Influencer marketing is a social media strategy that involves paying for product endorsements from influencers with users that have credibility and small, medium-sized and large followings on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
These days, consumers don’t want to feel like you’re actively trying to make them buy your products. Sounds strange, but consider that 1 billion people worldwide use ad blockers to avoid being marketed to online.
Why does influencer marketing work? Consider these statistics:
This doesn’t mean consumers don’t want to buy products. That hasn’t changed. But instead of being ‘sold to’ directly, customers want to find businesses organically through recommendations and their own research.
Influencers have already put in the hard work to prove their authenticity and grow their social following. This means consumers generally trust them more than they trust brands. With that in mind, it’s little surprise 82% of brands say they get better quality leads from influencer marketing campaigns than anywhere else.
Influencer marketing is here to stay. Tapping into this strategy as a business is one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and get more customers to your website. Let’s explore some of these benefits in more detail.
Implementing an influencer marketing strategy requires careful planning and an understanding of how influencer partnerships work. Let’s break down all the crucial details you need to know before you get started.
When a trusted influencer creates content featuring your products, this introduces your brand to thousands of people. This is especially helpful for new eCommerce businesses that don’t have a loyal community.
Partnering with influencers in your niche gives you the chance to discover qualified leads who are actively interested in the products or services you offer. This makes it easier to increase conversion rates.
Most brands spend years cultivating a loyal following. Influencers already have this credibility. By endorsing your product, they act as social proof and can help to transfer consumer trust to brands.
Influencer marketing is comparably more affordable than traditional advertising methods. As long as you partner with the right influencers, you can attract high-quality leads at a cost-effective price.
All of these benefits add up to one thing — a significant return on investment. On average, brands earn $5.78 for every dollar invested in their influencer marketing strategy.
Despite the proven benefits, there are a few things you should know before you get started with influencer marketing. Let’s discuss some risks and limitations of the strategy.
Partnering with an influencer means you’re placing your reputation in the hands of your new brand ambassador. If they don't fill their end of the influencer marketing deal, this could limit the strategy’s benefits.
If you work with multiple influencers at once, this could lead to irregularity in your brand messaging. Each influencer will have their own way of endorsing your product, but it’s equally important to have strong brand guidelines to avoid inconsistencies.
If the influencer you’re partnering with does something controversial that ruins their reputation, this could reflect badly on your business.
If you work with an influencer who has no genuine interest in your industry, niche, or product, this can come across as forced and inauthentic.
The good news is that most of these risks can be mitigated by working with the right influencers for your brand’s needs.
‘Influencer’ is a broad term. Technically, anyone with credibility and trust who can influence people on social media is an influencer, regardless of their reach. So, how do we know who to work with?
Bigger is surely better, right? Well, not necessarily. Let's break each type down one by one.
Mega influencers have over a million followers, meaning they have the most visibility and reach on social media platforms. Celebrity endorsements from these influencers are incredibly expensive but valuable.
However, studies have shown that engagement drops as follower counts increase, meaning mega-influencers see engagement rates as low as 1.97%. Smaller influencers also have more niche followings, meaning they may be able to drive more high-intent traffic to your page.
Image source: Instagram
That said, for those that want to appeal to a broad audience and can afford the price tag, mega influencers will catapult your brand visibility. This is the strategy that Adidas used through their partnership with Ninja, a hugely popular gaming streamer.
Macro influencers aren’t quite celebrities yet, but they’ve carved out enough authority in their niche through hard work and consistency.
Most macro influencers fit into one specific niche, such as fitness, fashion, tech, or food. This means their followers usually have the same interests, which could drive more high-intent traffic to your page.
For instance, partnering with lifestyle and fitness macro influencers is a favourite of Hello Fresh. The brand sends meal kits to various influencers and pays them to promote the product alongside the ‘hellofreshpartner’ hashtag.
Image source: Instagram
That said, macro influencers can still be expensive if you’re just starting out. They’re a good choice for small and medium-sized organisations who’ve found their feet and are looking for rapid growth in their niche.
Micro influencers have smaller but more loyal followings who trust their expertise in a specific niche. Compared with mega and macro influencers, they often have a much more focused, uniform audience who follow the influencer for their expertise as a thought leader.
Partnering with a micro influencer is an excellent choice, as these creators are passionate about their niche and often build more authentic connections with their audience. They’re also typically more open to brand partnerships and are more affordable than mega and macro influencers.
Image source: Instagram
Partnering with micro and nano influencers isn’t reserved for startups. Many large brands partner with small influencers because it makes the brand look more down-to-earth and relatable to everyday consumers. For instance, Glossier regularly sends out new products to micro influencers to encourage authentic reviews on social media.
Nano influencers have the smallest number of followers of any influencer category. While this means their reach will be smaller, they have the benefit of being more relatable to their audience.
These social influencers usually engage directly with their followers, meaning they have an easier time building trust with close-knit communities. Nano influencers’ opinions are often valued because of their authenticity.
Sending out new products to micro and nano influencers for social media reviews is a common strategy used by every business, from startups to well-established brands. One of the perks of nano influencers is that they’re very affordable. Many will even accept free products or a discount code in return for a review.
Before we get into the complete guide to creating your own influencer campaign, let’s briefly break down how the process works for your own understanding.
Now that you have an understanding of how influencer collaboration works let’s get into the guide. Here’s how to create an influencer marketing strategy step by step.
Before you begin sourcing and selecting influencers, there are a few details you need to work out:
These elements will help you make more informed decisions in the coming steps.
Using your audience as a guide, choose one or more influencer marketing platforms. Some options include:
To capitalise on trends and engage with a younger audience, a combination of TikTok and Instagram influencers is a solid bet. These platforms lend themselves brilliantly to short-form video content.
With your broad strategy prepared, you’re ready to identify relevant influencers. A good place to start is with your niche. If you’re in the beauty industry, for instance, you’ll want to find lifestyle and wellness influencers who’ve tested products like yours. One approach here is to check which influencers your ideal customers are following.
In addition, consider which type of influencers you want: nano, micro, macro, or mega, based on your needs and budget. To reiterate, a larger following isn’t always the best. Mega influencers and macro influencers have a larger reach, but this often comes at the cost of engagement.
Once you have a pool of potential candidates, you can narrow your scope with the following checklist:
To calculate the social engagement rate, start by determining the average number of likes and comments on each of the influencer’s posts. From there, follow this formula.
Engagement rate = (Average number of likes per post / Number of followers) x 100
Most influencers will fall somewhere between 1 and 3%. For larger mega and macro influencers, hitting the upper level of this range is usually a good sign. For nano and micro influencers, an engagement rate of 5% or more indicates they have a dedicated community behind them.
How you contact your candidates will depend on the size of the influencer. With nano and micro influencers, you can usually message them directly on social media. Some will also have their contact information in their bio.
In contrast, many larger influencers work with influencer marketing agencies, meaning you’ll need to go through them to get in touch.
Following your influencer outreach, negotiate the terms of your deal and create a formal agreement to ensure each party understands their responsibilities.
Top tip: Remember that influencer partnerships are a two-way street. You need to provide the influencer with value to make them want to work alongside you, whether that be through campaign payment structures or free products.
If you try to mould an influencer to fit your own ideas, loyal followers will be able to spot that the content is inauthentic. Ultimately, the influencer knows their audience best, so it’s important to allow them freedom for creativity.
That said, you can make specific requests. For a start, you’ll be able to explain the kind of endorsement you want the influencer to provide and for what product. You can also create brand guidelines to tell the influencer what they shouldn’t say.
Depending on the influencer, you may also be able to have a say in the type of content they produce. Common influencer video options include:
Ultimately, you should listen to the influencer’s advice about the best content strategy. Your chosen influencer will likely have a unique style that their followers love, so it’s important not to inhibit this.
Once they begin uploading, track your key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure the influencer’s content is helping you reach your goals.
Which KPIs should you track? Here are some essentials:
There are dozens of different KPIs you can track, but these are some of the most important.
Top tip: Learn how AI marketing can provide trusted recommendations to help you monitor, refine, and optimise your influencer marketing campaigns.
There’s no better way to learn influencer marketing than by examining the brands who’ve got it nailed down.
Australian skincare brand Frank Body is the ultimate example of successful influencer marketing.
Image source: Instagram
Rather than partner with huge celebrities, the brand opts for local Australian micro influencers who can endorse the product to their loyal followers.
Image source: Instagram
On the surface, Frank Body’s skincare range isn’t particularly unique, but the brand excels at authenticity and relatability. They have much more lax brand guidelines, with a cheeky tone of voice that allows the personality of influencers to shine through.
Image source: Instagram
Frank Body used this popular influencer marketing campaign to create a unique hashtag (#thefrankeffect). They then encouraged users to share their opinions on the products to boost engagement further.
From a one-product brand with a $5,000 influencer marketing budget, Frank Body has grown into a $20 million powerhouse through a unique persona, clever local influencer partnerships, and a commitment to authenticity and relatability.
Nathan Chan is the CEO of Foundr Magazine, a magazine that interviews extremely successful people. He’s interviewed a lot of well-known celebrities like:
When it comes to influencer marketing, he definitely knows a thing or two. So, we reached out to Nathan Chan to see if he had any insider tips that he’d be willing to share, and here’s what he had to say:
“For IG, I've found one of the best and easiest hacks is to create a brand new IG account. Find influencers/thought leaders you already know and follow them, then follow 'more like this.' From there, we love to use tools like Woodpecker to do outreach. Also, if I'm looking for a person whom I know their company but perhaps don't know their email address, I love to use Hunter to find that person's contact details.”
“When it comes to interviewing successful founders, I've found using the Amazon books coming soon list page to be an absolute game changer. It allows us to get ahead of the line as influencers/thought leaders/creators work on their book tours, press runs, and interviews. As an example, this is how I got an interview with Tony Robbins for his book: Money Master the Game.”
“Something else that has been super important is the power of following up and being patient. It took 18 months to interview Barbara Corcoran and months of regular follow-up one-on-one speaking with her assistant. If I had given up straight away, the interview would've never happened!”
With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can track and optimise every aspect of your influencer marketing campaigns. Our customer relationship management (CRM) platform lets you centralise your influencer data and track your strategies across all social media platforms.
For example, you can use our marketing software to track engagement rate for your posts, see which demographics are interacting with your partners, and even assess conversion rates.
You can also compare the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign to see how it compares with your other digital marketing strategies. If there’s a missed opportunity, the built-in Salesforce AI will provide actionable recommendations that you can use to refine and improve.
Influencer marketing is great for generating engagement and building consumer trust. It’s also much more affordable than traditional marketing methods, provided you choose the right influencers.
Getting started with influencer marketing and finding the best influencer to promote your brand isn’t always easy. You’ll need to consider your audience, goals, product, niche, and brand personality. Still, when you do find that perfect match, you’ll achieve more brand visibility and a huge ROI.
To learn how Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you get more ROI from your influencer marketing efforts, watch the demo today.
