Running paid ads to promote your business can be costly and may not give businesses a chance to connect with audiences at a personal level. This can be a huge setback, considering 69% of customers now appreciate personalisation. That’s where influencer marketing strategy takes centre stage. This marketing technique is more cost-effective and impactful than a typical marketing method.

According to a survey, 36% of marketers believe that influencer-created content performs better than the content created by brands on social media platforms. It allows for a personal connection with the audience and boosts overall business engagement.

This article takes a closer look at the details of influencer marketing strategy and explores how you can bring the best influencers on board. Let’s get started!

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the collaboration of businesses with social media influencers to promote their products. It makes use of an influencer’s credibility and allows you to make strong connections with your target audience, boosting engagement and brand awareness.

How to Do Influencer Marketing? 

In case you are considering to adopt an influencer marketing strategy, the following tips can help you:

Know Your Goals 

The initial step in creating an effective influencer marketing strategy is to know your goals. Find out what you want to achieve – is it brand awareness, engagement, driving leads, or a combination of all these objectives?

Once you know your goals, choosing the right influencer and campaign strategies becomes easy. For instance, if your goal is to boost brand awareness, focus on influencers with broad reach. But in case you want to boost engagement, look for influencers with a highly interactive audience.

Make a Budget 

Making a budget for your influencer marketing strategy is also crucial. According to a report, 82% of survey respondents intended to dedicate certain financial resources to influencer marketing. Therefore, to make a budget for this, start by researching influencer charges within your industry.

Take into account other factors like content creation cost and leave some room for negotiation. It’s because some influencers may be open to adjusting their fees depending upon their collaboration scope. This budget creation beforehand allows you to allocate your marketing resources properly.

Find Your Influencers 

Influencer marketing is all about picking the right influencers for your business. Begin by conducting thorough research in your industry and find influencers who share content that resonates with your brand’s value.

Ensure the influencers you pick have interests and expertise that align perfectly with your services. For instance, if you are a WooCommerce business dealing with baby care products, you can reach out to influencers who are new mums and understand the impact of your products.

The following questions guide you in finding the right influencers for your influencer marketing strategy:

• Do they have the ideal target audience you want to reach?
• What social media platforms do they use? Check the interaction of your target audience on such platforms.
• Is their content authentic and believable?
• Does their personality match your brand’s value?
• What’s their engagement rate? How often will they promote your products?

Reach Out to Influencers

It’s time to reach out to the influencers you’ve just found! For this, you should create a personalised and genuine outreach message. Firstly, write about your brand and the products and services you offer. Then, note exactly why you believe they are a good fit for collaboration.

Explain how the partnership offers mutual benefits. Once you have the right proposal in your hands, you can send it to the influencers personally via social media platforms or emails. Wait for their response to proceed to the next step of your influencer marketing strategy.

Develop Your Plan and Convey Your Expectations 

Now that you’ve gotten the right influencers, it’s time to set up a meeting to develop your future marketing plans. Tell them about the expectations of the collaboration, specifying the type of content and frequency of posts. Also, mention the key messages or points you want them to incorporate into the content and convey to the audience.

Discuss the timeline for the campaign and keep an open communication to address any possible queries. Finally, send your products or free samples to their address. Influencers will use them to create content and urge their audience to engage with your brand.

Track the Performance

It’s time to track the performance of your influencer marketing strategy! You should check the impact of the influencer’s posts on your brand’s online presence and audience interaction. See if there’s an increase in your website traffic, customer base, or engagement rates following the implementation of the influencer marketing strategy.

Around 82% of companies or businesses believe influencer marketing generates better customers than other marketing methods. But to see if an influencer marketing strategy is bringing positive results for your business or not, the following things can help you:

• Use Analytics: The use of analytics tools like Google Analytics or other third-party social media performance tracking tools helps you track the influencer’s marketing strategy performance. It provides you with information about influencer-related reach, engagement, and conversions.
• Track Unique Discount Codes: It’s always a good idea to give a unique discount code to the influencers. They can share it with the audience. This helps attribute sales directly to their efforts, giving you a tangible way to measure the impact of their promotion.
• Keep an Eye on Influencer Marketing KPIs: Look at the influencer marketing strategy KPIs you have in place. You’ll get to know what impact influencers have on brand engagement, conversions, and ROI. Recent studies reveal that the average ROI for influencer marketing is around 5.78 USD for every dollar spent. However, to get a precise idea, you can measure the KPIs.

Shortlist the Best Influencers

Another important thing is shortlisting the best ones from the pool of influencers with whom you collaborated. It’s easy to do – just see who’s finely sharing your brand’s message and bringing more traffic and engagement.

Then, in your future collaboration, you should sign an influencer agreement contract and continue working with the shortlisted candidates. You can even use the content made by these influencers as UGC (user-generated content) and make it a part of advertisements.

Where to Find the Right Influencers?

In a recent report by Statista, ad spending in the influencer advertising market in Australia will reach 522.60m USD in 2024. This is a huge number! In case you are also going to adopt an influencer marketing strategy, follow the given tips to find the right influencer:

Use an Influencer Marketing Platform

Influencer marketing platforms eliminate the hassle of finding the right influencers for your brand. These platforms help you discover, vet, and collaborate with influencers across various niches.

You even get insights into an influencer’s audience demographics, engagement rates, and past collaborations. All in all, influencer marketing platforms give you the chance to build credible and lasting partnerships in an efficient way.

Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social media also plays a great role in helping you find the right influencers for your marketing strategy. The simple way to leverage its potential is to look at industry-relevant posts and trending topics.

Look for influencers who actively produce content that resonates with your business and have a huge fan following. Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are rich sources for discovering influencers relevant to your industry or niche.

Hashtag Searches 

Social media searches are also useful in finding the right influencers. Just enter a specific keyword or hashtag related to your services. This will help you find influencers who are already creating similar content. For instance, if you are a WooCommerce business with sustainable kids’ toys, you can use the hashtag or keyword #SustainableToys on TikTok to connect with relevant influencers.

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

In case you don’t want to spend extensive time trying the above methods, the simple tip you can follow is to keep an eye on your competitors. Are your competitors collaborating with influencers? If so, look into the audience and following of those influencers to find similar creators.

Consult Your Network 

A word of mouth goes a long way! Another way to find credible influencers is to consult your network of colleagues and industry peers. They can offer insights into their experiences working with various influencers and how they impacted their business ROI and engagement. In addition, they may offer you suggestions about influencers who fit your criteria.

To gather such advice, you should attend industry events or virtual gatherings to engage in discussions about influencer marketing. Remember this – personal referrals often come with a level of trust and authenticity. They can guide you towards influencers who resonate with your brand and offer tangible results.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing strategy isn’t a one-step process. Instead, it involves various steps like knowing your goals, making a budget, reaching out to influencers, measuring the success of campaigns, and more. In addition, finding the right influencers can be overwhelming.

That’s where Referwo comes in. We have a network of credible influencers offering excellent engagement and conversions. Our aim is to make influencer and brand partnerships smooth and transparent.

Get in touch with us today and skyrocket your business impact with our services!