6 tips to crush your influencer outreach campaign

Influencer marketing is a reinvented form of celebrity endorsements but, where celebrity endorsements utilized celebrities that were known to a general audience (which usually include the general population), influencer marketing rather utilizes people who are looked up to in specific niches.

With influencer marketing, content regarding the brand that is sponsoring the campaign is published by a type of “role model” in a particular niche, which causes that “role model’s” fans to turn toward the business in question; thus generating more visitors, leads, and sales for the business.

A recent study provided evidence that influencer marketing may offer an ROI (Return-On-Investment) of as much as 11 times the initial invested amount. This means that, should a business invest $1000 into an influencer marketing campaign, they may get as much as $11000 in return. They also report that influencer marketing is now more effective than traditional display ads and that it allows a business to keep up with companies they are competing against.

To help you get a better ROI and to improve the results of your next influencer marketing campaign, we have compiled a list of six tips that will help you get the most out of your next strategy. These tips are all easy-to-implement and will not lead to additional expenses.

1. Consider a micro influencer

If you have been keeping up with the latest influencer marketing trends, then you would have noticed that micro influencers are now highly recommended – in fact, even some of the bigger brands are now turning toward micro influencers instead of the big names to help them reach a more targeted audience. Some report explains that micro influencers are much more affordable than the prices charged by bigger brands, with Selena Gomez charging as much as $500,000 for a single mention of a particular product (as an example).

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Turning toward micro influencers is not just about the price, but also about the fact that micro influencers have a smaller, but highly concentrated group of followers. This means the influencer is most likely more engaged with their audience than a celebrity would be, and that their audience would look up to the influencer as an expert in that particular niche.

2. Platform… then influencer

When it comes to influencer marketing, it is important not to start looking for an influencer immediately after you have decided to utilize this particular marketing tactic. You should rather start with the basics and draw up a plan. Before you can choose an influencer, you should first decide which social network you are going to target. This will not only make things much easier, but it will also ensure that your influencer marketing campaign is targeting the right people, on the right social network.

3. Choose an influencer who are engaged with their community

Once you have chosen the platform you wish to target, it is time to start looking for that perfect influencer that you can use for your campaign. While searching for an influencer, you should not only look at their profiles. This is quite a common mistake marketers make – they tend to pay more attention to the details on the potential influencer’s profile than to how they communicate with their audience.

Spend some time reading through their latest posts, take a look at comments they have made and whether they respond to any comments made on their own posts. If you find that a potential influencer does not engage with their audience at all, then scratch that one off your list and move on.

4. Let the influencer be part of the strategy

When companies first start out with influencer marketing, they might not be sure how to approach the influencer or the campaign itself at all. A lot of business owners can be quite sensitive when it comes to accepting advice and ideas from third parties that do not have anything to do with their brand, but when it comes to influencer marketing, it is important to be more open-minded.

The influencer that you wish to hire has worked with companies like yours before and they are often experts when it comes to social media marketing – and they know their specific audience better than you do. Thus, they know what content they should promote, how they should promote the content and when they should promote the content to get the best results for your business from their audience.

5. Promote the right kind of content

The way we promote content on the internet changes all the time, along with what we promote on the internet. A few years ago, people shared an image or two and a long article on the internet and considered it an appropriate strategy. Today, however, that will not be sufficient anymore. The world is changing fast and you need to know what content will work best for your influencer marketing strategy at the time.

Core DNA explains that, in 2017, video marketing, along with live streaming, seems to be the most effective way of promoting your brand. Interactive content also ranks at the top of their list, along with webinars and, of course, creative images that attract customers.

6. Know your goals

An influencer marketing campaign should have particular goals to strive for, or it would not be as effective as a brand would like it to be – and it would not be measurable since the results cannot be compared to any goals. Thus, defining what goals you are striving for with your influencer marketing campaign before you even start looking for influencers or a platform to target should be a priority.

Scrunch explains that a boost in brand awareness is often one of the most important goals, but generating sales are also just as important for brands as they need to make a return on their investment. Other goals may be to reach a new target audience and to increase the number of followers your brand has on its social media profiles.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is now one of the more effective marketing strategies on the internet, especially with the rise in ad blocking technology. By utilizing such a marketing technique, customers gain access to a laser-targeted audience that looks up to the person that are promoting your brand’s products or services to them.

Influencer marketing campaigns are often more affordable than most brands think and can lead to better results than the majority of similar marketing tactics. If you are not sure how to get the best value from such a campaign, simply consider the tips we have shared here to ensure your next influencer marketing campaign is a success.