Whether you have an existing business or you just start. You’re probably no stranger to Instagram, and you may have heard some of the amazing success stories of brands that are able to experience exponential sales growth on account of working with an influencer.
Influencers are individuals that have amassed an impressive audience of followers who look to them and trust their opinion about products, services, and other related topics.
From a marketing standpoint, finding the right influencer and partnering with them to help spread awareness of your brand could prove to be exactly what you need in order to allow your business to takeoff.
KakaClo has explored five influencer marketing tactics on Instagram that drives sales.
No.1 Homework
Your research is one of your most important weapons as it has the ability to pave the way for a successful influencer marketing campaign. When you’re first looking to work with an influencer, you’ll want to approach this with a talent-scouting mindset. It’s very similar to a sporting scout looking for the next champion, or a record label on the hunt for the next musical icon. Finding the right influencer can bring immediate results to your business and failure to align with the right influencer can be money down the drain when it comes to your social media marketing strategies.
Keep this in mind. A person is not an influencer because they have a lot of followers. What makes them influence your brand? It’s the fact that they and their audience can relate to what you sell or offer. This is the only time they should be considered an influencer to you.
If you sell high-quality winter jackets, which only ship within Canada, partnering with a surfboard-enthusiastic California because they have
1 million followers will bring you little to no results because their influence on the audience doesn’t necessarily correlate with your business or products.
Know your influence. Explore their content.
Read the comments on their posts, observe the engagement, and see what works best with their audience. If after you’ve done your research, you find the influencer to be a good match for your brand, then you’ve cracked the first code to what may potentially be a successful campaign that will drive sales to your business.
No.2 Enable customization
When planning your influencer marketing campaign it’s really easy to orchestrate all facets of the project, according to your brand, your brand’s objectives, and your brand’s identity.
However, the most successful influencer marketing partnerships and campaigns are the ones that allow influencers to express themselves in
their genuine, authentic way. You want to be careful not to suppress their creativity for the mere sake of mirroring your brand. This can cause a negative effect on the campaign as the influencer’s audience can easily
detect that the influencer is being scripted and molded by the brand that they partnered with. These filtered campaigns typically end with lower engagement rates and in the worst-case scenario, negative comments and overall sentiment towards the influencer and the brand.
Leave room for some customization and creative input from the influencer, simply because nobody knows how to engage their audience better than them. Also, remember when you’re marketing through an influencer, you’re not talking directly to your consumer, you’re talking to
your consumer indirectly through the voice of an influencer. If done successfully, it will almost feel like a really cool advertising translation.
No.3 Incentivize the influencer.
In 2017, the co-founder and CEO of Pura Vida bracelets, Griffin Thall made a huge discovery when it came to his company’s brand ambassador program. After analyzing the data of actual sales that his influencers were bringing in for the company, here’s what he found out. 75% of his influencers, which he referred to as reps had never made a single sale. What made this discovery even more troubling was the fact that the company was sending these influencers free swag in order to promote and influence their audience. But unfortunately, that wasn’t happening. After expressing how terribly painful this realization was, Griffin concluded that he needed tiers to avoid tears. Creating incentivized tiers amongst influencers proved to be the golden solution that very soon resulted in a 300% increase in sales year over year. Now you might be wondering what really changed. Pura Vida bracelets created an incentivized framework that would reward influencers at various levels. Based on the results they brought into the company, influencers were so excited and motivated to reach these tiered levels of rewards that they began really influencing. And the rest was history. Consider using incentives that will bring excitement to your brand influencers and see the awesome growth that you can achieve with your sales.
No.4 Squeeze value out of your content
You did your research and you found the perfect influencer for your marketing campaign.
They’re a creative powerhouse and you’ve encouraged them to tap into their creativity and use it to their advantage. You even managed to get them
really excited about your brand or your products and services with some really cool incentives while they produce the content. And now it’s in your possession. What do you do now? As the old saying goes, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. A great way to see impressive results with your influencer marketing campaign is to maximize the value of the content produced. In other words, you want to squeeze all the goodness out of the content and waste nothing. You can accomplish this by posting the content on your social media pages. And in some cases, cross-posting on the influencer’s page as well. You can even create mini versions and snippets of the content if you’re dealing with videos. Whatever the case may be, just ensure you have explored every possible way of utilizing the content so you’re getting top value for your dollar.
No.5 TLC(Talk, listen, connect)
Every successful relationship needs a little TLC. Once you’ve completed a successful influencer marketing campaign, you’ll want to make sure you
follow the TLC step in order to build a good relationship with the influencer and learn how you can achieve even greater results for your future campaigns. Let’s break down the TLC acronym.
Talk. Have a follow-up conversation with the influencer, and just gain a sense of their overall thoughts about the campaign.
Did they enjoy it? Did they like the product or service themselves? Was there any private feedback from their audience that they’re willing to share with you?
This conversation may prove to be extremely valuable when it comes to planning future campaigns.
Listen. Now that you’ve asked the questions, listen to the feedback.
What is the influencer saying? What are they not saying? Can you spot any trends in the comments, on their posts regarding your brand?
Listening with your ears and your eyes provides you with critical information that helps you develop a strong campaign every single time.
Once you’ve completed the campaign, there’s no harm in reconnecting with the influencer from time to time to explore any further possibilities or opportunities that may exist between you. A trusted relationship is much more beneficial in the long run than a one-and-done project, especially if you both enjoyed the process and saw amazing results.
Nurture the relationship as best as you can and the influencer may even become a loyal customer or fan of your brand, who promotes your products organically in the future.
This amazing cycle can increase sales while decreasing customer acquisition costs. TLC actually offered good ROI.
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