How To Run A Successful Influencer Campaign

Are you contemplating running an influencer campaign for your brand or product? You are on the right track.

Influencer marketing is among the most effective ways to market a product, brand, or business. Why? Almost everyone is now on social media and digitally savvy. 

Research shows that around 5 billion people (more than half the world’s population) are on social media. 

This means that if you want to succeed in getting your product or brand out there, social media is the best place to source for customers.

 And influencer marketers are the best agents to help you reach the masses. 

The truth is that influencer marketing is effective. However, each brand or business needs a different strategy to succeed, so we can not say we have a one-size-fits-all approach for getting your influencer marketing right. 

But there is a guide—yes, a guide to the essential steps to running a successful influencer campaign. 

Following these steps, you can tailor your influencer campaign to fit your product, audience, and goals. 

But first,

What is Influencer Marketing?

It is a collaboration between brands, businesses, or individuals with social media influencers to promote the former’s products or services. Usually, the influencers have huge followings on their social media platforms, which they use to push a brand or product. 

Influencer campaigns can be very effective methods of creating brand awareness, increasing engagement, and ultimately generating more sales.

However, they have to be done right. That’s why you must be extra keen when hiring influencers for your campaign or choosing the best campaign method or platform. 

The good thing about influencer marketing is that influencers are everywhere and are easily accessible. That’s unlike celebrities, who are extremely hard to access. 

Also, influencers exist in different categories. There are small timers known as nano influencers, big timers known as Mega influencers, and everything else.

So, no matter what kind of influencer campaign you need, there is always the right influencer for the job.  

Top Statistics of Influencer Marketing 

• The influencer marketing global value stands at $24 billion as of 2024
• Around 25% of brands and marketers use influencer marketing 
• 69% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations more than other product ads
• Businesses are getting a 5.2% ROI for every dollar spent on influencer campaigns 
• 67% of brands and companies prefer Instagram for their influencer campaigns 

How to Run a Successful Influencer Campaign  

While influencer marketing can effectively promote a business, brand, or product, it can also be challenging. But following these steps ensures that you achieve your goals. 

Define your Influencer Campaign Goals 

So, what’s the purpose of your influencer campaign? What do you intend to achieve from the campaign? Defining that purpose should be your first step.

Every business is unique, so having a unique purpose is crucial. Please refrain from copying another business’s strategy, as it might not work for you. 

With well-defined influencer campaign goals, you can formulate the best steps to help you achieve them. This ensures that you always follow the path to success. 

There are several goals that your influencer campaign may be aiming to achieve depending on their brand, products/services, and journey/business stage. 

You may have any of these goals:

Achieve Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a critical objective in a marketing campaign. Brand awareness refers to how familiar people are with a particular brand and its products. 

Influencers can help increase that familiarity among potential customers. Sometimes, a word from a thought leader is all you need to create a buzz, which will double or triple your reach and brand visibility.

Increase Leads

Influencers can help you generate leads for your brand. The influencer’s endorsement can help convert followers into leads. These sales leads could become customers. 

The leads are classified according to their level of interest and readiness to buy your products. Some may buy immediately, in the near term, and others in the long term.

Improve Customer Engagement

Efficient customer engagement is the basis of a successful business. It allows your business to communicate with and resolve customers’ queries and problems. 

Improving customer engagement can make customers feel comfortable with your brand or products. This will result in customer loyalty and increased sales through repeat purchases.

Build Customer Loyalty 

Influencer marketing aims to tap or leverage the credibility and trust influencers have built with their followers to promote a brand’s products and services. To achieve the best results, brands must partner with influencers with strong personal brands. Plus, they have a reputation for authenticity and honesty.

Drive More Traffic (Should be Measurable) 

Your influencer campaign can also drive traffic to your e-commerce business. Increased traffic means that more people can see your products. The more people reach your site, the more your offering becomes known. This can easily lead to hitting the ultimate goal of any business—achieving more sales.

Grow Sales

For most brands, the ultimate objective of a marketing campaign is to boost conversions (sales). That’s right! People may know and even like your products, but you still need help to meet the desired sales target. 

If your business sales are low, you can easily use an influencer campaign to boost them. Since influencers are trusted by their followers or audience, having them advertise or promote your products can easily change the trend. More people will want to start using products reviewed by their favorite influencers. 

Now, whichever your goal is, ensure it’s well-defined and achievable. 

Define and Understand Your Target Audience

The target audience is the most essential part of this entire process. Without them, you have no business. Therefore, you must understand who your influencer marketing campaign is intended for to have a successful campaign. 

For starters, properly defining your target audience lets you know the influencers who will influence them. For example, if your target audience is 25-35-year-olds, you don’t expect a 45—or 50-year-old influencer to have much effect. 

This is because their interests, values, and preferences are significantly different. 

Generally, you can group your target consumers using various parameters such as demographics, buyer lifecycle stage, or psychographics. 

Such groupings determine the type of influencers you use and the kind of campaign you create. 

When defining your target audience, follow these steps:

List the Characteristics of your Target Audience

The first step is to list the traits or characteristics of users who would benefit from your offering. 

For example, who would benefit from such products if you sell gym outfits? What is the ideal age of users? What benefits will the users be looking for?

Such questions can help you develop the best group to focus your marketing campaigns. 

Understand its Demographics and Psychographics 

Gathering more information about your audience can help you gain a deeper understanding. For instance, you should learn about their age, marriage status, preferences, culture, values, income, and education level. 

Such information helps you determine the best channels to use and the kind of campaigns to create. 

For example, the younger generation is likelier to use TikTok and Instagram, while the older ones mostly use Facebook. Understanding this ensures you don’t waste your efforts targeting the wrong audience.

Define the Problem that your Product Solves

Knowing the problem that your product solves helps you find the right target audience. For instance, who would be your customers if you sell air purifiers to clean indoor air? It would help if you targeted homeowners who, in most cases, are not the younger generation. 

On the other hand, if your products involve gaming solutions, you should target Gen Zers, who are more tech-savvy. Such characterization might save you time and resources and offer higher ROI.

Choose a Campaign Type

Deciding the type of campaign to undertake is paramount for a successful influencer campaign. It would help if you chose the content formats, the social media channels to use, and finally, the influencer compensation. 

The type of campaign you choose should help you achieve your goals. Whether the goal is to create brand awareness, drive traffic, increase sales, or improve customer engagement, your campaign should enable you to achieve just that.

Here are some common campaign types to choose from:

Sponsored Influencer Posts

These are among the most common influencer marketing campaigns. They include social media posts that review or promote a product or brand. Brands pay influencers to post or review their products on social media platforms, targeting the influencer’s audience or followers. 

One thing to note about sponsored influencer posts is that they must disclose that they include some compensation. This can be done consecutively using a hashtag or label such as #ad or “paid promotion.” 

Giveaway Competitions

Giveaway competitions are also effective forms of influencer marketing, especially for those seeking increased customer engagement or sales. 

In these, influencers are given free products or access to free services, which they can gift to some lucky followers based on the campaign’s structure.  

Generally, influencers specify what exactly their followers should do to win the goodies. This could include commenting on a particular post or interacting with a specific ad or post.  

Such activities attract high engagement levels on the posts, which means that more people get to interact with your products. This ultimately leads to increased brand awareness and, in most cases, higher sales. 

Affiliate Marketing

Adding affiliate marketing to the influencer marketing strategy might work miracles when you want to generate more sales for your e-commerce business. 

While there are several ways of affiliate marketing, like landing pages or case studies, influencers mostly rely on social media content. 

Here, the influencer creates posts enticing followers to buy a product or service from a particular brand or business using discount codes. They’ll usually attach an affiliate link through which a follower can buy the intended product or service. 

The discounts are meant to motivate the target audience to make purchases. 

When they do, an influencer earns from each sale. This makes affiliate influencer marketing one of the most effective options for return on investment. An influencer is paid by the number of sales they bring on board. 

Collaborations 

With collaborations, brands leverage influencers’ creativity to generate product buzz. The influencer may create content around the brand and its products or create special editions of products.

A good example is when fashion brands invite an influencer designer to create a special edition apparel for the brand. Similarly, a business dealing with cookware may partner with a famous chef to create special cooking tools for them inspired by a specific renowned dish on the chef’s menu. All this is meant to help generate buzz around the product or brand and boost sales. 

Unboxing and Product Gifting 

Unboxing and gifting videos are very popular on YouTube and TikTok. They involve an influencer unboxing a complimentary product a company or brand sends them. These videos capture the influencer’s real-time reaction as they unbox the product. 

The influencer also reviews the product as they use it over time. This offers more genuine product reviews that consumers tend to believe more than ads. Unboxing and product gifting lead to higher engagements and followings, which, in return, result in more sales. 

Brand Ambassador Campaigns 

When a brand chooses an influencer to be its brand ambassador, the influencer becomes the face of that brand for a specified period. 

The influencer will appear in ads, promotions, and other marketing content across the brand’s social media platforms. 

This type of influencer marketing offers long-term partnerships, where the influencers do all they can to best present a brand or product in the eyes of their followers. Brand ambassadorships help to grow brand awareness and increase sales. 

Pre-Release Content 

The main goal of pre-release content is to create anticipation and hype towards an upcoming product. Therefore,  a brand gives influencers access to a new product or service, allowing them to create content. 

This way, the target audience is in anticipation mode as they await the product’s release date. It is an effective influencer marketing tactic, especially common in the tech industry.

Influencer Takeover 

With influencer takeover, you allow an influencer to control your brand’s social media platforms for a specific period. During this period, the influencer creates and publishes content on behalf of the brand. They will also engage the brand’s audience, offering a new perspective on issues.

This influencer marketing type helps create a buzz or promote campaigns and special events. It leverages the influencer’s popularity and expertise in social media to expand your brand’s reach, increase awareness, and drive more engagement. 

Determine the Influencer Type to Use for your Campaign

Influencers command a vast following, and there are categories based on their follower count. 

Here are the different influencer categories based on the number of followers:

• Nano-influencers: These are influencers with 1,000 to 9,999 followers. 
• Micro-influencers: Influencers with 10,000 to 99,999 followers
• Mid-tier influencers: Influencers with a range between 100,000 to 499,999
• Macro-influencers: These are influencers with between 500,000 to 1 million followers
• Mega influencers: Influencers with 1 million followers and above.

However, it’s good to understand that only some influencers are ideal for your campaign. So, how do you pick the influencer category to work with? 

Here are some of the factors to consider:

• Reach—The more prominent an influencer’s number of followers, the greater the potential to reach a greater audience. If your goal is to get a broader audience, mid-tier, macro, and mega influencers might be just what you need. 
• Budget – The amount of money you’re willing to spend also determines the choice of an influencer. While an influencer with large numbers has a better potential of reaching more customers, they are more likely to charge higher rates. Therefore, pick an influencer group that falls within your budget.
• Campaign Objectives -Nano and micro-influences are perfect for niche audience segments. Moreover, they are more likely to engage with their audiences. Therefore, if your campaign aim is to reach a specific audience or boost the average engagement, these are the influencers to approach for the job. These two groups are pocket-friendly, so you can spread your budget and run multiple campaigns among several influencers.
• Audience Alignment: While an influencer with a more extensive audience base is preferred by many, they might not represent the best audience. Why? Their audience may not align with your product’s or brand’s target demographics, including age, interests, behavior, location, etc. Therefore, even seeking a more extensive audience base, ensure it aligns with your brand or products. 
• Consistency and Professionalism: Consider how often an influencer posts and the quality of their posts. Consistency and quality will significantly determine the effectiveness of the influencer campaign. There needs to be more than just a large followership. 

Locate the Ideal Influencers

You must identify the right influencers to run a successful influencer marketing campaign. 

And since you already know what kind of influencers you are looking for, you need to locate and hire them. 

But how do you find the right influencers for your campaign?

Start with the Social Media

Your social media channels present the most accessible options for finding influencers for your campaigns. You can locate these influencers by following trending topics or posts that have gone viral. 

For instance, if you see a viral post on TikTok, an influencer likely posted it. Locate that publisher and find out if they have a follower size of your liking. 

If you need more time, go to the comments and see if you can find influencers with substantial audiences that you can use.  

On a platform like LinkedIn, you need to type the relevant keyword, set your filters to “Posts,” and see the results. Review the posts showing high engagement levels and see if the publishers meet your ideal influencer requirements. 

Use Influencer Marketing Platforms

These tools are designed to help users streamline the management of influencer marketing campaigns. Luckily, most of these tools also have features for searching for relevant influencers for your campaign.

For example, you can use tools like Upfluence, Tagger by Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Grin, Affluencer, etc. With these tools, you only need to type and search for the best influencers based on your brand goals.

Competitor Analysis

Understanding your competitors comes in handy every day. Here, a competitor analysis helps you identify the types of influencers they are using for their influencer campaigns.  

You can connect and hire the same influencers, but there might be better moves. Instead, follow these influencers to identify others worth your influencer marketing campaigns. 

Use Hashtag Searches

Hashtag searches also present an easy way to locate ideal influencers. Go to your social media channels and search for hashtags related to your offering.

For instance, if you are looking for TikTok influencers for your recyclable water bottles, searching for #recyclablewaterbottles will bring up posts related to this hashtag. You can then look for the posts’ publishers and see the ones with followers that match your desired audience size.

From here, you can conduct more research on the influencers to determine if they are the ideal match for your influencer campaign. 

Search Engines

Even a simple Google search can lead you to the best influencer for your marketing campaign. You only need to search the engine and type what you want. 

For example, if you sell fitness products in California, search for “best fitness influencers in California.”

However, it would help if you were platform-specific. If you are looking for TikTok or Instagram influencers, include the site in your search phrase for more specific results. For instance, try “best TikTok fitness influencers in California.”

You can research more about the influencers you get from your search. This way, you identify the ones that align more with your brand or offering. 

Use Your Network

Sometimes, you don’t even need to go far. You can get the best influencers right from your network. 

This works by asking your friends, family, and colleagues for recommendations on the best influencer. Someone in your network might have the right person to offer the best influencer services for your intended campaign. 

You could also post your search for an influencer on social media. Ask your online friends or followers to throw recommendations your way.  

Interview and Hire an Influencer 

After your search for the ideal influencers for your campaign, you certainly have a list of several influencers. 

And to narrow it down to the ones you’ll work with, you should interrogate them. 

You’ll want to know their ideals or what they stand for. Does it align with your brand and audience? Also, it would help if you inquired about their charges, the number of times they’ll post your content and anything else they should disclose before hiring. 

After that, you need to lay down your requirements and expectations. For example, your contract should include things like:

• Deliverables and Expected Activities:  What is the influencer required to do? What are the expected results? For example, they should review your products and post five videos, tagging your company, on their Instagram channel. 
• Timeline: This specifies the campaign’s start and end dates. It shows the duration for which the influencer should accomplish the activities set out for them.
• Content Usage: Who owns the content posted by the influencer? Can you reuse this content in your other brand accounts? All this information should be included in the contract. 
• Compensation Plan: The contract should include details about the amount and time of payment to the influencer. This will avoid any collusion during the campaign period. 
• Termination Clause: The contract should also include reasons or scenarios when the contract may be terminated. The clause ensures that your relationship with the influencer is guarded and your expectations are met. 

Create the Marketing Content 

Once you have set everything up, from finding influencers to deciding the type of campaign to run, it’s the ideal time to create your content. The task of content creation lies with the influencer. However, you need to provide the necessary materials to facilitate the process. For instance, you should ensure that the influencers get the products to review. 

You must also generate the affiliate links and promo codes and share the campaign guidelines. In other words, make it easy for the influencer to create the marketing content.

After the influencer creates the content, ensure it’s appropriately reviewed before publishing it. This way, you only publish content that aligns with your marketing goals, your brand voice, and the needs of your target audience. 

Measure and Report Progress

To determine whether your influencer campaign was successful, monitor its progress and measure its results. Generally, your KPIs were set at the beginning of the campaign, so it should be easy to measure your results against those KPIs. 

And make sure to assess the results before the campaign is over. It would help if you continually did it during the campaign to ensure you are heading in the right direction. Luckily, you don’t do this manually. There are numerous analytics tools to help you assess the progress of your influencer marketing campaign. 

Best Influencer Analytics Tools 

Influencer analytics tools monitor and measure the performance of an influencer campaign. The tools help brands and businesses identify the best influencers based on the desired target audience and monitor, track, and measure the campaign’s performance.

That way, a brand can continually see the effect the campaign has and whether it’s achieving the set goals. Now, if you are running an influencer campaign, here are the top analytics tools to consider:

Tagger 

Tagger is an influencer analytics tool by Sprout Social. It is designed to help users identify the best niche influencers and analyze their content performance. 

Through Tagger, brands can create influencer marketing campaigns that resonate with the target audience. When brands get it right on campaigns, this leads to conversions and sales.

The best features of Tagger by Sprout Social include:

• Vetted influencer database: Contains audience demographics, intelligent filters, and more. 
• Offers real-time influencer content performance metrics
• Brand affinity engine: Using machine learning and target audience psychographics, it suggests the best influencers based on audience demographics, interests, etc.
• Competitor analysis
• Industry trend analysis
• Historic data analysis
• Engagement rate analysis and follower verification 

So, if you want to know whether your campaign is on the right track, Tagger is a great tool to incorporate into your influencer campaign.

Upfluence

Like Tagger, Upfluence helps businesses and brands discover the most suitable influencers for their marketing campaigns. It uses machine learning and a comprehensive influencer database to ensure that the influencer you pick matches your target audience’s interests and your brand’s goals. 

With Upfluence analytics tool, you can efficiently achieve the following:

• Discover influencers
• Measure content performance and audience engagement rates
• Integrate your influencer campaign into your overall brand’s marketing strategy 

Upfluence key features include:

• Content performance
• Engagement rates
• Automatic tracking of sales and ROI
• E-commerce and CRM integrations 
• Custom campaign result dashboard
• Influencer audience demographics

Emplifi

If you want to maximize your social media audience, Emplifi is your app. This marketing solution boosts reach and engagement, increasing conversions and sales. 

How?

As an AI-powered marketing solution, it allows you to create content that converts. This removes the guesswork from the equation. In other words, it enables you to understand influencer performance, audience engagement, and more.

As such, you can use the tool to discover the best influencers, measure the performance of their content, and determine whether the campaign’s ROI is worth it. 

Some of the main features of Emplifi include:

• Discovering and vetting influencers
• Audience segmentation 
• Competitor analysis
• AI-powered content grades
• Content analysis
• Influencer dashboards
• Combined view of reach, customer engagement, and sales

In other words, whether you want to find the best influencer for your campaign or measure their performance, Emplifi offers the features. 

Promote

Promoty is another influencer analytics tool that helps users locate influencers who best suit their brand. This potent tool also allows you to measure an influencer’s content performance to see how well it works. 

Promoty gives you a comprehensive view of the influencer’s profile, including the number of followers, engagement levels, audience demographics, credibility scores, brand affinity, and more. And the best thing? It has such a detailed overview of each influencer you can think of. 

The key features that make Promoty stand out include:

• Brand affinity 
• Influencer reach 
• Audience demographics
• Comprehensive influencer profile analytics
• Credibility scores
• Content analysis

Keyhole

Last, Keyhole is on this list of the best influencer analytics tools. It is a robust influencer tracking and analytics tool that helps you measure influencer impact and ROI based on reliable, trustworthy data.

The tool is designed for marketers to help them understand each influencer’s impact on their marketing goals and generate reports from credible data. 

Keyhole’s key features include:

• Influencer engagement analysis
• Audience demographics
• Real-time campaign analytics
• Hashtags and keyword tracking 
•  Automatic reporting 
• Comprehensive campaign reports 

With Keyhole, you can identify genuine influencers and assess them before hiring. You can view their social media profiles and analyze metrics such as followers, credibility scores, engagement rates, etc.

How to Boost Influencer Marketing in Different Social Media Platforms

Different social media platforms respond differently to marketing campaigns. As such, you should find the best way to lead a successful influencer campaign on various platforms. Here are some incredible tips:

Facebook 

Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social media platform. Research shows that it had a whopping 2.1 billion daily users by 2023. Now, that’s a massive audience to target. 

The Facebook audience is also quite diverse in terms of demographics. For instance, around 32% of users on the platform are between 25 and 34 years old. On the other hand, 25% of the users are 18 to 24 years old, while another 25% are between 35 and 54. This means that you must be very specific about the category of users you are targeting to get the best results. 

How would you run a successful influencer campaign here? 

• Retarget people who interact with your content using Facebook’s Custom Audience. 
• Create exclusive groups. These allow influencers to have a more personal interaction with your audience.
• Leverage Facebook Live Sessions for your influencer campaigns. Here, focus on product demonstrations or Q&As to get more engagement. 
• Identify the best influencer by using Facebook influencer marketing platforms like Cision.
• Repurpose content. This involves using the influencer’s content to reach your audience on various social media platforms.
• Come up with special promotional offers or discount codes.

By employing these tips, you can be sure to have the best ROI for your Facebook influencer campaign. 

TikTok

TikTok is famous for its short videos, which quickly go viral. These videos allow brands to embrace creativity and take advantage of trends while maintaining their brand voice.  

If you want to run a successful influencer campaign on TikTok, here are some tips:

• Use branded hashtag challenges: Creating hashtag challenges with influencers drives more content creation and user participation. 
• Use TikTok’s duet feature: Doing this with influencers helps create fun and interactive content. 
• Ensure the influencer campaign is made for your brand, not the influencer.
• Let your campaign strategy guide you in choosing the best influencers.
• Balance your brand’s goals with the influencer’s creative freedom. 

Instagram

You can leverage Instagram’s over a billion user base through influencer marketing to drive your brand’s reach, engagement, and popularity to the next level. You only need to utilize the following tips:

• Make use of influencer takeovers.
• Partner with influencers for a reel series 
• Make use of Shoppable posts in conjunction with influencers.
• Leverage user-generated content 
• Find influencers with Instagram skills.

Instagram influencers require a different skill set than other social media platforms. As such, before hiring an influencer, ensure they are well-versed with Instagram dynamics and features.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing 

Now that you’ve learned everything necessary to enable you to run a successful influencer campaign, what benefits does it offer? How do brands and businesses benefit from influencer marketing campaigns?

Increased Brand Awareness

Depending on the type of influencer, influencers have massive followers. So, when they create content about a product or brand, the followers learn about it. 

This, in return, increases brand awareness.

New businesses or brands that have yet to have a massive audience can leverage the power of influencers to get their products known. Influencer marketing is also an excellent option if you want to create hype or buzz around a product or service.  

Cracking New Markets

Since influencers have diverse audiences, it is easy for brands or businesses to penetrate new markets. You must identify and collaborate with the right influencers to create relevant campaigns for the target market. 

A good example here is the men’s skincare brand known as Bulldog. It used a TikTok influencer campaign to crack the German market. Their campaign generated around 28.9 million impressions, with a 5-10% sales increase.

Increased Sales

Influencer campaigns attract new audiences and create more brand awareness. As more people learn about a product, the chances of getting more sales are higher. Also, during the influencer campaigns, incentives like discount codes and free products increase sales.

If influencer marketing is done right, it can easily lead to increased sales and even repeat orders on your shop. 

Increased Trust and Credibility 

Influencers have loyal followings – people who trust their favorite influencers in almost everything they say. So, if an influencer endorses your product or brand, many people will start trusting what you offer. And if your product can live up to its promises, you can easily attract loyal customers. 

This tactic works well for new products that want to clinch a spot among the market bigwigs. It makes it easy for them to gain traction in the competitive markets. 

Better Feedback for Your Products

Influencer marketing can also be a good source of customer feedback. First, the influencers can give feedback as they use your products for reviews. You can use this feedback to better your products.

Also, influencers engage with their audiences during influencer campaigns. As such, they collect valuable feedback about your offering. This helps your brand or business improve its offering and increase sales. 

Conclusion 

Influencer marketing is undoubtedly among the best ways to promote your products. It also boosts sales and credibility. 

However, running a successful influencer campaign can be challenging. You must identify the right target audience, influencer, social media channel, and content for your campaign. All these require a keen eye and research. 

However, if you set your goals right and follow all the tips above, you’ll undoubtedly be at the top of your game. Also, for a more effective marketing strategy, you can couple your influencer campaigns with other marketing activities such as paid ads, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, etc. 

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