What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is quite a hot topic these days. Brands across industries are investing more and more in this form of marketing, with the worldwide influencer marketing market projected to reach $24 billion by the end of 2024. 

But what exactly is influencer marketing, and should your brand use this marketing strategy? In this guide, we’ll define influencer marketing and share some tips for creating an influencer marketing strategy to help you get started.    

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is when brands work with prominent individuals, “influencers,” to help promote their products or services. Although the term is fairly new, businesses have been using forms of influencer marketing for decades. For example, having a celebrity as a brand ambassador for your business is a type of influencer marketing. 

Most commonly, though, influencer marketing refers to working with social media content creators on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. You can incorporate influencer marketing into your broader social media management strategy. 

What are the benefits of influencer marketing?

The reason why so many brands are turning to influencer marketing is that it’s effective. Working with influencers offers some unique benefits, including:

Credibility

Influencers have already established trust and credibility with their audiences. The people who follow them value their opinions and may even see them as authorities on the topics they discuss. Collaborating with these influencers allows you to tap into that ready-made credibility with the audience. The influencers’ endorsement of your brand carries more weight in the audience’s minds than a random ad.  

Around 70% of consumers trust influencers over marketing and information directly from a brand. And that trust leads to significant results from influencer marketing campaigns. Nearly three-quarters of consumers have bought a product or service because an influencer recommended it to them. If you’re trying to build up trust with your target audience, working with established influencers is a great way to do it. 

Engagement

Getting customers to interact with your marketing materials is often very tricky. They may completely overlook your ads or look at them and take no further action, neither of which help you reach your marketing goals. Collaborating with influencers offers a major boost to the engagement of your marketing campaigns. 

Since influencers already have built-in audiences who enjoy and interact with their content, their posts about your brand will likely also receive higher engagement than traditional ads. Higher engagement also means more chances for conversions and sales. 

Cost-effectiveness

With limited marketing budgets, you need to make smart choices about the kinds of marketing campaigns you invest in. Cost-effectiveness is a major consideration.

One of the benefits of influencer marketing is that it is less expensive and more cost-effective than many other types of campaigns. Most marketers surveyed agree that influencer marketing offers a better return on investment (ROI) than traditional advertising like print or television. 

If you’re trying to stretch your marketing budget and get as much as possible out of your investment, influencer marketing is a good choice. 

Brand awareness

Often, influencers have large audiences who enjoy their content. By partnering with them, you get your brand in front of those audiences to hopefully reach new people. Customers can become familiar with your brand and your products or services through influencers’ sponsored posts. 

Long-term partnerships

Though you can have one-off influencer marketing campaigns, brands often form long-term relationships with their influencer partners. Working together repeatedly builds a deeper connection between your business, the influencers, and your audiences. 

The influencers will understand your brand better with time and be able to post even more effective sponsored content. Their audiences will also get more familiar with your products or services during these long-term partnerships, increasing their odds of becoming customers. 

Audience targeting

The audience of any marketing campaign is arguably its most important element. Even the most well-written and designed campaign won’t produce great results unless the right audience sees it. 

Part of what’s special about working with influencers is that you can carefully select the audience for your campaigns. By partnering with influencers who already have your target customers following them, you can get your marketing materials in front of the ideal audience. 

Selecting the right types of influencers

Whatever industry you’re in, there are influencers who can help promote your products or services. You just need to know where to look.

By platform

If working with a social media influencer doesn’t sound like the right fit for your brand, consider other options. Examples include:

• Experts on medium.com
• Bloggers
• Celebrities
• Podcasters and media personalities
• Authors
• Academics
• Community leaders
• Industry experts

These non-social media influencers typically have deep knowledge of their fields and strong reputations. They can use their existing platforms, like blogs or other websites, to spread the word about your brand. 

Social media content creators, by contrast, may not have a .com website to talk about your products or services. Instead, in these marketing collabs, they post about your brand on their social media profiles to reach their own audience. 

By reach

Some influencers have much larger audiences than others. For example, a mega social media influencer has over 1 million followers online and may even be a celebrity or household name. The other types of influencers by reach are:

• Macro-influencers: 100,001 to 1 million followers
• Micro-influencers: 10,0000 to 100,000 followers
• Nano-influencers: Less than 10,000 followers
  

Many marketers think that more followers is always the goal when selecting partners for influencer marketing campaigns. That’s not necessarily the right move for your brand, though. While partnering with mega influencers gives you lots of exposure, working with smaller influencers may offer a better return on investment. 

For instance, Instagram influencers with less than 10,000 followers have higher engagement rates than all other types of influencers. If engagement is your goal, nano-influencers might be the best influencer partners for your brand. 

By niche

There are influencers creating content about every topic you could possibly imagine. Some of the most popular niches for influencers include:

• Health and Fitness
• Travel
• Technology
• Beauty
• Parenting
• Food and cooking
• Lifestyle
• DIY and crafts
• Business and finance

If your brand doesn’t neatly connect to any of these topics, don’t worry. You can still find influencers in much smaller or more obscure niches for your marketing campaigns. 

Creating an influencer marketing strategy

If you’re interested in trying influencer marketing to promote your brand, you need a strong strategy. Influencer marketing is different from traditional social media marketing, like marketing on Instagram, so you have to adapt your approach. 

Follow these steps to create an effective strategy for your influencer marketing campaigns. 

Decide your target audience

In any marketing campaign, it’s important to start by deciding whom you’re trying to reach. Who is your target audience for these messages? You need to understand who they are, what they have in common, and how you can address their needs and preferences. 

Since everything about your campaign, from the design and copy to your influencer selections, will depend on your target audience, complete this step first. Your understanding of your target audience will guide your campaign decisions going forward. 

Set your goals

Next, clarify what you’re trying to achieve in your influencer marketing campaigns. Maybe you’re just trying to build brand awareness or drive visits to your website. Whatever your goals are, make sure your whole team understands them. 

Also, establish some metrics that will measure your progress toward these goals. If your goal is building brand awareness, for example, you might use metrics like impressions, follower growth, and the engagement rate on your campaign posts. 

Create a budget

Before you contact any influencers about partnerships, think about how much you’re able to spend on your influencer marketing campaign. The cost of influencer marketing varies widely based on the type of sponsored posts you want, the influencers you choose, and the exclusivity of your influencer partnerships. Having a clear budget will help you make responsible campaign decisions going forward. 

Select influencers

Your next step is to define the type of influencers you want to work with. Select the niche you want them to be in, the medium (e.g., social media, blogging, or traditional media), and the level of reach. For social media marketing with influencers, consider which platforms your target audience uses most. If your target audience is largely on Instagram, working with Instagram influencers makes the most sense. 

Once you have a general picture of the influencers who would be a good fit, you can start looking for actual influencer partners. There are a few ways to find suitable influencers, including:

• Searching hashtags related to your business on social media platforms
• Looking at your brand’s followers if you have brand social media pages
• Using influencer marketing platforms that suggest influencer partners for your brand
• Exploring digital influencer databases

If you see a promising influencer, check their metrics like follower count, engagement rate, and follower growth over time to see if they’d be a good partner. You should also try to get a sense of their authenticity and relationship with their audience by seeing how they interact with followers. 

Be aware that some scam influencers and bots are trying to take advantage of brands. Look out for red flags like suspicious followers, sudden growth in follower count, and low or no engagement on posts. 

Launching your influencer marketing campaign

With your influencer marketing strategy in place, you can get the wheel rolling on your campaign. 

Contact influencers

There’s an art to contacting potential brand partners and getting the relationship off on the right foot. First, you need to determine your contact method. If the influencers have an agency or business email listed in their profiles, use that. If not, you can send a direct message on social media. 

Don’t send the same generic message to everyone. Instead, include a customized greeting and something that drew you to that influencer specifically. Influencers often get many of these messages, so being personal and sincere can help your brand stand out. 

Set guidelines for influencer partners

Once influencers agree to participate in your campaign, share clear guidelines. Get a contract in place that clarifies payment, posting schedule, exclusivity agreements, and any other pertinent details. You may want to use a spreadsheet or campaign management tool to help you keep track of everything, especially if you’re working with many influencers. 

Track results

Your influencer partners will start posting promotional content as agreed. As they’re publishing those posts, track key campaign metrics like reach, engagement, and conversions. Analyzing these results will provide insights to help you improve your next campaign. 

Also, keep an eye on your own brand’s social media profile. Your campaign may help boost your follower count and other metrics. If you aren’t already, consider using a social media management tool like Constant Contact. With Constant Contact, you can connect your social media accounts, schedule posts in advance, and easily respond to your comments — all from one platform. 

Pairing Constant Contact with influencer marketing will take your brand’s social media pages to new heights. Sign up for a free trial today to simplify your social media marketing.

Mistakes to avoid when working with influencers

When you’re first working with influencers, it takes some time to get the hang of it. In the meantime, try to avoid these common mistakes: 

• Offering pay for exposure: Pay influencers fairly for their work promoting your brand.
• Choosing the wrong influencers: Research all your potential influencer partners, and only choose those who are reliable, fit your brand, and have engaged audiences.
• Neglecting transparency: Sponsored posts from influencers are advertisements and must be labeled accordingly. 

Learn from the first campaign, then take those lessons into the next one. 

Integrating influencer marketing into your strategy

Influencer marketing can be an excellent addition to your broader marketing strategy. Pair an influencer campaign with other marketing efforts like content and social media marketing for even better results.

As you’re creating your campaign, remember to carefully select your influencers and communicate your vision. Track your results so you can figure out what works well and what you can improve going forward. You might be surprised what a big difference influencer marketing can make for your brand.

Next, download our social media guide.