How to build a successful influencer marketing campaign

The Covid pan­dem­ic brought many changes to the glob­al con­sumer. The use of online and social media chan­nels dur­ing lock­down for enter­tain­ment, con­nec­tion and e‑commerce merged with a new desire for some­thing more authen­tic in their lives.

That includ­ed want­i­ng brands to give them more in terms of val­ues and mean­ing both in the ser­vices they pro­duced and how they mar­ket them. Influ­encer mar­ket­ing, which was already grow­ing before the pan­dem­ic, has ben­e­fit­ed. 

The per­son­al con­tent pro­duced by influ­encers rather than tra­di­tion­al brand mes­sag­ing has tru­ly engaged con­sumers.  Accord­ing to a sur­vey from Col­lec­tive Bias in the US, 70% of mil­len­ni­al con­sumers said they are influ­enced by the rec­om­men­da­tions of their peers in buy­ing deci­sions.  The small­er the bet­ter it seems with Col­lec­tive Bias also find­ing that 30% of con­sumers are more like­ly to buy a prod­uct rec­om­mend­ed by a non-celebri­ty blog­ger.

Expe­ri­ence Klear first-hand

“Peo­ple are used to get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions on social media now and act­ing on them,” says Neil Bren­nan, SVP at Klear , an influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form.  “Brands don’t own the nar­ra­tive any­more, con­sumers do. It is on these social media chan­nels where influ­encers and cus­tomers have con­ver­sa­tions and start or spot new trends. It is a great avenue for brands to tap into. They need to under­stand these com­mu­ni­ties and find the right influ­encers to part­ner with , so it feels more authen­tic.”

Brands must focus

It is why, says Bren­nan, over three quar­ters of brands are already doing some form of influ­encer mar­ket­ing. These brands want influ­encers either to be part of a stand-alone or broad­er mar­ket­ing cam­paign dri­ving sales or grow­ing brand aware­ness and/or sen­ti­ment. They can be either one-off deals with influ­encers or more valu­able to cre­ators and brands,  long-term part­ner­ships.

As the indus­try grows so does the num­ber of influ­encers – with around fifty mil­lion describ­ing them­selves as such around the world – and agen­cies help­ing to sup­port brands with their influ­encer mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. 

This growth brings with it oppor­tu­ni­ties but also chal­lenges. Brands need to be more focussed if they are going to make sense of this increas­ing­ly crowd­ed mar­ket­place and avoid an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign going wrong.

Down­load the free Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Cam­paign tem­plate here

“As a result of over­sat­u­ra­tion of influ­encer mar­ket­ing and inau­then­tic part­ner­ships, it’s ingrained into our being to resist being sold to. Brands and mar­keters need to take a step back and ask them­selves — is this part­ner­ship rel­e­vant? Is this part­ner­ship authen­tic? And does this part­ner­ship make sense?” says Ellie Hoop­er, head of client at agency Goat. 

Matt Woods, chief exec­u­tive of mar­ket­ing and cre­ator agency AFK adds: “Don’t use influ­encers for the sake of it. You need to have a spe­cif­ic goal in mind as part of a wider mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy such as using their trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty to pro­mote your brand or boost sen­ti­ment or to come up with some­thing real­ly cre­ative after attend­ing a brand event.”

He says that brands can often think too ‘one dimen­sion­al­ly’ about influ­encer mar­ket­ing. “If you are a skin­care brand and you think imme­di­ate­ly you need a female influ­encer who looks a cer­tain way then be cau­tious,” he says. “Before you select that influ­encer you need to under­stand who their audi­ence is. The age split, the gen­der and loca­tion. If you get that right, then you know you are talk­ing to the right con­sumers in the right set­ting and in the right way.”

Klear, which allows its cus­tomers to search a data­base of thir­ty mil­lion influ­encers, also says data is at the heart of selec­tion.

“When brands and agen­cies begin search­ing for an influ­encer, they want to look at data, not just rely on a gut feel­ing,” says Klear prod­uct spe­cial­ist Dana Bena­mi. 

Each of the influ­encers on the Klear plat­form has a pro­file biog­ra­phy so brand CMOs and agen­cies can clear­ly see their fol­low­er count and more impor­tant­ly their engage­ment rates by social chan­nel. High­er engage­ment means more inter­ac­tion between influ­encer and read­er and a greater chance that the cam­paign will suc­ceed.

The pro­files also give exam­ples of pre­vi­ous con­tent from the influ­encer to see whether their lan­guage, style and opin­ions match with brand val­ues. Infor­ma­tion on the influencer’s audi­ence is also pro­vid­ed so CMOs can gauge whether the demo­graph­ics they want to hit will ulti­mate­ly see the con­tent. 

Benchmark influencers

Klear is able to bench­mark influ­encers against each oth­er and give them a unique Cus­tom Brand score. It allows a CMO to set rel­e­vant para­me­ters such as the audi­ence age and gen­der they want to tar­get in their mar­ket­ing cam­paign as well as top­ic. The score then details how well an influ­encer aligns with the cam­paign goals improv­ing the chances of find­ing the best fit.

“Brands and agen­cies could also use key­word search­es to find influ­encers who have men­tioned a cer­tain phrase. So just say you are mar­ket­ing a new baby food prod­uct then you may have ‘preg­nant’ as a key­word,” Bena­mi explains. “We have also recent­ly added a unique fea­ture where we can do AI pow­ered visu­al search­es on Insta­gram. So, we could ask for images of preg­nant female influ­encers who again could help that brand find the best match.”

Also, Bena­mi says Klear can embed media data and analy­sis from the Melt­wa­ter plat­form to give CMOs more detailed data on influ­encer activ­i­ty. 

For exam­ple, Klear’s media intel­li­gence ana­lyt­ics ser­vice offers brands the oppor­tu­ni­ty to mon­i­tor and analyse social media chan­nels, TV and Radio, print news and pod­casts to find data show­ing how often their brand is men­tioned and sen­ti­ment around it.  This can help in a num­ber of ways from see­ing which influ­encers are men­tion­ing their brand or prod­ucts, which chan­nels they should be invest­ing more time and ener­gy in and, after con­tent is pub­lished, how many impres­sions they have received as well as sen­ti­ment around online dis­cus­sions. In addi­tion, its AI pow­ered social lis­ten­ing ana­lyt­ics helps brands keep track of how and when they and their prod­ucts are men­tioned in social media, sen­ti­ment around their com­peti­tors, rel­e­vant indus­try news and to spot new con­sumer trends.

In addi­tion, using AI tech­nol­o­gy it can sift insights from the mil­lions of online mes­sages, con­tent and reviews shared and tweet­ed by con­sumers every day. It helps seg­ment audi­ences into their sep­a­rate ‘online tribes’ which could help CMOs bet­ter tar­get social media influ­encer cam­paigns and make them more effec­tive.

For Bren­nan this is an ‘end to end solu­tion’ for brands and at a time of eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ‘make more strate­gic deci­sions on when and where to invest your next mar­ket­ing dol­lar’.

Jill Booby­er of mar­ket­ing agency Smarts believes this 360-degree view of influ­encer selec­tion is extreme­ly valu­able. “You want reas­sur­ance that your deci­sions are based on num­bers. We know exact­ly the engage­ment rates an influ­encer has hit over the last three months, who it has reached and why,” she says. 

How­ev­er, she stress­es that it is still impor­tant to have “that human instinct in deter­min­ing whether some­one is the right fit or not.”

Clear objectives and KPIs

Some agen­cies do take a more human cen­tred approach by using prod­uct seed­ing to build an influ­encer base. It essen­tial­ly means giv­ing free prod­ucts to influ­encers to see what kind of con­tent they pro­duce.

Brands should have a brief­ing dis­cus­sion with influ­encers before con­tent is pro­duced. It can’t be too pre­scrip­tive but needs to let the influ­encer know what the guardrails are in terms of style and lan­guage. Brands must also be clear about objec­tives and KPIs upfront as well as how these will be mea­sured.

Klear says its tech­nol­o­gy can pre­dict how well influ­encers will  per­form by out­lin­ing expect­ed engage­ment and ROI. After the con­tent has been pub­lished these pre­dic­tions can be com­pared with actu­al results to see if an influ­encer under or over per­formed.

“You can present this data to the Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer or oth­er stake­hold­ers to show suc­cess or to look at where the next cam­paign can be improved.  Who per­formed well and who didn’t? Which influ­encers should be retained? It will dri­ve action­able insights and bet­ter deci­sion mak­ing for future part­ner­ships,” says Bena­mi. 

The best per­form­ing con­tent by engage­ment can also be repur­posed to a brand’s own chan­nels such as a brand’s own Insta­gram feed or web­site. 

This can save brand’s time and mon­ey in devel­op­ing their own con­tent. They can use an inte­grat­ed approach, such as that tak­en by ath­leisure brand Lul­ule­mon, of mix­ing its own cre­ative con­tent with that from ath­letes and fit­ness influ­encers for bet­ter authen­tic­i­ty.

“This will increas­ing­ly become more pow­er­ful because con­tent cre­ation is an expen­sive part of a brand’s mar­ket­ing bud­get,” says Bren­nan. “It’s part of turn­ing the whole influ­encer mar­ket­ing process into some­thing more struc­tured and valu­able for brands. Brands can lose the Excel spread­sheets and count­less email/WhatsApp exchanges and scale their influ­encer pro­gramme with a CRM built for cre­ators.”

Learn how to be suc­cess­ful at influ­encer mar­ket­ing:

The Covid pandemic brought many changes to the global consumer. The use of online and social media channels during lockdown for entertainment, connection and e-commerce merged with a new desire for something more authentic in their lives.

That included wanting brands to give them more in terms of values and meaning both in the services they produced and how they market them. Influencer marketing, which was already growing before the pandemic, has benefited. 

The personal content produced by influencers rather than traditional brand messaging has truly engaged consumers.  According to a survey from Collective Bias in the US, 70% of millennial consumers said they are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in buying decisions.  The smaller the better it seems with Collective Bias also finding that 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger.