Once you’ve identified your influencers and gotten them on board, it’s time to start running campaigns. Influencer marketing can be used for a variety of different goals–boosting brand awareness, driving sales, and more. But before you launch a campaign, it’s important to step back and take the time to map out the key considerations that...
Once you’ve identified your influencers and gotten them on board, it’s time to start running campaigns. Influencer marketing can be used for a variety of different goals–boosting brand awareness, driving sales, and more.
But before you launch a campaign, it’s important to step back and take the time to map out the key considerations that will help you run a successful campaign. Learning how to set up an influencer marketing campaign can help you ensure every campaign runs effectively.
Define your goals
Before deciding what type of campaign to launch, it’s important to know what goals you want to achieve. Some campaigns are more effective for driving awareness, while others can help increase conversions.
Identifying and defining your goals before starting a campaign helps you map out the campaign up from end to end. If you have clearly defined goals, it not only makes it easier to pick the right type of campaign, and target the best influencers, it also facilitates tracking the performance to determine whether or not the campaign is successful.
Pick your campaign
There are several types of campaigns and tactics that brands can use to leverage influencers. Depending on your goals, it’s important to pick the campaign(s) that will provide the best chance for hitting your goals and boosting your ROI.
Sponsored content can help drive brand awareness and website traffic. Competitions and giveaways drive engagement and generate user-generated content. Event promotion provides social proof for your events and generates buzz for the event before, during, and after.
Knowing your goals helps you choose the right campaign which means you’ll have a better chance of ultimately meeting those objectives.
Set clear KPIs
To measure success, you need to be tracking the correct indicators of the campaign performance. These key performance indicators (KPIs) enable you to focus on the metrics that are most representative of how the campaign or influencer is performing.
Use the goals you previously developed to determine which KPIs will provide the most accurate indications of success. Here are a few examples:
Conversions: If you want to drive conversions, track them before, during, and after the campaign and compare any changes. By using affiliate links or dedicated promo codes and landing pages, you can track the source of the sales.
Referrals: Referral traffic is a good metric to measure a campaign’s reach since conversions don’t always encompass the success of a campaign. Tracking referrals to your website is a good indication of whether an influencer campaign is driving people to your site.
Awareness: Reach and awareness can be measured by tracking impression data to see what the impact is on building brand awareness and reaching a wider audience.
Engagement: Engagement shows how your audience reacted to a campaign and provides a deeper look into the strength of relationships with your audience, brand relevance, and customer loyalty. Likes, comments, shares, clicks, views, and brand mentions are all metrics that can be used to measure engagement.
Create a brief
An influencer marketing campaign is only as effective as the content that’s created to support it. If your influencers don’t know the goals, KPIs and how to determine success, they can’t be effective partners for the campaign.
Write a detailed brief that includes your goals and vision so that you and the influencers are on the same page from the start. Communicate clearly the parameters, including talking points, deliverables, due dates, content inspiration, and what you hope to accomplish.
However, once you start working with influencers, it’s important to listen to them and be open to their suggestions. Influencers know their audience best and they can be a huge help in brainstorming creative ways to hit the KPIs and accomplish the goals for the campaign.
Identify influencers
Once you have thought through all the steps to building your campaign, it’s time to select your influencers. Creating a targeted list based on key parameters will help you tailor your outreach and keeps you from wasting time on influencers that aren’t a good fit for your brand.
Look for influencers that align with your brand aesthetic and vision. Check out how their organic and sponsored posts have performed in the past to see if they have a good track record of hitting the metrics you want to track.
Once you have a list, you’re ready to reach out and start running great campaigns that are mapped out and set up for success.
Creating effective influencer marketing campaigns takes more than simply using influencers if you want them to be successful. Take the time to determine your goals first, so you know what type of campaign will best fit your objectives and which KPIs to measure. Put it all into a brief so your influencers will have all the relevant information they need to create the most impactful content.
Octoly helps you create, manage, and measure your influencer campaigns from start to finish. Use your campaign goals to help target influencers and connect with the ones that are the best fit for your brand. Get high-quality assets that fit your campaign brief and measure the performance at a campaign level, product level, and influencer level.
Whatever your goals are for your influencer marketing campaigns, Octoly can help!