Influencer marketing involves collaborating with established social media influencers to promote your brand, products, and services to reach relevant audiences on a grand scale. 

The influencer marketing landscape has evolved beyond mere product mentions or endorsements. Instead, it entails collaborating with talented content creators and dedicated social media influencers to create authentic content on behalf of your brand that resonates. The result? Increased brand exposure to highly targeted, relevant audiences. 

Discover how to find the right influencers to promote your brand and product(s).

Challenges of Influencer Marketing

Before diving into the nitty gritty, it’s good to be aware of some of the challenges presented by influencer marketing. Firstly, influencer marketing can be expensive, with a single creator sometimes costing thousands of pounds per post. Researching, vetting, contracting and monitoring influencers can also be very time-consuming for brands, especially if you don’t have the capacity or resources to do so. Finally, the results of influencer marketing activity can be unpredictable and difficult to measure if you don’t have the right expertise or tools in place. 

That’s why it can be beneficial to work with dedicated influencer marketing agencies like us to help establish successful brand-influencer partnerships. 

Identifying the Right Influencers for Your Product

A larger following doesn’t always yield better results. There are plenty of things to consider when it comes to finding the right influencers for your product or brand, so here are a few tips to help get you started. 

Understand your target audience

This might sound simple, but deeply understanding your customer personas and demographics is crucial. Knowing their interests, passions, and how they engage with social media can help you figure out which influencers will work best in creating content that truly resonates. 

Know your influencer types

Depending on your audience and budget, there might be a particular pool of influencers you’re more likely to work with. Usually, collaborating with a blend of influencers is worthwhile so you can reach a variety of audiences. To help you decide, here’s a quick rundown of the different types of influencers: 

• Mega-influencers have a substantially large following of more than 1 million. Think of top-tier celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Beyoncé, Cristiano Ronaldo etc.… While mega-influencers provide brands with a staggering reach, it often comes at an equally staggering cost.
• Macro-influencers usually have a following between 100,000 and 1 million. The majority of macro-influencers consist of content creators, vloggers, and those who found fame online or through socials. For example, PewDiePie, one of the most subscribed YouTubers, and Lina Noory, a well-known fashion, beauty and wellness vlogger.
• Micro-influencers have a smaller yet dedicated following, between 10,000 and 100,000. Micro-influencers usually consist of industry experts focusing on a particular topic area or niche. For example, a food vlogger showcasing the best places to eat/drink in a particular city or region/state.
• Nano-influencers have a relatively small yet super-engaged following of 10,000 or less. This group usually consists of content creators, creatives or notable figures with significant influence within their community or space. For example, parenting content creators or local lifestyle vloggers.

It’s important to note that the more followers an influencer has, the more expensive they’ll be. Despite a lower cost, micro- and nano-influencers often yield better results due to their highly targeted, dedicated following. 

Analyse collaboration relevancy

While the number of followers an influencer has is one consideration, it’s not the be-all and end-all of everything. There are far more crucial factors to consider, such as the quality of content and whether an influencer’s values align with those of your brand. For example, if you’re an ethical skincare brand and collaborate with a fast-fashion influencer (think Primark hauls), the collaboration could be inauthentic. In this scenario, the influencer’s audience is unlikely to be interested in ethical skincare products, and you might even risk alienating your own audience. 

This is why collaborating with influencers who are relevant to your brand and share your brand’s values is so essential. When both parties share the same values, the collaboration between social media influencers will feel more natural. 

Effective Strategies for Influencer Outreach

Once you’ve identified the right influencers for your brand and product, the next step is creating an effective strategy for your influencer outreach campaigns.

Discuss your goals

Discussing your goals with your chosen influencers can help them fully understand what they need to do to help you achieve your goals. For example, if you’re looking to increase your social following, you could conduct a collaborative giveaway or competition. If you’re more sales-focused, you could give your influencer a product to review alongside a personalised discount code for their followers. 

Negotiate compensation

When you first reach out to influencers, there’s usually some negotiating to be had! While the most common type of compensation is monetary, you can work with influencers in a couple of other ways. 

• Gifted product: Some influencers are more than happy to receive a free product in exchange for a simple story mention, in-feed post, or short video. Remember that gifting a product means that the influencer is not obligated to post about it. While collaborating in this way can save you money, it can come with its own risks. For example, if an influencer does not like the product, they usually won’t post about it, but there have been some rare cases where a product review has been negative. 
• Affiliate marketing: involves providing the influencer with a special discount code to entice their followers into buying your product. In return, the influencer will receive a small portion of each sale made using the discount code. 
• Monetary: The standard way to compensate influencers is by working with them based on an agreed-upon amount. Keep in mind that being an influencer or content creator involves much more than simply uploading a post to Instagram. More often than not, each piece of content is carefully curated, requiring a certain level of strategy, planning, scheduling, photography, videography, editing, and copywriting. 

As well as agreeing on compensation, you should also confirm deliverables and other legal terms of the agreement before committing to the collaboration. For example, are you looking for a single post or multiple posts? What is the desired format (e.g. story, post, video)? Any specific platforms? Is this going to be a long-term collaboration? Would you prefer to guide the content or let them lead? 

Involve the influencer in your strategy

You might have a strategy in mind, but influencers understand their audience better and know what works and doesn’t. This is why it can be so important to listen to your influencers and work with them to achieve the best possible ROI. For example, you might want to stage a video or reel in a certain way, but the tone or style might feel unnatural to the influencer. While you might be hesitant to stray from your original plan, always listen to the influencer and take whatever expertise or advice they have to offer. 

Measuring the Success of Influencer Collaborations

Hooray! You’ve chosen your influencers, come up with solid influencer marketing strategies and launched your campaigns. The next step is vital – monitoring and measuring key metrics to analyse campaign performance. 

Depending on your goals, the key metrics may differ, but here is a list of the most common metrics to help you measure success: 

• Impressions: This refers to the total number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked/viewed or not.
• Reach: This measures the total amount of social media users who saw the content.
• Engagement rate: This refers to the percentage of followers who interact with content compared to the overall number of followers. 
• Views: If the content were in the form of a video or story, you’d likely measure the amount of views the content received.
• URL clicks: If you asked for a URL to be included in the content with UTM tracking parameters, you’ll be able to see how much traffic has been brought to your site from the campaign(s). 
• Conversions: Carefully monitor conversion increases, especially when tracking traffic directly from UTM links.
• Follower growth: Carefully monitor the follower growth on your social channels during the campaign(s) to see if there’s been any uplift. 
• Sentiment: Analyse the reactions and comments on the content in terms of overall sentiment – did they react positively? 

Using an agency 

Knowing your key metrics is one thing, but measuring them accurately and reporting on success requires expertise and dedicated social marketing tools. At Social Chameleon, we live and breathe influencer marketing. Working closely with you to understand your brand’s unique needs, industry landscape, and target audience, we’re here to help you achieve successful brand-influencer partnerships.