Good marketing will always be critical, whether you are working with brands or with an influencer. In order to elevate and promote your brand to the highest potential, you have to consider the lessons and steps that go into a successful Influencer Marketing Trend or Campaign.
So, what goes into a successful Influencer Marketing Strategy?
1. Find the influencer that works with your vision
In order to have a successful Influencer Marketing Strategy, you have to have the ‘right’ influencer on your team; the influencer has to have a similar audience and content. A good relationship will make the process, for both parties, smooth. There are different types of influencers to choose from nano, micro, macro or mega influencers.
2. Determine the insights beforehand
It is imperative that you research the metrics and analytics beforehand; who are you reaching out to? When is the best time to post? What social media platform yields the best results? You will also have to keep following up on these metrics and insights on a daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly or bimonthly basis.
3. Make the Influencer Campaign relatable
After picking out the influencer you wish to work with, you must find a way to be authentic; you must show your audience and the influencer’s audience that your brand is something attainable and relatable to them, not something far-fetched or out of reach.
An example of a successful Influencer Campaign that focuses on relatability and touches on a person’s morality is the Coca Cola Christmas ad; it depicted a group of people, neighbours, getting together to offer their lonely neighbour a gift.
The message was that gifts are better when they are shared; a Coca Cola is shared over a meal.
4. Influencer Marketing Trends
Whether it is a Twitch stream, a YouTube live, an Instagram post or a TikTok challenge, you must keep up with the latest Influencer Marketing Trends. Your target audience is the greater public – the billions of people using social media. Brands that have recognised and mastered working with influencers are seeing the fruits of their labour.
With certain influencers, like Logan Paul, all publicity is good publicity. However, in case you want to avoid the bigger brand influencers, you can consider working with smaller brand influencers by having your product or service be featured as a sponsored advertisement.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, some of the best Influencer Campaigns from 2021 include ABSOLUT Planet Earth’s Favourite Vodka Campaign, 67 Shades of Dior Campaign, Paddy Power Save Our Shirt Campaign, Motorola’s Launch of the Moto Z Family and Moto Mods, Sony PlayStation Virtual Reality Headset, The Pepsi Emoji Product-line at Walgreens Stores.
It is worth mentioning some additional Influencer Marketing Trends from 2021:
1. Utilise multiple social media platforms;
2. Experiment with different mediums of content such as video and photo content;
3. Consider experimenting with different types of content – if you are not used to live sessions, for example, try to do them at least once to see how your audience reacts to it. Nevertheless, avoid changing your content too much and too often as it may be redundant and cause your audience to be uninterested.
Other Influencer Marketing Trends that can be incorporated into an Influencer Campaign are:
a) Social commerce
This is essentially a social media platform used to analyse the insights or metrics being used by the parties to promote and sell their products. Social commerce helps a brand organically promote and boost its products and services with paid or sponsored advertisements.
Examples of social commerce platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Discord.
b) Tools like social listening
Social listening is the assessment and identification of what the audience is saying about the brand’s product and service. You can do this by monitoring forums or utilising software tools such as Upfluence and Creatorpilot.com.
This Marketing Trend is important for the brand and influencer to understand the feedback and, potentially, changes they would need to implement. You can also compare the metrics and insights between your campaign and a competitor’s campaign.
c) The role that influencer SaaS platforms play in making a campaign a success.
A SaaS stands for Software as a Service. They are customised and integrated software that helps secure a network, platform, Operating System or Application. A free tool and graphic design company you can consider is Canva; the website is open to the public, makes it easy to download and share designs and even allows users to get and share client testimonies.
An Influencer Marketing Strategy helps the brand form a bond and partnership with the influencer and their audiences. It is important to note that technological advancements are here to stay. This includes aspects such as Influencer Marketing Trends or an Influencer Campaign, especially when it comes to growing your brand’s visibility. Also, do not feel let down if you do not see results straight away! These things take time, patience and a lot of (good) work. You are able to use the influencers and overall social media marketing strategies in order to successfully do so – if you follow the tricks and tips above.