Key Things Influencers Need to Follow While Running a Campaign

Influencer marketing is the new way of promoting your product, and guess what businesses are making 4 times of the actual money invested! It’s surely got a lot to offer that would be beneficial for both short and long term business goals.

Although we have talked a lot about what brands need to check for influencer marketing, it’s time to talk for the influencers!

What are the prerequisites that an influencer should have before getting into influencer marketing? Is the influencer marketing process easy as pie? Can an influencer set about this marketing game all by themselves without any support?

Hang in there as we explain in detail how to and where to begin with. Shall we?

9 Simplified Campaign Basics That Must Be Followed By Influencers

We have a scenario for you!

Let’s imagine you are a social media influencer (with >1000 followers) who is interested in promoting an ‘x’ brand. How would you get along with the brand and plan a strategy?

1) Who is the brand and your target audience?

The first and foremost thing to do: understand your brand thoroughly. To put this out simply, brand is about the emotional and the functional aspects while product is what the brand makes. So, before you put your foot forward into the influencer marketing game, make sure you know the brand history, their past collaborations, popular products, brand values, quality symbols, uniqueness.

Then we have the ‘target audience’. Make a note of ‘who is the target audience’ — the buyer persona and demographics who are more likely to do the purchase. The target audience can be determined on the basis of age, gender, location, income, likes, dislikes, etc. You can check the ad campaign settings to understand more about this.

2) Understanding the brand idea

The brand idea is something that is the soul of the marketing campaign. This will be provided to you from the brand’s end during the initial talks, where they will explain ‘the emotional connect’ which would be the key highlight throughout the brand campaign.

For example, the meditation app Headspace (I am sure you might have come across their social media posts which has a bright coloured palette spread out. This reflects positivity, joy and promotes a cheery mood.) This is the brand identity and all their brand discussion, posts, collaboration would align with this brand identity. And here the brand idea would be mindfulness and mental health.

Therefore, you need to keep this brand idea in your mind while curating the content.

The brand idea answers: what is that needs to be promoted? What is your brand supporting? Which issue is the brand tackling?

3) Keeping up the brand voice

Brand voice is the tone in which the b3 pm rand communicates with the audience or elsewhere. For example, the brand voice of Apple reflects quality, confidence and closeness. Therefore, understand the brand voice and plan the marketing strategy accordingly.

Although, it’s not always necessary to follow the brand voice in the influencer marketing content. You can keep a check on this with the brand and know their content requirements.

4) Choosing the right social media platform

Once you are aware of the brand details and the audience demographics — we come to the second step of selecting the content promotion platform. Check the audience demographics (mainly age, gender, interests) of the brand and look out for the best suitable social media platform that matches the brand requirement.

For example, if you are a meme-lover and planning to prepare meme-based content for a younger audience, then Instagram is the best platform. Similarly, for political and finance based news and memes — you will find them on social media platforms like Reddit or Twitter.

This way you could know what platform is relevant for the brand audience and prepare content accordingly.

Questions you can ask: which is the most preferred social media channel of the brand audience? Where are they highly active and responsive?

5) What’s the budget?

There’s a fixed budget set aside for the branding and marketing. You can check the marketing budget which is specially allocated for the influencer marketing campaign. Depending on the brand value, size of the campaign, the expected reach, marketing goal- you can negotiate the budget value, let the brand know about your requirements and bring a conclusion. We do suggest having a friendly negotiation with the brand team considering the ongoing market trend and pricing.

6) Focus on engaging content

Engagement is everything. More the people engage, the better the campaign effectiveness. How to know if your content is engaging?

Is your content giving a unique perspective for the audience? Does the content have something funny to make it relatable? Engaging content has always got something that has never been heard or talked before. This is what makes a normal content engaging and fun to read.

7) Take your time!

Well, Rome was not built in a day! Similarly, content buildup takes time. Talk through your ideas with the branding team and set up brainstorming sessions. This will help you in creating better brand-driven forms of content and also make it easier on your part with the content curation.

Perfect influencer marketing is a combination of brand idea + influencer’s creativity. So keep your creative magic alive and communicate through with the team.

8) Get a feedback

Once you are ready with the smashing content for the brand, share it with your close contacts and take a quick review. Note down the points shared by them and consider the ones which you can apply for the campaign purpose.

Also, as an influencer, do not break the trust of your audience just for the sake of better branding for brands. Brands can come and go, it’s the audience that made you an influencer, not the money! So, take proper feedback from your audience as well and consider them as and when needed.

9) Build a good relationship with the brand

Brand-influencer relationships are fragile. You need to handle it with care. This is not only helpful for you as an influencer but also gives the brand a sense of loyalty and authenticity which leads to improved brand awareness! So engage, share ideas and stay in touch with your brand and keep creating stories!

Begin your influencer marketing journey with us!