How To Optimize Your Influencer Campaign For Better Results
Influencer campaigns may be all the rage amongst marketers these days, but it’s easy to get them wrong. Now, more than ever, an endorsement is what we’re looking for before we make a purchase.
If you’re thinking of investing time and money into an influencer, you want to make sure the campaign is going to succeed. It may look simple, but it’s not as easy as finding someone with a bit of reach and sending them stuff for free.
To make sure your brand or business isn’t victim to another influencer horror story, here are a few ways to get better results by optimizing your influencer campaign.
Make sure the influencer fits the audience and product
Your campaign isn’t going to see success if you choose the wrong kind of influencer. This isn’t a one size fits all marketing technique. Certain influencers will be better suited to particular brands. If their existing audience has no interest in your product or service it won’t lead to any results. Find someone whose image, attitude and online voice fit your brand.
Pre-campaign you should be vetting and researching your influencers to make sure they don’t come with a bad image. Just because they have a clean slate doesn’t mean they’re perfect though. Doing your research is the first step to optimizing your campaign, as it takes away a lot of retrospective work in the future.
Switch to micro-influencers
Aiming too high will kill your influencer campaign before it even gets started. Not only will you not get a tangible return by working with a Kardashian, but you’ll also be drowned out in a sea of posts promoting other products and brands. Celebrity endorsements don’t have the same weight they used to, people want recommendations from online personalities they relate to and can trust.
This is why we’ve seen the rise of micro-influencers. Social stars, bloggers and YouTube celebrities can optimize your campaign through the natural feel of their content and their ability to understand how to connect with an audience.
Switching to a micro-influencer can make a huge difference to your campaign not just in terms of spend but the quality of output. Their follower count might not wow you, but they command loyalty and trust from their audience. Leverage that trust to optimize your campaign.
Take a step back from micromanaging the influencer
Influencers gain their audience through being relatable and having a natural air to their content and online presence. You’ve chosen to work with them for this reason, so don’t try and take away their uniqueness.
Too many marketers will try and micromanage their influencers by putting words in their mouths or guiding the content too heavily. An influencer’s audience is willing to accept being advertised too, but they don’t want to see a complete stylistic change in the content.
Try not to make the campaign too marketing-centric and let the influencer create content themselves. The key to this campaign will be in how seamlessly it fits into the influencer’s everyday content.
Measure performance properly
While you shouldn’t be micro-managing your influencers, optimizing your campaign means learning from their performance. Influencers can have a huge impact on your overall brand presence, but only if managed correctly.
Like any other marketing campaign, you should keep an eye on the metrics of your influencer’s performance. Delving into the campaign data can teach you a lot about your chosen influencer and provide valuable analytics such as watch time.
Measuring performance can help you highlight where your campaign can be altered mid-process. If you’re not getting the results you wanted it’s not too late to change things up. That’s the beauty of the loose nature of social media. This can lead to lifted product sales, lifted brand presence and a continued working relationship with the influencer.
Make sure the landing page fits the influencer audience
If the influencer’s content is the first stage of the campaign in action, don’t let everything fall apart at the second hurdle with a landing page not fit for purpose. You can optimize your campaign by building or revising a landing page to fit the influencer’s audience’s habits and needs.
A dry, overly complicated landing page that is not fit for purpose can kill any conversions. You have to treat these visitors as different from your regular audience, as they’re not approaching from a place of interest in you, but from interest and trust in the influencer. This is your time to continue with the theme of the campaign.
This is a situation in which you should use specially created copy, imagery and presentation inspired by the influencer’s style. You’re looking to make this user feel as at home as possible, and extending the branding beyond the initial social post is vital for doing so.
Boost your influencer’s content through multiple channels
Don’t rely on one platform or method to get your message out via an influencer. Use their presence across one or multiple platforms to your advantage. If they’re popular on Instagram use stories and IGTV as well as regular promotional posts. Get them creating unique content across all social platforms they’re on. Give their audience as much as a chance as possible to see the campaign without feeling like they’re being over-saturated.
To optimize further share their posts across your platforms. Don’t shy away from the working relationship and make it known you’re open to working with influencers. This helps your existing audience see what kind of content you’re involved in away from them.
If your early influencer campaigns are slow-starters don’t fret. There are many things you can do to optimize the campaign and make the most of your investment. It requires some intelligent thinking about the process and trusting the influencer to do what they do best, with a little of analytics-based direction.