A social media influencer campaign combines the power of word-of-mouth referrals with the power of a social media ad. It’s like a personal recommendation from one person to hundreds or even thousands.
People trust the opinions of the influencers they follow on social media. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 61% of consumers trust influencers on social media, compared to only 38% trusting content produced directly by brands themselves.
Wondering how you can get started with social media influencers? Here’s what you need to know.
Determine Your Goals & Audience
Like with every marketing campaign, you have to start by knowing two things: what are your goals, and who is your target audience? Having a clear goal for the campaign and knowing your audience will help you understand your next steps.
Your goal for an influencer marketing campaign should be focused on brand awareness or lead generation. An influencer can talk about your brand and even show products they have used. They can recommend services you provide to point their audience in your direction.
When deciding on your target audience, consider both demographics and psychographics. You may want to reach women between 35 and 54 — but what kind of lifestyle is your target audience living? Take into consideration their lifestyle, interests, and the social media platforms they are on and why they use those social media platforms.
Know The Rules And Laws Regarding Influencer Marketing
The Federal Trade Commission has very strict rules that both businesses and influencers must follow when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns.
Disclosure is the most critical part. Influencers must tell their followers about the partnership to comply with the Endorsement Guides to protect against deceptive advertising. If you plan to have a “material connection,” meaning they will receive free or discounted products or services, the influencer also needs to disclose this.
Don’t rely only on the built-in tools on social media platforms, such as Facebook’s Branded Content Partner tool. While it’s good to use these, both the influencer and the business should make sure there are multiple disclosures that are easily seen or heard.
It’s a good idea to review the FTC guidelines each time you start a new influencer marketing campaign to make sure you are following the latest rules and regulations.
Find An Influencer To Partner With
Now that you know your goals, your target audience, and the laws, it’s time to start looking for influencers. There are different levels of influencers, so it’s important to know who would be the right fit for your brand. First, what types of influencers are there?
- Mega & Macro-influencers: A mega-influencer is someone who has over 1 million followers. These influencers are celebrities like Selena Gomez and Cristiano Ronaldo. Macro-influencers have 100,000 to 1 million followers. National and international companies tend to partner with them because they can afford the high price tag of a post, and they are trying to reach a wide range of people. However, just because they have the most followers does not mean their engagement rate is higher than other influencers.
- Micro-influencers: A micro-influencer has anywhere between 1,000 to 100,000 followers. They are big enough to have a wide reach and small enough that they are able to be personal and engage with their audience. These influencers are more likely to have some direct contact with their followers and their followers are highly engaged with their content.
- Nano-influencers: Nano-influencers reach fewer than 1,000 followers. While their audience is smaller, their engagement is powerfully personal. The people who do follow a nano-influencer tend to be very engaged with their content and most trusting of their recommendations.
Unfortunately, there’s not a list of influencers you can scroll through to find the right one, but there are ways to find them! Start by looking up hashtags that someone in your target audience might use or follow on the platforms your target audience spends time on.
Small businesses that primarily provide products or services to their local community benefit most from partnering with micro-influencers and nano-influencers who live in the same community. These local influencers know the area and may already be familiar with your business, and their audience is more likely to live in the area too.
If you’re focusing on a local audience, partnering with a media company can be a simple way to connect with influencers. It can also help ease your mind over fake or phishing accounts.
At Federated Media, several of our radio hosts have built large followings on social media, each with their own personal brand and demographics. They are great social media influencers and can enhance an influencer marketing campaign with on-air promotion during their shows.
Collaborate On The Campaign
It’s important to collaborate with the influencer you’re working with on the campaign. Remember adding an influencer to your campaign is exactly that, an addition. They might talk about a product or service that you’re focusing on with a larger marketing campaign, but how they talk about it will be unique to them.
The bond between audience and influencer can be powerful in a brainstorming session that you have with your influencer. While you know your product the best, the influencer knows their audience the best, and they know what kind of content and messaging their audience expects out of them.
The influencer needs to make sure that the campaign is authentic to them — both for credibility with their audience and to follow FTC regulations. The people who follow the influencer aren't going to be upset by what they say or how they talk about your products or services unless it’s obvious they’re just reading an ad, and then the influencer loses credibility. In fact, 20% of consumers are ready to stop trusting and following a social media influencer if they aren't being authentic and fail to mention if they’re being sponsored or if it’s a paid partnership.
Measure Results
When the campaign launches, it’s important to measure results during and after. Your measurements will depend on the goals that you set in the beginning.
If your goal was to increase sales and the influencer shared a unique offer code with their followers, how many people used that code? If there wasn’t a code, how much did your sales increase during and after your campaign compared to the previous month or year?
If your goal was brand awareness, are you seeing more social media followers, more social media engagement, more people talking about your business on social media? What kind of conversations did the influencer’s followers have in the comments section on their post(s) featuring your business?
Measuring your goals helps you understand how successful the partnership was. It also helps you decide if you need to make any changes if you choose to partner with the influencer again, or partner with a different influencer.
For businesses that want to reach a wide range of people, you might consider partnering with multiple influencers. Depending on your goals and how you’re measuring results, you may want to partner with one influencer at a time, or you might be OK with overlapping campaigns.
Influencer marketing is a powerful tactic for businesses because it’s like getting a personal recommendation from someone who people follow and trust. Working with influencers may involve a lot of steps, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.
Partnering with a media company that has a group of influencers available for partnerships can make it even easier to get started with influencer marketing. Interested in learning how to partner with an influencer at Federated Media? Check out our influencers and reach out to us to get started!
