“Gone are the days where you would put an ad in a magazine or use a legitimate celebrity. Now are the days where you will pay any plant, animal, or mineral with an online following to endorse your product.” -Amanda Rosenberg.

Any successful business knows that favorable outcomes are deeply rooted in promoting your brand.

However, brand promotion is not as easy and straightforward as it was back in the day. In fact, many would say that it is getting increasingly difficult by the day. Your audience is exposed to all sorts of digital content whose objectives focus on product or service promotion almost on a daily basis. Needless to say, online content is saturated with promotional content—so much so that consumers have become more aware and cynical about the type of content they are exposed to. Unfortunately, this means that your target audience is a little more discerning and thorough when it comes to picking products that they like. As a result, implementing traditional methods of advertising is no longer an option.

The competition is stiff, however, and it is easy for your brand to get lost among its competition. That said, your brand needs to find ways to stay relevant. So, how do you adapt and stay on top of the game? As a brand, you need to think out of the box and innovate your approach when it comes to promoting your brand. Today, your target audience is still lurking around the internet. What you need to do is to find a way to reach them and relate to them. Influencer marketing is one of the best and proven ways to reach your target audience and gain more exposure for your brand. Engaging in influencer marketing services influencer marketing services involves collaborating with social leaders, which helps your brand gain immense public exposure. In effect, people of considerable influence are effectively vouching for your brand. As a result, posts and contents made by influencers seem more genuine and legitimate, which gives your brand unparalleled exposure. Before you start dipping your toes in influencer marketing, however, know that you need to do this right. If you intend to join the trend, there is absolutely no room for failure, as this will give your competitors an advantage over your brand.

So, if you have wanted to incorporate influencer marketing into your strategy, below are some of the marketing tips that will help you plan, execute and succeed with your future campaigns.

1.) Define your goals

Never start an influencer marketing campaign without setting a set of goals of what you want to achieve by the end. Your goals would help steer you in the right direction and serve as a roadmap for your entire campaign. That said, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve in order for you to plan your campaign more effectively and run it smoothly. Your goals can range anywhere from increasing reach, generating leads, getting more revenue, or even all three. Defining what these are will help you plan which metrics to use to better assess how well your campaign is performing. From there, you can set target goals for each of the metrics/KPIs by giving them a numerical figure. At the end of your campaign, you can analyze how well it did by comparing your statistics to your KPIs.

2.) Define your target audience

It is not enough that you know what your campaign goals are. You need to know who your target audience is as well. Having a clear idea of your target audience helps you have an insight into what you should do and a clearer picture of how to strategize your campaign. To determine who your target audience is, you need to take several factors into consideration, such as their age, interests, demographics, locations, and so much more. Knowing who your target audience is will help ensure that your campaign reaches the right people. Launching a campaign without knowing who your target audience is will render it useless as it will never reach the right people. More importantly, defining your target audience makes it easier for you to find the right influencer for your brand. You can do this simply by searching for influencers whose followers share similar interests as your target audience.

3.) Turn to smaller communities

Understandably, well-known and established influencers can help you expand your brand’s reach. However, if you are aiming for short-term traffic and sales, you may want to shift your focus to smaller communities. Influencers in smaller communities help your brand get highly targeted traffic. You can look for these influencers in:

*websites that get your brand traffic

*social media platforms such as Quora and Reddit where questions are asked about similar products to the one you are offering

*groups on Facebook and LinkedIn which relate to your niche.

Alternatively, you can also find active users on social media who regularly interact with others in your niche.

4.) Do research on your influencers

Considering how popular influencer marketing has become, it is inevitable that there will also be a rising number of influencers in the market. That said, there are a lot of fake influencers that have taken over social media. These are the type of influencers who prey on brands and trick them into paying for ineffective sponsored content. Brands typically go for influencers who have a massive following. Unfortunately, most influencers charge fees depending on the number of followers they have. That said, you need to be a little meticulous and thorough about the kind of following an influencer has. TIn these days, anyone can buy followers and likes just to inflate their overall count and engagement. So, when it comes to influencer selection, always do a background check on them and their social media profiles. As a result, you can minimize your losses.

5.) Think of the influencer’s audience

As a brand, you should not be hyperfocused on your exposure alone. While exposure is something you should be aiming for, there are other things you need to be considering. One of the things you need to keep in mind is an influencer’s audience, especially since the campaigns you create are for their audience, not you. That said, take a look at their audience’s interest level and engagement with the content. A broader audience is likely to give you more impressions. On the other hand, an interested and engaged audience is more likely to convert. To do this, approach and select micro-influencers as these are the ones who have a highly engaged audience which helps your brand drive more conversions. It is also worthy to note that these influencers may charge you a cheaper rate considering that they have a fewer number of followers.

6.) Allow your influencers some control

Traditional marketing gives you total control over all the aspects of your marketing campaign. However, influencer marketing shifts some of that control to your chosen influencer. That said, you give them a certain amount of leverage over the kind of content they post. For some brands, this may be a little intimidating, but this can be highly beneficial to you. In fact, research has shown that influencers who are given creative freedom by brands are more likely to collaborate with them for future campaigns. That said, you need to understand that influencers can produce more effective content when they are allowed creative freedom. So, give them some flexibility. IMoreover, it is also important to note that they know their audiences best which means. As a result, they know what kind of content works. However, giving up some control does not mean relinquishing all of your control. While you can oversee how your influencers are doing, do not try and micromanage them.

7.) Engage with influencers on social media

An excellent way of developing relationships with influencers is doing it through social media. It is also a great way to determine and pick out influencers you want to engage. To approach and engage with them, you can do any of the following:

* Share their posts

* Mention them on your brand’s blog posts and tag them while sharing their content on social media

* Compliment the quality content they share

* Comment regularly on posts that catch your interests

Engaging with an influencer regularly helps them notice your brand. It also enables you to stand apart from the rest. In this way, you can leverage their social influence better by building the relationship. If you create a successful rapport with them, you may even ask them to do cross-promotions on social media, which is a cost-effective way of incorporating influencer marketing. Also, another thing worth noting is that engaging with influencers on social media allows their audience to notice you as well, which gives your brand more exposure and attention.

CONCLUSION

The influencer marketing tips above are designed to help you plan and execute strategic influencer marketing campaigns. To do that, however, selecting the right influencers and collaborating with them in a mutually beneficial way is paramount.

That said, give them enough freedom to work on their content and consider nurturing the professional relationship you have with them. Lastly, continue to analyze and optimize your campaign in order for your brand to get the most out of them.