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Influencer Marketing Marketing

Influential not infuriating: 10 tips to simplify your influencer marketing strategy

By Matt Donegan, managing director

September 6, 2016 | 6 min read

So, let’s talk social influencers. Over the last few years we have seen a rise in these over the top, excitable, hipster like figures – and we bloody love it. Brands are throwing money towards influencer marketing, and it’s becoming essential to have a strong strategy. Here we’ll outline some overlooked points to help you understand influencer marketing, which are so simple, anyone could grasp them.

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1. Know what you want, and go get it

Just like a good night out on the town, we all love to get involved and dive right in – but do we ever think about the consequences when in that ‘moment’? Well you should, and the same applies to influencers.

Don’t get blinded by the shiny light – think about who are you engaging. New or old audiences? Do you want to make noise, or build an ongoing relationship? Do you want a one campaign stand or a wholesome community?

2. Embrace the data

We love choices and it’s easy to get distracted by impressive subscriber numbers, but NO, just because your CEO’s daughter is in love with a particular glamourous YouTuber, that doesn’t mean she’s a good choice for your men’s grooming product. Dive into results, look at views, engagement, audience and demographics, and make an executive choice. Ultimately helping identify the most exciting and cost-effective influencer on the market.

3. Get to know them

Isn’t it awful being forced into a conversation with someone you have nothing in common with? It’s like talking to a wall, but wait, we’re all (mostly) friendly people remember.

Get to know the influencer you work with. The purpose of influencer marketing is to tap into the powerful, essential relationships they have with their audience and fans in order to deliver engagement with your brand! This will help align the content they create, but also show how you can bring value to them and their audience.

4. Ready, set, engage

We all love to rush into things, but hold your horses. Engagement is at the core of influencer marketing which, with patience, can provide a great tool for you to measure future and existing influencers. Clever huh?

It’s important to measure all engagement metrics, and give weightings to apply proper value to each engagement across channels. Create a CPE model, which works for you and calculate how much each engagement is worth.

5. Everyone loves a good platform

YouTube – the glittery, most exclusive stage of them all, and god we love it. Every new brand that takes on influencer marketing runs for YouTube, and god knows why. There are multiple other platforms like good 'old' Twitter, through to the newbies like Blab and Kwickie all connecting with different audiences and influencers. C’mon, be unique, take a risk, it will pay off.

6. Help influencers influence

There is a big difference when most people think of 'influencers'. The term tends to get applied to everyone who is popular across social platforms. However, popularity and influence are two very different things. Some influencers may create great content and make us laugh, but they can’t peer pressure us into buying something.

We’re not pretending this one is easy, but one way to navigate this is to work with the influencer to deliver an engaging story around your brand. But remember, don’t get carried away – an influencer knows how to work their audience best.

7. Summer festival or small dainty café?

We’re all tempted by the very accessible, loud, alcohol-fuelled, messy festival weekends which showcase the biggest bands and swarms of fans. However, sometimes a small candle-lit cafe with one or two bands we love provide us with a better, more personal experience.

It can be tempting to work with a 'rock star' influencer and blow all your budget at once, yet this can be detrimental to your whole campaign. We have found that working with multiple small influencers can not only be more cost effective, but create a more intimate experience, and if you use many of these, you’ll create many little splashes – leading to a large wave of influence.

8. Be safe, please

Isn’t it terrible when people don’t tell the truth? Influencers and brands have got into trouble before for not disclosing paid commercial content (naughty) resulting in AIA and CAP releasing a number of guidelines on how paid content should be signposted in this space.

And guess what? Recent surveys have showed marketers are still unaware of the rules… or they chose to ignore them. Either way, they weren’t happy. So make sure you read the rule book, or ask a knowledgeable third party for guidance.

9. Management

We’ll be honest, managing influencers can be full of potential pitfalls and boy have we seen many. This isn’t generally due to malicious intentions (there's always exceptions), but you need to understand that every influencer works differently and some have never even talked to a brand – bless.

Be gentle, and assume nothing. Communicate clearly what you need, and ensure key deliverables are outlined. The key thing is these aren’t traditional media owners, they have worked hard to gain their position, so just be honest early on, and discuss what they are comfortable doing, or you might blindly walk into walls and look a little clueless.

10. Whatever you do, let creators create

There are so many horrible examples of where brands have had too much control and it has killed the campaign. Let the influencers do what they do best, let them excite their audiences using your brand – this must be a collaborative process so keep the door open.

And yes, we know it’s scary to let go, but let them play. It’s in their brief not to communicate something unwanted or untoward. Just be clear on the deliverables and have a veto in place to ensure nothing goes wrong – that way everyone’s happy.

Matt Donegan is managing director of Social Circle

Influencer Marketing Marketing

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