What is Influencer Marketing: How to Develop Your Strategy

Digital marketing has changed a lot over the years. And unlike before, it’s no longer limited to content marketing and Google ads only.

Today influencer marketing has emerged as one of the most popular digital marketing trends, and businesses are enthusiastically collaborating with influencers to promote their products and services. But what exactly is this influencer marketing? Let’s find out.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing in which businesses partner with a person(aka influencer) who can strongly influence a section of the target audience to use its products and services.

Influencers already have a huge follower base. So when a business partners with them, it benefits the brand by getting a positive and powerful exposure without appearing too promotional. It’s a great way of reaching out to a wide target audience in a meaningful and natural way.

But how do you create a successful influencer marketing campaign? The obvious answer to that is by building a solid marketing strategy. So here are the 4 steps you need to take to create a successful influencer marketing campaign for your business.

1. Define Your Goal

To make your influencer marketing campaign work, you first have to define your goals. This will help you recognize the metrics that you need to monitor and track to understand if you’re going in the right direction.

Different marketers can have different goals depending on their business type. Some might want to create brand awareness, while others may want to build a strong brand identity. Identify the goal that you want to achieve and define your objectives accordingly.

Some of the goals you might want to consider are link building, audience building, lead generation, a boost in sales, etc.

2. Set a Budget

Influencer marketing is a growing industry. And you can’t expect to partner with influencers just in exchange for a product or a gift. Although there are influencers who agree to promote your business in exchange for a gift, it’s ideal to pay them for their services.

An average influencer on Instagram charges $ 100 per 10K followers. This means the more followers they have, the more they are going to charge.

And you can benefit from these campaigns only if the influencer has a huge fan base. So it’s important for you to set aside a budget for your influencer marketing campaign.

3. Choose the Type of Influencer Campaign

Once your budget is set, it’s time to choose the type of influencer marketing campaign you want to create. There are various types of influencer marketing campaigns. You can ask an influencer to co-create content with you, let you guest post on their social media account or blog, ask them to mention your business on social media, etc.

You might also want to let them take control of your social accounts and use it to inspire and influence people to use your products and services. So do some research and select a campaign type for your business before reaching out to the influencers.

4. Find the Right Influencer

The next big step is to find the right influencer. Just like there are different types of influencer marketing campaigns, there are different types of influencers too. To get the maximum out of your campaign, you need to find the right influencer to collaborate with.

You might want to partner with bloggers, social media stars, industry experts, or thought leaders. This will depend entirely on your campaign goal and target audience.

To have a successful campaign, you need to consider 3 things while finding an influencer for your business.

The first thing you need to consider is the audience that these influencers have. There’s no point working with an influencer with a huge audience if your target audience doesn’t match. So it’s important for you to find influencers with the right audience.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll overlook their reach. This brings us to the second factor you need to consider, which is the influencer’s reach. Find someone whose reach is wide enough to help you accomplish your goal.

The third factor is the content of the influencer. Make sure that the content they create aligns with your brand. Otherwise, it might appear out of context and will not derive the expected results.

Once you identify the type of influencer you want to collaborate with, you can reach out to them for the partnership.

Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways of getting brand exposure and achieving conversion goals for businesses. But to get the desired result, you have to plan it with a solid strategy. The above tips can help you create a powerful influencer marketing campaign that can help you gain more exposure, increase your followers, and boost your sales.

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Author: Chris Christoff

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