Influencer marketing is a process wherein you reach out to social media personalities

to promote your brand, products, and services through their accounts to their followers.

Not all social media platforms or influencers will have the audience you want to promote your brand to. Finding the right platform and influencer that shares your brand’s values and covers the same type of industry is crucial to effective influencer marketing.

You can reach out to influencers directly, but it’s often better to work with an influencer marketing agency, such as House of Marketers, so you don’t have to go hunting for the right influencer to work with, so you get the best ROI of your marketing campaign.

In this article, I’ll go over a strategy guide for your brand to utilize influencer marketing.

Types Of Influencers That Can Work With Your Brand
Having a huge number of followers doesn’t make that influencer the best option for your brand. You need to match your brand with an influencer that has an engaged audience who are interested in specific areas that your brand covers.

Smaller influencers often have a more niche audience and the cost to work with smaller influencers is lower. So instead of paying for a single influencer, you can work with multiple smaller niche influencers and often get better ROI.

It will depend on your goal and the size of your brand; if you just want to get your brand out to as many people as possible, then a bigger influencer may be a better choice.

Nano-Influencers have under 10,000 followers
Micro-Influencers have 10,000 to 100,000 followers
Macro-Influencers have 100,000 to 1,000,000 followers
Mega-Influencers have 1,000,000 or more followers
If you don’t have the resources to determine the right kind of influencer for your brand and reach out to them with brand deals, then it’s easy to work with influencer marketing services like House of Marketers that have a stable of content creators categorized for you to pick from.

Cost For Influencer Marketing Services
The actual cost for influencer marketing services will come down to who you work with and what kind of deals you’re interested in making, whether it’s a one-time promotion on their social media channels or an ongoing relationship with a certain number of promotional posts each month.

You may find that some of the smaller influencers will promote your brand, products, or services if you provide a free sample rather than having to pay an actual fee. However, larger influencers are approached by more brands and expect to be paid based on their demand and reach.

You can offer several payment options to the influencer you want to work with based on your budget, goals, and what the influencer expects out of the deal.

Free products or services may work well as payment for smaller influencers
Single payments for single promotional posts may be required for larger influencers
Creating an ongoing relationship and monthly payment structure may be required for some larger niche influencers.
Creating an affiliate-type program where an influencer is only paid based on results is one of the top choices by influencers that have an engaged audience as they can make more based on the amount of effort they put in, which also works for your brand.
Generally, base payments are $100 per 10,000 followers, which is good for brand awareness; there may also be some additional cost depending on the deal.

However, you can also base the payment on their engagement which is better if you’re trying to convert their followers into leads or sales; the rate ranges around “average engagement” x $0.06 to $0.16, depending on the type of promotional post used.

The formula for engagement is “all engagements (likes, shares, clicks, comments)” divided by followers and multiplied by 100.

If you’re working with an influencer marketing service, they will take care of negotiating the prices based on your budget and getting you the best influencers using the most cost-effective method with the best results.

Influencer Marketing – Risks and Rewards | Insight Creative, Inc. | Influencer marketing, Marketing, Blog marketing

Influencer Marketing Strategy Guide
Create Influencer Marketing Goals
Before spending money or time on influencer marketing services, you need to set realistic goals. For example, is your goal to broaden brand awareness? Do you want to create leads? Do you want to directly convert an influencer’s audience to sales from promotional posts?

There are a broad range of goals that you can work towards and understanding what you actually want will help you determine budgets, content in promotional posts, and the types of influencers that you should be working with.

Some of the most common goals in influencer marketing are:

Reach new customers that have never heard of you before
Increase product and service awareness
Drive leads
Drive sales
Build brand awareness
Communicate your brand’s values and goals
Build customer loyalty
Determine Who Your Audience Will Be
For influencer marketing services, you need to determine your audience, where they can be found, what type of content they want, and which influencers they follow.

You can create multiple campaigns that target different audiences if your brand has different products, or you want to gain more customers from demographics you’re currently missing out on.

Whatever you decide, you need to create a profile of your target audience. Determine what social media platforms have the highest percentages of your target audience, research the types of content that work best with that audience, and then find influencers that have high engagement from the audience or demographics that you are targeting.

Identify Sponsored Posts
There are legal requirements and social media platform requirements for identifying promotional posts or paid advertising. You can’t work with influencer marketing services or directly with influencers and expect to hide that you are paying for the post a viewer is seeing.

You will need to build into your agreements and then follow up on posts that all rules are being followed. You’ll also need to research and determine what the rules are legally and per social media platform, to ensure all requirements are met.

Pick Relevant Influencers For Your Brand
Influencer marketing services will present you with the best influencers for your brand and goals. However, if you’re researching influencers yourself, there are several factors that you should consider when picking an effective influencer for your brand.

Influencers should be relevant to your brand and industry, if you sell knives and pick an influencer that reviews movies, then the relevance is poor, and your promotional posts are not likely to do well.
Follower count isn’t the ultimate factor, but it can be important depending on your goals; if you’re looking for brand awareness, then a smaller follower count has a limited reach.
A smaller niche influencer with an engaged audience has the potential to have more impact than a general influencer that has average engagement, especially if their audience isn’t specifically interested in your brand.
It’s essential to research the influencers that you want to work with, review their posts, past promotional posts they’ve done, and look at their engagement. Confirming that an influencer can actually help you reach your influencer marketing goals is critical.

Collaborate On Promotional Posts
An influencer is often considered a content creator; they’ve built their following based on their ability to create engaging content that their audience loves.

However, you should provide some guidelines around your goal and what you want them to showcase. Seeing the post before it goes out will be crucial to ensure your brand is displayed in the best light possible.

You should have researched an influencer and looked at their posts and past promotional posts to have an idea of the type of content to expect.

Effective influencer marketing services should also advise you on the type of content to expect from the influencers they offer to your campaign. So undesirable content or influencers shouldn’t make it to the final stages of your marketing campaign.

Analyse Results
Analysing actual results from influencer marketing will help you determine if you’re on the right track with the types of influencers you’re working with and whether you’re getting good ROI.

A promotional post with many likes, comments, and shares doesn’t mean anything if your goals aren’t being met. You need to implement analytics and tools to track your goals and how your promotional post has impacted them.

You can work with influencer marketing services to determine the best tools or methods to track results from promotional posts. Otherwise, you will need to research each social media platform and then determine ways to track results and your goals.

Working With An Influencer Marketing Service
Whether you have a dedicated marketing team or you’re a smaller business and wear many different hats, it’s an easier option to work with specialized influencer marketing services and social media marketing agencies.

Niche marketing services have already created relationships, understand the costs, and know the most effective methods that get the best results based on brands goals.

Marketing agencies like House of Marketers will review and help you create an influencer marketing strategy and then help you reach your social media goals.