How do you succeed with an influencer marketing campaign?

Running a campaign with a digital influencer often guarantees a good ROI, so crucial for a business.

It is therefore not surprising that the number of businesses having integrated influencer marketing in their communication strategy is increasing exponentially. Brands that are already investing consistently in influencer marketing also intend to increase the budget allocated to it.

But be aware, a successful campaign is a well-thought-out campaign! In a market that is still maturing, mistakes leading to negative impacts on businesses are still too frequent. Here we give some advice on the methodology to follow to guarantee the success of your campaign.

An influencer marketing campaign requires serious preparation. This means establishing a strategy before launching the campaign to limit the risks associated with it. It’s a strategy that can be formed around five crucial questions:

1. What digital influence strategy should you use?
2. How do you choose the right influencer?
3. How do you manage the relationship with the digital influencer?
4. What digital influencer campaign systems should you choose?
5. At what price?

Choosing the right influencer suited to your campaign, this is important – we’ll come back to this. But defining the most suitable system upstream to establish the operation is essential. Each social network has a unique dynamic and different engagement potential. And, of course, this must go together with the creation of creative content.

Influencer marketing must be able to be integrated into an overall marketing and communication strategy, with its goals, its consistency and its objectives for the brand.

It is obviously essential to choose the influencer most suited to your campaign. One of the mistakes most often committed by advertisers is to  contact an influencer based on a completely subjective choice, without fully studying their compatibility with the brand.

Even if your campaign is promising, a lack of analysis of the influencer’s communities could lead it to fail. What target market do they really reach? What geographic areas do they impact? Are they “trendy”? Is their community really engaged?

Relying on an expert or an influence platform makes identifying the personality that best corresponds to your type of campaign and your brand much more simple.

Collaborating with influencers can sometimes worry advertisers. However, if certain conditions are respected, associating with them can only be beneficial. Several elements must therefore be taken into consideration:

• This is, above all, not about imposing an editorial line but by maintaining a relationship of trust. When you collaborate with an influencer, you agree to associate with their world and therefore with the way in which they express themselves and communicate.

• Communicating with your influencer throughout your partnership will help to create healthy and amicable relationships. Total transparency generated by the two parties is essential.

• Whatever the system used to engage an influencer, it is important to enter into a contract with them. Through the contract, the two parties will ensure that they have fully understood the challenges of the campaign and the reciprocal commitments. This will help to ensure your security as well as that of the Key Opinion Leader’s one.

All these subjects must be anticipated as soon as possible, well before that activation phase.

Before reflecting on the means that you will use to activate your campaign, you’ll need to first define your objectives, which can be multiple:

• Improving brand image
• Building brand awareness
• Acquiring new customers
• Creating customer loyalty
• Increasing a fan base on networks
• Etc.

There are an infinite number of types of collaboration with influencers. Each objective can be achieved if the right influencer marketing system is used. This means defining the type of content (text, photo or video), the social networks on which you want to communicate as well as the accounts (account of the brand or influencer). Keep in mind that each social network has a unique dynamic and different engagement potential!

The signing of the contract with the digital influencer is the most delicate stage. You need to think of putting all the elements together to protect you and to protect the key opinion leader. Numerous possibilities are available to you for this step. In particular, relying on an agency or platform offers you the best possible guidance.

It is difficult to establish fixed rates for influencers. You still have to respect their work and their investment by offering them remuneration. The cost of an influencer campaign will vary, in particular, according to the size and engagement of their community, and the scope and the kind of partnership chosen.

The success of an influencer marketing campaign depends on the goals that you have set yourself.

This involves three aspects to take into account:

• Ensuring that your goals have been put into figures before you even identify and mobilise the influencer. Reach, engagement, commercial performance: we speak in more detail about the question of KPIs here.

• Your data measuring must be effective, and your tracking tools must therefore be ready.  Whether is concerns a simple bitly link or a more comprehensive system.

• Your marketing and communication efforts must be suitable for your campaign. Influence for an event, digital influence to steer its positioning, or to re-engage their target: a digital influencer campaign must be part of a simple and overarching objective.