Efficient Influencer Marketing Strategies
Influencer marketing has skyrocketed in popularity in the past few years, with the strategy being included in many lists about top marketing trends.
This is because about half of consumers depend on recommendations by influencers to find new products they might like. However, there have been many changes and challenges when companies decide to utilize influencer marketing campaigns.
Analytics
Every single marketing effort should be supported with strong data and robust analytics. When a company sets up an influencer marketing campaign, it’s not enough to simply keep track of the number of clicks or purchases from the links that the influencer has received.
It’s become a lot more common to ask the influencers involved in these campaigns for more analytics, such as the number of new followers, their engagement rate, the number of impressions, and views on their promotional posts. Additionally, some companies have also been utilizing social listening strategies to get a better understanding of how the campaign is performing among the target audience.
Long-term Relationships
Instead of seeking out one-time collaborators, companies should be focusing on long-term relationships with the influencers they enjoy working with. Although building these relationships and maintaining them over a long period of time requires time and effort compared to collaborating on a single post on social media platforms, the results can be even better than a single post.
Through long-term relationships, companies can work with the same influencers consistently, which means that the target audience will be consistently reminded of the brand and its solutions, and become more interested in it. Additionally, consumers see long-term collaborations as a sign of a high-quality brand, as an influencer wouldn’t use a product multiple times if it wasn’t a good product in the first place.
Micro-influencers
One of the most common things that new companies do is chasing after the number of followers an influencer has. According to a number of studies in the last few years, consumers are far more likely to rely on recommendations from micro-influencers instead of people that have millions of followers across social media platforms.
This is because most of the time, micro-influencers are focused on a very specific niche, which helps companies work with influencers on their campaigns that are aligned with the companies in the same market. Another important aspect is that micro-influencers have a much stronger relationship with their audience because they’re able to build more authentic and genuine connections with their followers. This means that their audience trusts the recommendations a lot more than the recommendations from micro-influencers.
Creative Campaigns
Finally, consumers no longer want to simply see a single post of a product and become convinced to make a purchase. The company should be working with influencers on more creative campaigns, using different formats, mediums, and even types of content that will convert the consumers.
Instead of resorting to having the influencers create their own content or pitch to the target audience and then call it a day, companies should be truly collaborating with the influencers in their marketing campaigns. This allows for more creative campaigns to develop, which makes the target audience even more interested in what the brand and the influencer are both promoting.
