Influencer marketing is now front and centre of most (consumer) digital marketing strategies. This article highlights key factors to consider before engaging an influencer and benefits from collaborating with the right influencer (KOL) who aligns with your brand and purpose.

What is influencer marketing and why is it important?

Influencer marketing exploded onto the digital scene in 2016. In its preliminary form, influencer marketing relied heavily on celebrity endorsements. However, with consumers demanding more authenticity and relatability, brands have shifted to everyday people celebrating brands and products they love. In 2021, 89% of marketers affirmed that influencer marketing works just as well, if not better than other marketing channels. With Gen-Z consumers valuing a brand’s authenticity and their willingness to make purchasing decisions based on recommendations, a carefully thought out influencer marketing strategy is critical to ensure success of these campaigns. Consumers are more likely to buy from someone they know and trust, so, influencers are extremely effective when it comes to strategies like word-of-mouth marketing or increasing social proof.

1. Identify your target audience and assess where they spend time

Before developing a digital or social media campaign, assess your consumer demographic. For example, Facebook, with its extensive network spanning over 2.8 billion active users continues to be a popular, reliable social marketing platform. Instagram, with over 1 billion active users, is beginning to face stiff competition from Tik Tok, SnapChat for capturing the younger demographics (depending on your location). As marketing campaigns and influencers differ between these various channels, it is imperative that you research your demographic and where they spend their time. This will increase the effectiveness of the social media campaign.

Ceci N. | @Ceci N. | @no7| Digital Creator |180k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

2. Look for an influencer to aligns with your brand values

Authenticity is at the heart of influencer marketing. It is about buying into someone you feel you” know”, relate to, and trust. Instead of merely focusing on “the numbers” and outreach – assess if their positioning, style, values and tone aligns with those of your brand. It is critical that the influencer you decide to work with has demonstrated credible knowledge of your industry, product or service to ensure they come across as a credible and authentic voice. Assess their customer engagement and reputation as that will impact your brand.

3. Focus on Micro and Nano 

Whilst they have smaller audiences, micro and nano influencers can be effective and powerful. Lower cost to engage, often with higher engagement rates than their mega influencer peers, this group can be a great option. Social media algorithms pick up on their higher engagement, thus boosting visibility of micro and nano influencer’s content. With Micro influencers, brands can achieve higher engagement rates among a large enough audience. A study conducted by the reputable Dr. Jonah Berger, Wharton University professor and author of ‘Contagious: why things catch on’ showed that 82% of consumers surveyed, were likely to follow a recommendation from a micro influencer. Micro influencers are often seen as truly knowledgeable, passionate, authentic and are seen as a trusted source for recommendations. Working with micro influencers can improve the return on investment (ROI) on the influencer campaign.

Jessica Wong | @jessicawong_wt | Beauty | Fitness | Fashion | 50,000+ followers (Macro influencer)

4. Build a relationship

Authenticity and authentic relationships are at the core of influencer marketing. Before engaging an influencer, make an effort to engage with them, their posts and their content. Showing a genuine appreciation for their efforts builds rapport thereby laying a foundation for a credible ongoing partnership.

5. Develop your campaign messaging for your influencer

Once you have identified your influencer, make sure they have sufficient access and guidance from your marketing team to determine what content your influencer should or should not publish. Ensure that you share your brand guidelines including details about your brand voice, tag lines, hashtags, and language to avoid with your influencer so that they are aligned with your brand values and tone.

Dann | @myhotelscollection | Hotels | Resorts | Travel | 150k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

6. Finalize campaign expectations with your influencer

Ensure you review all of the expectations you have for your influencer / KOL in addition to any expectations they have for you. We recommend that you have these expectations are written, agreed upon, and signed by both you and the influencer — you can organize all of this information through an influencer contract. This will help you avoid any issues and discrepancies down the road. Common points to consider and document include:

• Terms of partnership – how long will you be working with the influencer
• Payment terms – how the influencer will be paid or remunerated
• Communication lines – how you will be communicating with each other      

Anson Kong | @_kisang_ | 330k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

7. Measure campaign results

In order to determine success, you have had in reaching your audience through your influencer, it is important that you measure results of your influencer marketing strategy. Top line revenues continue to be a core metric for marketers when measuring impact of an influencer campaign. Key metrics to evaluate when determining success of a campaign include:

• Engagement: Measure metrics such as likes, shares, comments, tweets, reposts, blog mentions of your product or service made by the influencer.
• Views: Determine your reach by measuring how many people are actually seeing the content the influencer is posting by looking at the overall number of ‘views’.
• Engagement and resonance: This can be measured by the level of interaction and engagement between the influencer and the target audience.
• Clicks: Review the number of clicks on the content the influencer shares about your brand.
• Follower count: Track follower count over time and determine.
• Conversions: It is helpful to use a specific discount code for your influencer or measure customers that sign up via the influencer’s page to keep track of conversions and sales made through the influencer.
• Measure ROI: ROI for influencer marketing is measured by dividing the revenues generated by the influencer by the costs incurred on the influencer marketing campaign. Cloud based engagement, content and outreach measurement apps BuzzStream and BuzzSumo both have analytics tools built into the software to help you measure the success of the influencer’s work.

By identifying the type of influencer best suited for your business and developing an influencer marketing strategy, you are sure to improve your reach among potential customers. Incorporating credible influencers will help you build new and lasting relationships with your target audience.

4EVAJESSIE | Jessie Lai | @jessieli  | 390k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

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