Building a Strategy Behind Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Influencer marketing has been evolving over the past decade, moving past celebrity endorsements and creator product reviews to a valuable part of the marketing mix. With 3.96 million of the world’s population on social media, influencers have become a necessity to influence consumer purchase decisions, boost brand reputation, and foster authentic connections.

But successful influencer marketing takes a well-planned and strategic approach to campaigns and collaboration.

Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

There are several different types of influencer marketing campaigns:

Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are a popular way for influencers to promote brands or products. The influencer publishes sponsored posts on their social media accounts with a clear disclosure indicating that it’s sponsored, such as the hashtag #ad or #sponsored post.

For example, a pet food brand may compensate a pet influencer for posts about its products nutritional value.

Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a great way for brands to leverage the reach of influencers to boost engagement and encourage user-generated content (UGC). With UGC, the brand and its products may get even further reach to new audiences outside of the original post.

For example, an electrolyte brand may partner with athletes and travel influencers to boost awareness for people with busy lifestyles. The influencer may ask followers to share their best tip for staying fit with a hectic schedule in exchange for discounts on products, which generates buzz on social media.

Affiliate Campaigns

Affiliate campaigns encourage influencers to promote a brand’s products or services in exchange for a commission on each purchase consumers make based on the recommendations. These campaigns usually have several different influencers.

For example, an art supply company may launch affiliate marketing campaigns with prominent art influencers to share affiliate links and discount links in tutorial videos.

Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are ongoing partnerships between a brand and influencer to promote a brand or its products on a regular basis. Brand ambassadors may appear in brand advertising, wear or use products in public, post social media content featuring the brand, or attend industry expos as an ambassador.

Collaborations

Collaborations are campaigns that involve a partnership between the influencer and the brand, allowing both to leverage each other’s clout for more awareness and sales. Typically, collaborations involve a series of posts or a product line.

For example, a fashion brand may collaborate with a street artist to paint a mural on their storefront. Grammarly launched a six-month influencer collaboration with college students, NCAA athletes, and other academic professionals to promote Grammarly as a tool for students and professionals to complete error-free work.

Product Reviews

Influencers are often used to write honest product reviews. Influencers share their genuine experience with a product, good, bad, and ugly, with disclaimers that let the audience know that they were compensated for their review.

For example, a food influencer may create a recipe tutorial video to review a new line of cookware from a brand. A software subscription service may hire a tech influencer to share their experience using the software for the first time.

Social Media Takeover

Social media takeovers involve compensating an influencer to take control of the brand’s official profiles for a set period of time to “shake things up” and engage with the existing audience – while also bringing their followers to the brand’s pages.

For example, a gourmet coffee brand may hire an influencer to take over their Instagram account for a day, documenting their experience, engaging with followers, and encouraging them to visit their local coffee shop for a chance to be featured – offering an opportunity for UGC.

Planning a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign

The success of an influencer campaign comes down to planning. Here are the steps:

Set Goals and Budget

Like any other marketing campaign, influencer campaigns need to have a budget and goals that serve larger business objectives. For example, a brand’s goal may be to increase brand awareness with a campaign goal of gaining 1,000 new followers and increasing engagement rates by 20%.

Outline Expectations

There’s a fine balance between staying true to a brand and giving influencers some creative control to leverage their unique voice. Brands should have a contract that clarifies the expectations for both parties, which includes:

• Campaign deliverables: The actions the influencer should take and campaign deliverables should be outlined clearly, such as creating and posting five Instagram posts with a product or sharing a detailed video review on YouTube.
• Timeline: The contract should have a start and end date for the agreed-upon deliverables.
• Compensation: There should be information about how much the influencer is compensated for the campaign and how and when they’ll be compensated.
• Content rights: The rights to the influencer content, including the right to repost the content on either account, should be outlined.
• Termination clauses: Influencers represent a brand and need clear expectations about conduct that may result in termination, such as inappropriate behavior or failure to deliver campaigns as agreed.

Track Results

Monitoring performance is a key part of assessing campaign success and learning what’s working and what isn’t. The results of a current campaign can be used to inform and optimize future campaigns, especially for long-term influencer partnerships.

Successful Influencer Campaigns Come Down to Strategy

Influencer marketing can have a dramatic impact on a brand’s success, but campaign strategy requires just as much planning and effort as any other marketing campaign. This includes planning campaign content, setting goals and budget, and outlining expectations.