unnecessary stress and mitigate potential challenges by creating a clear brief for your influencer.

When you deliver the brief to your influencer, you should outline these important areas so that both of you are on the same page:

• Goals and objectives of your collaboration
• Your target audience
• Metrics that you will be looking at to measure the success of the campaign

3. Being Transparent With an Influencer

Transparency is critical to creating the best type of business relationships. Being transparent with influencers will gain their respect and further goodwill. It will also encourage them to maintain a long-term working relationship with you. 

Naturally, you will also have better results when an influencer understands your brand’s expectations and goals. It’s better than leaving them to figure it out themselves because you would know best about the kind of success metrics you are looking for.

Working together allows you to grow, learn, and create a rewarding business partnership.

4. Provide Proper Creative Direction

Many influencers know their stuff, but for them to work well with your campaign, you will need to share proper creative direction too. Take the time to connect with your influencer and explain your creative vision.

When that happens, you will both be singing from the same song sheet, which can help you to:

• Reduce any forms of confusion and misunderstandings
• Ensure the content created ticks all boxes, such as tone, style, and type of content
• Use call-to-actions that will bring beneficial engagement
• Ultimately, drive your campaign’s success rates!

5. Utilizing the Influencer’s Relevance to Your Target Audience

When identifying a suitable influencer to engage for your marketing campaign, you must first check the influencer’s relatability to your target audience. Here are six practical steps to determine if the influencer you have in mind will be relevant to your target audience.

Step 1: Identifying the Target Audience

It would be best if you were 100% clear about the target audience for your brand. Use precise audience demographics with unique characteristics, interests, and habits.

Step 2: Researching for the Right Influencer(s)

Ask yourself if a mega influencer, macro influencer, or mico-influencer will work best for your campaign. The key is to look for influencers that have a significant amount of followers that match your target audience. It is also important to check that their content matches your brand and messages.

Step 3: Checking the Relevance of the Influencer(s)

You can check the influencer’s relevance by looking at their number of followers, engagement rates (likes, shares, comments), and how they approach different types of content.

Step 4: Negotiating a New Partnership With Your Identified Influencer(s)

Reach out to the influencer to propose a collaboration that is beneficial to both of you. In exchange for their service, you can offer various things such as monetary compensation, exclusive products, access and/or experiences, or even a share of the profits!

Step 5: Collaborating on Content Creation

Work together collaboratively on content creation. Make every effort to create genuine content that will appeal to your target audience, and at the same time, ensure it represents your brand’s values and vision.

Step 6: Monitoring and Evaluating the Results

Set time aside to monitor and evaluate the results of your influencer campaign. This can be done both during and after the launch of the campaign – learn from the experience and metrics, measure its impact, and use it as ammunition to power up your future campaigns.

Don’ts of Influencer Marketing

Now that you know what you should do, here are the things you must avoid when working on your influencer marketing campaign. 

1. Don’t Go For Quantity Over Quality

Don’t get caught up in the numbers. Sometimes, working with one quality influencer may bring you far more results than working with many unsuitable influencers.

Checking the engagement of an influencer is a clear indicator of their quality. An influencer with a smaller but more engaged group of audience might just be what your campaign needs! By focusing on engaging a quality influencer, you can have more quality engagement with your target audience.

2. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Micro-Influencers

Again, it is worth bearing in mind that just because an influencer has a larger group of followers, it is not a hundred percent guarantee that their posts will drive sales.

Even though they have the smallest group of followers, we should not dismiss the power of micro-influencers as they sometimes can produce better results for your campaign, and here are some reasons why:

• Better Relationship with Their Audience 

Although micro-influencers have a smaller following, they tend to have a stronger connection, trust, and reputation with their audience. Hence, your campaign will be able to reach out to a more targeted group that will produce higher engagement rates.

• More Cost-Effective  

Due to their smaller following, you do not need to spend as much money engaging micro-influencer as compared to mega-influencers. Therefore, engaging micro-influencers are not only more affordable, but it also allows you to have a better return on investment for your campaign.

• Availability

As micro-influencers are still working on building their social media presence, they are more inclined to work with brands to expand their portfolio. More often than not, they will have more availability to take on your campaigns as compared to mega or macro influencers with busier schedules. This creates a win-win situation for both parties!

3. Don’t Forget to Measure the Return on Investment (ROI)

You’ll need to keep an eye on your campaign to see how effective it has been. You can use different metrics to measure your ROI, as these figures will help you determine what is and isn’t working. You can then adjust your campaign accordingly.

You can determine your ROI easily by:

• Checking if your sales have gone up
• Monitoring the increase in traffic to your website
• Looking at the increase in engagement on your social media accounts

4. Don’t Force Product Placement(s)

Product placements can be an excellent tool to market your brand, but forcing one may give you the opposite of your intended effect.

If the influencer starts putting your product in every post, it can come across as aggressive and even off-putting. It could inadvertently reduce the influencer’s credibility with the audience and impact your campaign results.

It is crucial to keep in mind that product placements should be done in a natural, organic, and even creative way! Sometimes, it is best to consult your influencer on the best approach as they have plenty of experience with what works with their audience. 

Also remember, what one influencer has done may not necessarily work for another. Different influencers have their own unique ways to captivate and reach out to their audience.

5. Don’t Ignore the Importance of Having a Contract With the Influencer(s)

Like every other business partnership, you should always have a contract with your influencer. The contract should set out the terms, expectations, and amount of compensation. It can help to avoid misunderstandings and potential legal issues.

It also allows you to highlight any extra things the influencer might receive. For example, offer them benefits or perks for working with your brand, which would help strengthen your business relationship.

The Future of Influencer Marketing

The influence of social media will keep growing, and so will the importance of influencer marketing. Brands will and should continue to work with influencers to build brand awareness, generate sales, and increase their reach to new audiences. 

Over time, influencer marketing will become more regulated, and brands must adapt quickly. The use of automation and artificial intelligence will also increase, which will help improve the targeting and measurement of such social media campaigns.

This trend will only continue to grow, and now more than ever, you should seize this opportunity to build your brand with the help of influencer marketing.

Final Thoughts – Go and Start Your First Campaign

Now that you know what the dos and don’ts of influencer marketing are, follow these steps above and refine them as you progress. Good luck, and get ready to see your brand in the spotlight!

Ivan from ThatsIvan