8 great tips for your next influencer marketing campaign

8 great tips for your next influencer marketing campaign

I've written many times about influencer marketing, but I feel it's time for another one!  Not everyone knows what they're doing when it comes to influencer marketing, so I've written up 8 quick tips to help you out the next time you pay someone to post for you.  I've written a few different tips and tricks discussions to help people out, and they are the ones helping me write even more becuause of all the questions they've been asking.  I've expanded my own knowledge of influencer marketing due to the members here asking more questions that I never covered, so I go and research a bit more so I can come back and answer their questions with a great response.  All those questions and answers result in new discussions that will now help others with their influencer marketing

Most of the time you read about big brands doing great things with influencer marketing, but those big brands have big bank accounts.  This discussion is for the little guys who probably don't have millions to use as an experiment through influencer marketing.


Release the reigns and let your influencer have creative freedom
Influencers know their following better than anyone else, so by letting them have creative freedom is probably one of the smarter things you can do.  They will add their own personality into the posts, which their following is familiar with, and you will likely get more engagement because of it.  If you were to tell them "I need it posted just like this, with this content and filter!" you probably won't get the same results you would if you posted that on your own profile where your following is expecting it. 

Influencers are engaging with their following all the time, so their following knows what to expect with the posts to come in the future.  If they end up posting something that clearly looks like an advertisement, they will sometimes unfollow the influencer and this isn't good for anyone.


Make sure your influencer is the right one for you and your business
When working with an influencer, you need to dig deep into their past and make sure they are the right person for your business.  Someone that has a bunch of happy posts with a massive following and great engagement might have been someone that posted negative things online that could come back to bite them in the back side.  Even though the influencer has a great following right now, their skeletons could come out of the closet and hurt their reputation.  Since you're affiliated with the influencer, it will then hurt your own reputation even if you didn't know about the negative things in the influencers past.

These influencers will be representing your brand, so if they have a negative language towards their following or anyone that raises their voice, you might want to avoid working with said influencer.


Try not to get blinded by an influencers follower count
Having a lot of followers is great, but it's not everything when it comes to making money through influencer marketing.  Sometimes you can get the same results from posting on a 50,000 follower account as an account that has 5,000,000 followers.  Actually, the majority of the times I've done influencer marketing, the smaller accounts tended to be better in terms of engagement and conversions.

Think about it, if someone with 5,000,000 followers is posting 10 times a day, your post could get buried pretty quick.  A smaller influencer, who probably doesn't see themselves as an authority in the industry, probably isn't posting 10+ times a day.  This means your advertisement on the 50k influencer page will be seen more often than on the 5,000,000 influencer page (usually).


You need to negotiate the best pricing
Not everyone knows how to do this, so I'll break down the method I do in order to get the best price per post. 

What I do is target the influencers who have 50k to 200k followers and make sure they are perfect for my campaign.  I'll then contact them and see what their pricing is, which is usually overpriced lol.  After they send me their price for a single post, I'll ask how much they charge for multiple posts, and the overall price per post usually drops around 25%

Now that I have my first discount going through because I plan on doing multiple posts, I ask them how much they would charge for X amount of posts each week for 1 month.  This will usually get me another discount, but not as high as 25% because they're already giving me a discount.  I can usually get another 10% off though, which puts my total discount around 35% by just contacting them to do posts for me lol.

The third, and final, question I'll ask in order to get another discount is "Ok, so we have a set price for X amount of posts per week, for 1 month.  How much would you charge me if I paid for the full month up front?" and this is where it gets tricky, because some influencers might not budge past that second discount while others will offer you another 10% off.  So if they offer you another discount, you're sitting pretty at 45% off for influencer marketing. 

If they influencer doesn't offer you that third discount, you will then respond with "Ok, I understand.  I'll get back in touch with you after I hear from the other accounts I'm talking to."  and this will create an urgency since they influencer knows you're not likely going to choose everyone to post for you, for an entire month   Sometimes the influencer will come back with another discount while others will stick to their guns and not offer you another discount and just respond with "Ok, let me know".  If they say that, you can just stop talking to them until they come back and want to work with you


You're not producing infomercials
If an influencer is publishing content that shows them holding your products with a description that says "Purchase this now for only $99.95!" it won't go over very well.  It will make the influencer look like a sell out and you will basically be wasting your money because there won't be as much engagement compared to a legitimate post.

Remember, let them have creative control since they know their audience best


Utilize the little guys, the micro influencers
Micro influencers are the guppies in an ocean of sharks, but they have some power as well and should never be overlooked.  Lets say you have $3,000 a month for influencer marketing, you could hire 1 big fish to do all your posts for 1 month or you could hire 10 to 15 to do posts for you and spread the wealth as well as the targeting across multiple platforms

Remember, follower count isn't that important, so focus on how engaging the followers are with the influencers to make a clear decision.


You need to constantly be analyzing
If you're hiring an infleuncer who is posting for you, but nothing is coming of it, you'll likely need to switch infleuncers and move onto someone else who can help you out for the money you're paying.  There's no formula to measure your success with influencer marketing, so you'll either have to use UTM URLs or work with one influencer at a time to figure out who works the best for you.

You can go into Google Analytics and see where your traffic is coming from, which will show you exactly who is having the best conversion rates through their posts.  Keep the good ones and dump the ones that are a waste of money.  Remember, this is a business and you're not out to make friends.


Don't ignore your other marketing campaigns while working with influencers
One of the biggest mistakes I see online is when someone gets into influencer marketing they forget to keep monitoring their Adwords, BingAds, Banner Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.  You need to always be monitoring what's going on, and that means you can't forget about your other marketing and paid traffic methods.  If you do, you could be wasting a great deal of money.



In Conclusion
When it comes to influencer marketing, there are things you should be doing and things you shouldn't.  Never get blinded by the amount of followers an influencer has, because they could actually be inflated.  If they aren't inflated, the posts on those profiles may not perform as well due to how frequent the influencer is posting.  Your posts could get pushed down on the influencers profile, making it less likely to be found by the influencers following.



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Thanks!

Razzy