Five Ways to Get More Out of Your Influencer Campaign

Chico Tirado

Influencer Marketing grew in leaps and bounds in the last few years. The Google Trends report for influencer marketing literally looks like a hockey stick. However, the market still has a long way to go to be considered efficient, by any standard. Most of the hangups lie in the manual process. Audience targeting is difficult. Influencers are naming their own price. There’s no sure-fire way to measure your efforts. And, activating a group of influencers for a campaign takes hours of work.

In the world of advertising, doing anything manually is quickly becoming outdated. Unfortunately, that’s how influencer marketing is still being done.

For those of you who are tasked with corresponding with influencers and getting them activated, here’s a list of five things that will make your job much easier and yield better results:

It starts with targeting

Brand alignment is key for maintaining authenticity in your campaign. Don’t just settle for any influencers that have a large following. Before reaching out and starting the negotiation process, go through each post and make sure their content aligns with your campaign initiatives.

Check the followers

For many advertisers, fraudulent impressions come in the form of click-bots; for influencer marketers, they come in the form of purchased followers and other types of engagement bots.

Check the followers. There might be a problem if…

• a majority of followers have no profile pics.
• followers have fewer than 10 photos or videos. (Mediakix)

Read comments and make sure there’s no bot activity.

• Engagement rates should be 2–7%+.
• If a person has 200k followers and is only getting 20 comments on each post consistently, there’s a chance they purchased followers and/or likes.
• Scan for generic comments and look at the commenter’s account.

Stick with your budget

#numbersgame

When pricing campaigns, it’s important to keep in mind the creative scope, type of influencer, and the overall ask of your requirements. Negotiating with influencers is by far the biggest inefficiency in the whole process. You will find the right person for your campaign parameters. There is no need to exceed your budget trying to make an influencer fit into your campaign.

Create compelling campaigns

People want to work with brands they love. Cool brands have cool stories that influencers want to be a part of. Create a campaign so compelling that the post will not only resonate with the influencer but with each of their followers as well.

Incentivize well

Don’t get me wrong, cash is king. However, some of the most effective influencer/UGC campaigns offer much more than just cash for posting. They love receiving free product, and travel expenses go a long way to securing their loyalty. It’s also important that the influencer be allowed to incentivize their followers. This promotes engagement. Giveaways are a great way to achieve this.

Activating influencers for a marketing campaign can be a cumbersome process. Using these tips will give you the confidence to know that you are going about the process in a way that ensures you get the most out of your campaigns.