Implementing Efficient Influencer Marketing Strategies for Your Brand

Madison Linville | October 21, 2020 at 6:30 AM

How Do You Know Who's Right For Your Brand?

More brands are turning to influencer marketing to help gain awareness and increase sales for their products. Why are they using this tool? It’s effective and it produces results – but only if you implement a strategy that closely aligns with your brand’s goals and values.

Building a trusted relationship with your influencer can be a valuable experience for both parties, but you both should have the same values in mind. Find an influencer who matches your brand identity and has a strong authority over their audience. In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares how your brand can utilize an efficient influencer marketing strategy, and determine who most closely aligns with your brand’s goals and identity.

efficient influencer marketing

What is Influencer Marketing?

In the age of digitalization, producing content is as important as ever. One of the ways that brands are doing this, is partnering with influencers, who will make and deliver their content. 91% of people within marketing agencies, brands and industry professionals feel that influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing. So, what is influencer marketing? It’s when a brand collaborates with an online influencer to market a product or service, in order to gain recognition. It’s an effective form of returned value for your company. The same study found that Businesses who are able to understand the value in it can reach impressive returns of up to $18 in value for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. Talk about a good campaign! Brands are increasingly realizing the value of these partnerships. In the last 12 months, they shared that 380 new influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies came into the market. In 2015, there were only 190. That’s some serious growth.

There are countless influencers on each platform, so how do you go about choosing the right one for your brand? There’s a new focus on partnering with micro-influencers, as opposed to mega-influencers and big-name celebrities. Micro-influencers have lower follower counts than mega-influencers, making it easier for them to reach higher levels of engagement. Micro-influencers tend to be experts within a topic, making them good partners for your brand! Your influencer should have some sort of authority over his/ her audience, and be able to affect purchasing choices.

influencer for your brand, partner with micro influencers

Determining Your Brand's Goals

Before you can build a relationship with your influencers, you need to determine what your brand’s goals and values are. Are you interested in building brand awareness? Do you want to attract an entirely new target audience? Your goals for your brand will determine what type of influencer you should partner with. If you want to attract a new target market, you should partner with an influencer who has a strong authority and influence in that specific market.

You need to go where your target audience is. Are they a frequent Instagram user? Twitter? You should find an influencer who is present on your specific platform. Before communicating about a partnership, check out their recent posts, to get a look at how engaged their followers are. If they have a high follower count, but don’t seem to be getting many likes and comments, their followers aren’t very engaged, and you may want to think about picking another influencer.

You’re going to get value from working with someone who has a loyal audience. To get maximum engagement, the sweet spot is to work with an influencer who has between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. It’s important to establish a trusted relationship with any relevant influencer. This influencer should relate to and understand your audience’s needs and desires. They should be able to make an authentic post about your brand, and it should blend with the types of content that they usually post.

partner with a relevant influencer to your brand

How to Maintain Effective Influencer Marketing

After you choose an influencer that best matches your brand’s values, you need to decide which platform will be most effective for your campaign and message. You should still think about where your audience is, and which platforms they utilize most. Do you also want high levels of engagement? Many brands choose to work with Instagram for influencer marketing because of the overall high levels of engagement with followers. 90% of all influencer campaigns include Instagram as part of their marketing mix. If you pair that with partnering with a micro-influencer, who’s in that sweet spot for follower count, that’s a lot of opportunities for engagement!

Twitter has an overall lower level of engagement, but it makes sense, if you think about it. There are countless tweets that go unanswered. Twitter influencers with less than 1,000 followers have 1.4% engagement, and those with more than 100,000 followers only have a 0.3% engagement per the same study referenced above.

Another platform that is becoming even more popular is TikTok. TikTok generally attracts a younger audience, so you need to decide if that’s the appropriate demographic for your brand. There are so many types of videos that are popular within the app, whether that’s dancing, comedy, beauty tips, etc. Then, you can find an influencer who can appeal to the same niche as your brand’s consumer.

Some of the different ways you can utilize your influencer marketing include discount codes, competitions and giveaways. Competitions and giveaways can be an effective way to increase engagement by encouraging followers to like the post, tag friends, or share on their personal account.

We are in the age of digitalization. Investing in an influencer who can utilize video to promote your brand, is an effective strategy. With YouTube, brands don’t have a say in when or where their advertisements are shown. Many brands are switching to having influencers promote their brand within the actual video or vlog. A successful example of this would be an unboxing video, where an influencer introduces their viewers to a product with the goal of increasing sales goals.

Since there are so many options within every market, consumers are unsure of who they can trust, or what products to turn to. Some consumers are utilizing the ad block functions, meaning they’re choosing not to see those advertisements, and are not being exposed to the product. Since consumers are taking such measures to stay away from advertisements, an important feature to take advantage of is the idea of influencer marketing. These are people that they already follow, so they’re getting that advertisement just by scrolling through their feed and looking at pages that they enjoy looking at.

partner with influencers who can use video to promote your brand

Examples of Effective Influencer Marketing Partnerships

The Audiobook brand, Audible, created a campaign to promote their app, along with photographer, Jesse Driftwood. Jesse has a strong following due to his photos, and his ability to connect with his audience. He created an authentic post to promote Audible, through a story about his love for running, which a lot of followers could relate to. The reason why this partnership was so successful was because Jesse was able to promote Audible in a way that he knew his followers would relate to.

In 2015, Audible also utilized influencer marketing to increase sign-ups for their membership service and increase awareness and engagement for their monthly membership service. They were able to do this by sponsoring many well-known YouTubers, including Tyler Oakley, Joey Graceffa, Grace Helbig, PewDiePie, and many others. These YouTube stars integrated Audible into their video content, and the total number of marketing campaign views (to date) reached 83,993,301. So, implementing this strategy of partnering with popular YouTubers proved to provide a successful reach.

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Travel and Food Influencer, Miette Dierckx, and 11 other Belgian influencers, partnered with Coca Cola to create content for the brand. Dierckx’s content that she posts for Coke blends well with her other posts, making it authentic and appealing to her audience, while she’s representing the brand well.

The Power of Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing truly has so many benefits for your brand, and it’s evident by the sheer number of brands who are turning to utilize this tool. It can be extremely effective, if you follow the steps to make it a successful partnership.

You have to determine your brand’s goals and identity. Are you wanting to tap into a new market, or stick within the same one? You should select an influencer based on your decision, and make sure that they closely align with your brand’s values. To reach maximum engagement, aim to partner with an influencer who’s in that sweet spot follower range of 10,000 to 100,000. You should check out their feed, to make sure they have an engaged group of followers, and that they can be authentic in their posts. Follow these steps, and you will be on your way to having a successful influencer partnership!

Define Your Goals, Build Your Partnership

You have to determine your brand’s goals and identity. Are you wanting to tap into a new market, or stick within the same one? You should select an influencer based on your decision, and make sure that they closely align with your brand’s values. To reach maximum engagement, aim to partner with an influencer who’s in that sweet spot follower range of 10,000 to 100,000. You should check out their feed, to make sure they have an engaged group of followers, and that they can be authentic in their posts. Follow these steps, and you will be on your way to having a successful influencer partnership!

If you’d like to learn more about influencer marketing and partnerships, check out some of our other blogs!