VERB’s Guide to Influencer Marketing

By Kirsty Gilmore

Influencer marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies for promoting your business and driving sales. According to a poll of marketing professionals conducted by Tomoson, businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. The benefits of using influencer marketing include boosting your engagement, driving conversions, increasing impressions, building your asset library, and more. If your company isn’t working with influencers by now, we recommend mixing it into your marketing strategy. This guide will give you the basics of what you need to know to get your influencer marketing strategy started.

Set Your Goals

Before beginning your influencer partnership, you want to establish the goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your campaign. Determine how this campaign will fit into the bigger picture of your overall social media marketing strategy. Make sure you set goals that you can measure and report on to help keep you on track and evaluate its effectiveness. Focusing on what your brands needs are will help you identify your goals for a successful campaign. Common influencer marketing goals include: increased engagement, raising brand awareness, lead generation, or generating sales.

Know Your Audience and Do Your Research

Influencers are creators who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. They know their audience — and it’s important that you do as well.

Researching your audience, as well as the audience of potential influencers, will help you ensure you’re reaching the right people with your campaign. To help you pinpoint your ideal audience, we always recommend the creation of audience personas. These are detailed descriptions of different types of people who represent your ideal target audience. Then, with this information in hand, you can begin researching influencers that fit with your campaign.

When vetting an influencer, you want to make sure they’re consistently creating high-quality content that aligns with your brand values. You’ll also want to take a close look at their audience. Do the people engaging with their content align with your audience personas? Are their followers the ideal audience your campaign wants to reach? These are essential questions to consider moving forward.

Of course, you’ll also want to ensure an influencer utilizes the platforms your audience is most active on to get the most out of your campaign. For example, you may find an influencer who is successful on TikTok, but if your brand/audience isn’t active on that platform, it might not be a great fit.

Try using a social listening tool to help find popular influencers in your industry or scope out your competitor’s influencers. There are several free social listening platforms you can test out, including Talkwalker, Mention, and Google Analytics.

Collaborate With Your Influencers

Through an influencer partnership, you will plan, direct, and gather authentic content that can be reused across all digital channels for targeting potential new visitors. This helps authentically showcase your brand through a trusted voice and connect you to a new audience. Collaborate and utilize your influencer’s content creation skills to gain assets for your brand and reach your target audience.

Unsure of how to collaborate with an influencer? Social media takeovers are a fun way for an influencer to highlight different aspects of your destination or brand. Takeovers can also help draw in a new audience through cross-posting on their channels. This gives potential customers a chance to take a personal look at things. If you have a special event on your calendar, you can work with an influencer to help get your event in front of your target audience or build up excitement for the event. If you have a smaller budget, gifting is an excellent opportunity to gain brand exposure for the cost of your product or service. Consumers find influencers relatable and place a lot of trust in their product reviews.

Measure Your Results

It’s easy to look at vanity metrics when working with influencers, such as number of likes, comments, and views. And yes, it is great to increase these metrics! But what you really want to see is an ROI on your spending for the campaign. You will be able to integrate the results and ROI into a customer journey funnel and real-time measurement dashboards. There are many different ways to measure your results. These include:

• Referrals from the influencer to key web pages
• Number of net new leads generated
• Growth in followers and engagement on your social channels
• Measurable resonance with target audiences

There are various ways to track the results of an influencer marketing campaign. For example, providing influencers with a unique discount code to track any sales generated through their content. Another way to keep track of the results is to provide the influencer with a link with UTM (Urchin Tracking Module). This will give you a clear picture of the results. Additionally, measuring your engagement rate and reach will help determine the results of your campaign.

Let’s Grow Your Brand

At VERB, we handle social media and online influencers with a strategic and data-driven approach. We will help you through every step of the process. Through careful analysis, we seek partners with more than just an impressive following, but a quality, engaged audience that aligns with your target audience personas. VERB works closely with influencers to develop a content plan that works for both the influencer’s market and tone as well as our client’s marketing objectives. Ready to get the ball rolling on your influencer marketing strategy? We’re here to help. Contact us to learn more about what we can do for you.

Influencer Checklist

Use this checklist to help guide you through creating a successful influencer marketing strategy.

• Set Your Budget
• Define Campaign Goal
• Create Audience Person
• Choose Your Platforms
• Set KPIs
• Research Influencers
• Reach Out to Influencers
• Select Your Influencer
• Create Partnership Contract
• Plan Your Campaign
• Monitor Campaign Results
• Gather Influencer Assets
• Evaluate Campaign Performance

Kirsty Gilmore is a Copywriter with VERB Interactive — a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.