How to Scale Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Micro Influencer Marketing: How Effective?
The rise of social media and technology has shift the way things work, especially in the marketing field. In fact, social media has fundamentally changed the balance of power between customers and brands. Consumers today trust personal recommendations and online reviews more than traditional advertising.
With the increasing rate of ad-blocks and emergence of social media stars, 2017 has been the year where the number of influencer marketing campaigns skyrocketed and it is not going away in the coming years. According to Linqia, most marketers spent between $25,000 — $50,000 per influencer marketing program in 2016, and based on its survey, they will double to $50,000 — $100,000 per program in 2017. Not just that, 48% of marketers increase their overall influencer marketing budgets in 2017 after seeing how effective it is.
So what is all the hype about? Influencers marketing is proven to be more effective than traditional marketing because of several reasons. For the most part, influencer marketing helps improve brands SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
By working with influencers, personalized content is generated to engage their specific range of audience. The creative posts and relevant use of keywords that the influencers are expert in is most likely going to push that content all the way up in the search results which correlates with high traffic for the brand.
Not only that, Influencer content also provides long-term value. Brands can enjoy the benefits even long after the program ends as the social media algorithm usually steadily rises the content which has a gradual share and engagement. Overtime, brand can influencer programs see up to 40% additional traffic and conversions from sponsored posts in the six months following the conclusion of a program as more users discover it.
Secondly, brands can leverage on influencers’ (especially micro) engaged audiences. The large followers that these influencers has a strong bond of community who cares about their recommendations, tips, and other content. Therefore the word of mouth from influencers to their followers is most likely to succeed and more effective than the ones from celebrities whose credibility often time is questionable. It is especially perfect to reach the younger generations (millennials and generation Z) that have even more skeptical view towards traditional advertising.
Of course, influence is not only about the number of followers. According to the Linqia survey, the indicator of success of influencer marketing programs should be seen from, among any others, the number of engagement in social media, traffic of the brand’s platforms, and reach. Brands who work with micro-influencers have seen the payoff.
An eMarketer study found that influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers get on average like rates of 8% and comment rates of 0.5%. That’s more than 4x better than influencers with more than 1 million followers, who has like rates of 1.8% and comment rates of 0.09%.
Why Scale Influencer Marketing?
Now that you know how effective influencer marketing is, you want to get started and go all out.
It may be easy to start with ten influencer, but what if your program requires 1000 influencers? Or even 10.000?
It can be quite a nuisance to handle everything on your own. With all the perks it has, there are several challenges for influencer marketing that marketers have admit to go through. There is the task of identifying the right influencers, finding the right engagement tactics, and measuring influencer program performance.
Scaling your influencer marketing campaigns may seem like a handful but the outcome is definitely not disappointing. Here is why;
- Scaling your influencer program can give you bigger output than you anticipate. Whether it is higher traffic revolving around your brand, sales lift, or higher exposure to a specific group of age audience.
- Scaling your influencer marketing campaign means larger pool of influencers, which gives brands and agencies the ability to test brand’s messaging in different audience segment.
- Scaling influencer marketing is very cost-effective. With the presence of influencer marketing agencies and platforms, brands can scale their influencer marketing campaigns easily. It requires a lot of effort and human capital to search, reach and monitor a thousand influencers. However, by using influencer marketing platform that is based on technology like Pample, all of those thing can be made possible without increasing the expense of human capital. The same team can achieve a lot more. Plus, marketers don't have to worry about the quality control.
How to scale influencer marketing campaigns?
It is a tricky business to work with a big number of influencers at the same time, sometimes it is more than the employee can handle. Running an influencer marketing program takes time and resources. They have to have insights on the perfect timing for a post, find and contact influencers, developing and distributing content, issuing payments, tracking campaign results and content approval, maintain relationships, and many more.
Working with the influencer marketing tools is the answer to the fuss.
Make sure to consider working with credible influencer agencies that could make the whole process from identification and program communications to payment, analytics, and strategic recommendations much more effective and efficient.
There are two kinds of platforms, the self-service one is for you who like to be hands on in the whole process of maintaining relationships with the platforms connecting you to the pool of desired and filtered specific criteria influencers. The turn-key service provider goes beyond and handles everything for you. Pample brings you both options.
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First, align your goals.
What are your marketing goals? Different categories have different approach and strategies. It is important to have a clear mind about the goals as the first step to measure the outcome. Many of the common goals for influencer marketing campaigns are: Brand Awareness, get people to try a product, gain social Media followers, and increase sales.
From here, determine how you want to measure success (KPIs), your ideal influencer persona(s), and which social networks suits your category the best. For instance, Instagram may work for fashion and food industry and boost sells right away, but might fall flat for the automotive industry. Different categories requires different approach and strategies.
Second, have a killer game plan.
The key to success lies in first understanding your audience. Based on many surveys, the top problem for marketers is finding the right influencers. When scaling your program, you still need brand-influencer fit to maintain authenticity and credibility. Look beyond basic demographics. What and who they like? Why do they prefer your brand over your competition? What do they watch, listen, or read? Marketers should also pay attention to these three qualities when looking for influencers: they have high quality content, high engagement with audience, and multi-platform presence.
Connect with influencers by tapping into a influencer marketplace. Marketplaces offer you an existing directory of pre-qualified influencers which you can browse or search, or some will even match you up with influencers based on best fit criteria. Pample, for instance, streamlines comprehensive influencer marketing from providing assistance on planning and budgeting, using technology to reach out to influencers from their vast database and live monitoring. Making it simple for marketers to scale their campaign.
Third, content collaboration and campaign workflow.
Creating a high number of content pieces does demand a level of standardization and simplicity. Great content is one of the important key to a successful scale influencer campaign. What is a great content? It should conclude all three;
- Brand’s story
- Audience interest
- The influencer/ content creator creativity
There are a few notes and strategies to an effective influencer marketing, here is what they are:
- Share program goals with the influencers and deliver them the tools needed to achieve them.
- In creating quality and original branded content in form of videos, photos, or blog posts, clearly define requirements while allowing room for influencer creativity and personalization. Promotional content should be for both the brand and the influencer. Influencers will understand how to make the message relevant and sincere to their audience. This way viewers will absorb the messaging without filtering it as advertisement. This strategy is recommended for driving discovery, consideration, or evaluation.
- Optimize distribution. After influencers create content, it is not enough just to post on their website or across social media channels. The strategy is to also incorporate the content to the whole marketing strategy; Use influencer content in quotes and testimonials. Even share your content in a dedicated section of brand newsletter. Influencer marketing doesn’t only live entirely in social media, tap into your existing digital assets as well– website, mailing list, mobile app, loyalty programs, social followings, as a direct source of ideal personas.
Fourth, monitor and evaluate.
When working with a digital marketing agency for scaling your influencers campaigns, you have to be mindful and evaluate the following points:
How are the influencers recruited and their data verified?
How does it measure performance?
What other partners and technologies does it integrate with?
These will help you establish a good foundation to make measurement and evaluation easier.
The next step is to measure the success with KPIs. Every brand and campaign has to have their own personalized measurement. Take a look at Coca cola, a company who has countless success with influencer campaigns. They measure the success of their campaigns from, among many others, how many posts did they get and the impressions that the posts are generating. Those data then compared to past achievements to really see the significance. This process of collecting and comparing data is possible with the help of influencer marketing tool, such as Pample.
Pample is a full service influencer marketing platform and agency. We provide a platform that allows marketers and brands to scale their influencer marketing campaign to tens or even hundreds of influencers and get live insights on campaign. Pample also provide white glove services where we handle influencer marketing program end-to-end. It makes scaling influencers campaign so easy and fuss-free.
