The Best Influencer Marketing Strategies You Need To Know In 2021

By QuikPlace | Aug 10, 2021

Influencer marketing is the marketing tool discovery of the decade.

Creators online on social media and various other digital channels are the new medium of communication for brands.

Thanks to the power of influencer marketing, ads have gone viral. It has heaped rich dividends for brands in the form of increased brand awareness and sales. It is no surprise that brands are now allocating budgets specifically for influencer marketing.

While many brands taste success in influencer marketing, some of them fail to utilize their full potential.

One of the main benefits of influencer marketing is measurable results. Brands can track and analyze results to see the effect of their influencer marketing campaigns. Many brands fail to take advantage of this benefit. As a result, they misjudge the campaign’s outcome.

Another factor where an influencer marketing campaign fails is the strategy. Your campaign is similar to a half-baked recipe if you do not have a solid strategy.

So, are you interested to know the influencer marketing strategies?

Here are the best influencer marketing strategies you need to know to get the best results for your campaign.

1. Study your audience

The first step in influencer marketing is knowing your audience. List down some of the questions to know your audience better.

What is the demographic of the target audience?

Study the age, gender, location, education status and income of your target audience. Integrate Google Analytics into your business website to get insight into the visitor demographics. Your brand social media account analytics is also the best resource to study your audience.

What are the audience’s interests?

Do your followers love fashion, beauty, healthy living, gadgets? Do they log in with their mobiles or desktops? What are their other interests? Gather as much information as you can from social media engagement on posts and insights.

What are the buying preferences?

Study the buyers’ preferences by analyzing the feedback and reviews. The comments on products in your social media posts offer you a preview of your followers’ buying preferences.

Carefully analyze the audience to set goals. Create content to align with the user’s interests and needs.

2. Set definitive goals

Why will you use influencers for your brand? Do you want to get more followers? Do you want direct sales?

The next step in influencer marketing is to set tangible goals for your brand. For this, identify the objectives you intend to accomplish with your influencer marketing campaign.

What is the objective of your influencer marketing campaign? Is it-

Brand reach- Make audiences aware of your brand by increasing its reach.
Audience building- Get more followers or subscribers to your social media account.
Build engagement- Get more people to like, share or comment on your content.
Lead generation- Get people to sign up for offers, inquiries or newsletters.
Sales- Get people to visit your sales channel like the e-commerce website.
Link building- Get more links to your website or page.

Once you identify the goals, getting influencers to accomplish the goals is easy. Also, finding a proper channel for your influencer marketing campaign becomes easy.

3. Find proper influencer channels

Which influencer channel is most suited for your brand? Is it Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Which channel will give you a better chance to accomplish the goal?

Study the format and features of these channels to apply the influencer marketing campaign effectively. For instance, long videos like vlogging, product review videos, unboxing videos, and creative ad videos go well with the YouTube audiences. Attractive high-quality images are for Instagram. LinkedIn and Twitter are the best when you need to engage professional audiences. Tik Tok has a large audience for short video formats.

Selecting the right channel to achieve your business objective is also the key for best influencer marketing strategies.

4. Set the timeline and budget

Influencer marketing campaigns easily exceed your budget limitations if not planned properly. It is wise to allocate a certain amount of money as your campaign expenditure. Otherwise, you fail to get the desired results.

Just like the budget, timeline is also necessary when planning the influencer marketing campaign. Is your campaign strategy aligned with a product launch or an event? Is the campaign designed for a specific cause? When you plan for an influencer campaign, set the timeline and budget. Try sticking to it.

5. Get the right influencer

Brands face the difficulty of selecting the right influencers. But having the right goal in mind and deciding the right channel makes the job of picking influencers in your niche easy.

Based on the follower count, influencers are divided into:

1. Mega influencers- Follower count above 1 million
2. Macro-influencers- Follower count from 500k to 1 million
3. Regular influencers- Follower count from 50k to 500k
4. Micro-influencers- Follower count from 10k to 50k
5. Nano-influencers- Follower count from 1k to 10k

Micro-influencers bring in follower engagement and macro-influencers get brand awareness and sales. But, consider your budget, the channel and the brand niche when approaching the influencers.

Do not always go with the follower count to select an influencer. Study their followers and see if they match your target audience.

Influencers come in various shapes and sizes-

Journalists
Fashion & lifestyle bloggers
Celebrities
Industry experts
Sportspersons
Educationists
Travelers
Gamers
Parents
Photographers

It is up to you to select the right one for your brand. See if the influencer content is authentic. Find out their passion and knowledge. Finally, your business goal has to match the influencer niche.

Moreover, there are online influencer marketplaces that come with pre-defined campaign packages. From picking the right influencers to running an end-to-end influencer marketing campaign, they support you with result tracking and analysis.

6. Select the right influencer marketing campaign

After selecting the right influencers to endorse your brand, you are ready to look upon the influencer marketing campaign. There are various methods influencers use to engage their followers.

Brand mentions- The influencer gives a shout-out to your brand or mentions it casually. Hashtags and tagging are popular ways of brand mentions.
Creative ads- The influencers do brand collaborations to create ads like photo and video shoots.
Brand reviews- The influencer demonstrates the features and benefits of the brand.
Unboxing- The influencer unpacks a product to give a feel of the product to the audience.
Contest & giveaways- Influencers announce contests or giveaways to their followers.
Discount codes- Influencer followers can shop for products from your website using special discount codes.
Affiliates- The brands give a special code to the influencers to share with the audience through social media posts and blog links.
Account takeover- The influencer takes control of the brand’s social media accounts for a short duration.
Guest posting- The brands create content on the influencer’s blog site or vice-versa.

Brands use a combination of the above strategies to achieve their influencer marketing campaign goal. Contest & giveaways bring more followers. The discount code gets sales. Brand mentions create brand awareness. Unboxing gets you more website visitors.

Influencer marketing campaigns give brands the flexibility to use different forms to achieve their business goals.

7. Offer content liberty to influencers

Influencers build a dedicated community of followers through their hard work and they know what works best. Instead of brands dictating content to the influencers, it is best to offer them creative liberty to come up with ideas.

Firstly, brands have to communicate and educate the influencers about the product. When an influencer understands the brand, they create better content. And natural content favors follower engagement. Audiences relate to the product when influencers authoritatively talk about the brand.

Effective collaboration is a key. Creative liberty goes a long way in conveying the brand message to the audiences.

8. Execute the campaign effectively

The success of an influencer marketing campaign does not solely rest on the influencer. Brands need to be proactive and engage with the users on social media.

Alongside the influencers endorsing the products, brands have to engage with the audience and promote the influencer campaigns on their accounts.

Product interest through comments has to be answered. Brands have to share the influencer campaigns on all their social media channels and other guest accounts. The more the reach of the campaign, the more its chances of becoming viral.

The onus for an effective campaign is on the influencers too. Promoting the brand campaign in numerous ways will get them additional followers from the brand. It is a win-win situation for the brand and the creator.

9. Measure the results

Once your influencer marketing campaign goes live, it is time to analyze the results. More than half of the brands do not use analysis metrics to gauge the success of the campaign.

Tracking the campaign results on social media or the website gives you an idea about its performance and success. Multiple tools to measure the results are-

Brand awareness- website traffic, social media post impressions.
Brand engagement- Shares, comments & likes
Followers- Mutual connections between influencers & the brand
Sales leads- Google Analytics & coupon code tracking
Lead generation- Count the opt-ins
Link building- Trace the backlinks on Google Analytics

Site traffic before and after the campaign helps you get the leads. But stopping here is not the option. Follow-up your influencer marketing campaign with conversions.

10. Be ready for the campaign outcome

All said and done, what next after your influencer marketing campaign? Are you ready for the after-effects of your campaign? Is your website equipped to handle the sudden surge in website traffic? Are you prepared with content for social media posts after an increase in your followers?

Your influencer marketing campaign is successful only when you utilize its full potential. Make a plan of what lies in store ahead of the campaign. Check your website for heavy traffic, stock the products, prepare content in advance for social media accounts, and be ready for audience engagement.

Analyzing the website traffic gives you an idea of cart abandonment and email signups. Retarget the audiences who have left shopping in between. Follow up on the opt-ins through email marketing. An influencer gets you leads and feeds the top of the conversion funnel. Nurturing them and converting them into customers is your job.

Do not give a reason for the audiences to be dissatisfied with the customer service. It will earn you a bad reputation and the influencers will not collaborate with you on future projects.

In A Nutshell

An influencer marketing campaign is measurable but its benefits are countless. Are you ready to utilize the benefits of influencer marketing for your brand?

Follow the above guide on influencer marketing strategies and your campaign will surely rock!