Here we are: you’re in the process of developing an influencer marketing strategy for your business or clientele. Choosing a social media influencer you already know, sending them items, and setting ground rules appears to be a breeze. Yet in practise, this often causes more problems than it solves.
Set away your personal biases; this isn’t all there is to it when choosing influential people. There are a lot of things to think about if you want to be sure you’ve picked the greatest possible group of influencers. Before launching an influencer marketing campaign, we decided to compile a brief list of considerations.
Finding the best influencer to promote your cause
The examples are endless. You may (and should) check and double-check a lot of details. The following criteria, however, ought to be sufficient. Certain questions are always worth answering, whether you’re just getting started or have managed some influencer campaigns before.
Learning the influencer’s specific area of expertise
You should think about the influencer’s link to your company or industry and the industry they represent before making your decision. If you want to launch an influencer campaign for a line of baby products, it’s a safe bet that you should target parents.
They meet all the requirements: they are well-versed in the field, so their opinions will carry weight; they already have or are expecting children; and they amass an engaged audience for the promotion of your company.
Maintaining honesty is crucial for the success of your influencer marketing initiatives. Although connecting with a relevant influencer in your industry (particularly if it is a specialised one) won’t ensure your success, it will move you in the right direction.
Analyze the data about influential people
Let’s say you’re trying to get the word out about your brand-new healthy eatery in Chichester, England’s south. It was your idea to run a tiny influencer marketing campaign. Which Instagram superstar would you select, a Scottish influencer with over 50,000 followers who has never heard of Chichester and is obsessed with fast food, or a local influencer with 1,800 followers who knows every aspect of the area like the back of their hand?
Too many individuals, however, would choose the second alternative if it meant gaining more supporters.
In the world of advertising, influencers can be a tough lot. It’s common practise for marketers to check out an influencer’s fan base without considering how valuable that base actually is or what kind of outcomes that fan base may bring to a campaign. It’s more likely that the micro-influencer in the previous scenario would yield better outcomes than the celebrity, resulting in a greater influx of customers to your local eatery. If an influencer with a smaller following can build a loyal and engaged group of fans, those people are worth far more than the hundreds that would passively follow the influencer’s profile.
You must research the influencer’s followers
Statistical data always has context. Determine whether or not an influencer’s followers are a good fit for your brand’s ideal customer. It’s possible that a significant number of the accounts following a certain influencer are phoney or otherwise questionable. Another red signal would be if it turned out that their readership wasn’t really interested in what they were publishing.
It’s also important to see if and how the influencer engages with the people they’re trying to reach. Engagement throughout your campaign with that influencer may be very low if community management is weak on their account and followers do not participate in conversations.
You should investigate their prior influencer marketing initiatives
You must have a compelling motive for wanting to contact that influential person. You may recognise them from prior marketing campaigns or promotions featuring influential people. You should go at all of their influencer marketing efforts, not just the one that struck your eye.
Their ties to other companies or brands that don’t reflect your own may come to light. The prospective followers you have might be turned off by the perception that your campaign is dishonest.
Examples? Using an influencer who is a brand spokesperson for cosmetics tested on animals is a certain way to sour an influencer marketing campaign for a vegan business.
It’s not a bad idea to look at the outcomes as well as the brand sponsorship portfolios. If you can’t get the information elsewhere, beg influential people to share it with you (if they are not restricted by NDAs). In order to avoid squandering resources, brands should always keep this in mind.
Avoid profiles that look like an advertisement.
There are still more questions to be answered even if your chosen influencer meets all of the aforementioned criteria. For the sake of reiterating the vegan business example, let’s assume you already have an idea of which influencers you would like to recruit. One of them is ideal since she is a current customer and also believes in the same ideals as your company. But, her Instagram page is a never-ending stream of advertisements for vegan goods. Her feed resembles a never-ending series of billboards thanks to the constant stream of advertisements that fill it.
Getting your brand name out there might be tough, and it’s possible that other names on that page could be confused for yours. Given the time and resources required to launch the campaign, failing to achieve your goals would be devastating.
Choose people that have a lot of clout in a field you care about, but avoid using them as walking billboards. Unless, of course, you care less about your brand’s credibility than you do about joining the herd of inconsequential trendsetters.
