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Influencers are now at the forefront of social media marketing, previously, individuals influencing consumer behaviour was reserved for a select few A list celebrities. Now the humble content creator has the ability to build a loyal community who are influenced by their recommendations. Influencers now come in a wide variety, from celebrities with over 1 Million followers to Micro Influencers with under 10,000 followers. The is still immense value in both as smaller influencers often have a stronger connection to their smaller audiences. The challenge for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) looking to collaborate with influencers is forming a structured strategy that aligns with their business goals.
This also applies for influencers and content creators wanting to collaborate
Contents:
Define your goals
Identify target audience
Define budget
Choose a type of campaign
Choose your platform and start researching
Measure results
1. Define Your Goals
Social Media is a personal channel where users feel more connected to brands and influencers, a mistake most SMEs usually make is going directly for sales as their primary goal. This is no doubt important for the growth of the business but on social media, a more practical goal is to engage potential buyers. This can be split into two stages of the traditional buyer's journey, first they need to be aware of your business before they can consider purchasing, second, this usually comes after engaging with your content (sales can still be tracked through promotional codes).
Goal: Engage potential buyers by raising awareness and engaging them to consider purchasing your businesses products or services.
2. Identify Taget Audience
Before reaching out to influencers, it is important to have a clear picture of who you want them to influence. At Empowered Digital we focus on supporting SMEs, to be more targeted we would use different influencers for Fashion SMEs, Health & Beauty SMEs or Food & Beverage SMEs. Building a persona of your target audience, will in long-term support in your efforts to create personalised content.
3. Define Budget
Once you have a good idea of the target audience you wish to influence, your budget will help you narrow down the best type of influencers to reach. Not all influencers require payment, some are happy with free gifts, however, to sustain influencer relationships it is good to agree on some form of regular compensation. For smaller influencers this can range from £100 - £500 and over £1000 for larger influencers, even with a small budget you can start testing collaborations to see if it will be worth it in the long run.
4. Choose Type Of Campaign
With your budget and the type of influencers you want in mind, you can consider the messaging and call to actions for your campaign.
Guest posting
Sponsored content
Mentions
Contests or giveaways
Takeovers
Affiliates
Discount codes
Say for example you are a fashion business looking for fashion influencers on a smaller budget, offering free clothes and an affiliate percentage from each sale to a fashion influencer for posting your product would be a valuable offer. Them accepting will depend on if they feel your products fit their style and they think their audience would buy your products.
5. Choose Your Platform And Start Researching
Which platform do you want to grow your influence on? Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube are currently buzzing with influencers and content creators with sizeable followings.
You can start with your account, who are you following that post good content?
From those engaging, which of them also post similar content?
What does their engagement look like?
Who is trending on your favourite #?
For influencer research you can also use tools like Social Blade, Buzzsumo and Upfluence to go into more detail. Once you have compiled a good list, you can reach out privately to make your campaign offer and collaborate on any additional content ideas they might have.
6. Measure Results
Once your campaign is live, measuring the results is crucial to improving and maximising growth. Remember our initial goals? Now we can flesh them out to more specific key performance indicators (KPIs).
Brand Awareness: Impressions, Website traffic (clicks), Mentions, Followers
Engagement: Likes, Comments & Shares
Sales (more on tracked links coming soon) or New Leads
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