INFLUENCER MARKETING

How to Create a Successful Influencer Marketing Strategy (+ Examples)

An influencer marketing strategy is like a movie night in.

You’ve got your snacks, your favorite film, and your favorite person to cuddle up with on the couch.

But what if you don’t have any of those things?

Then you’re stuck with a bad movie, no snacks, and no one to cuddle up with.

Like any good movie night, you need to plan for your influencer marketing strategy.

This means having clearly defined goals, target audience, and tactics. Without these things, your campaign is likely to flop.

And sure, designing an influencer marketing strategy that drives results requires knowledge and dedication.

It can be challenging initially, but you can do it after reading this guide.

We’ll tell you how to leverage influencer marketing to your advantage, pick the right content creators, and build a successful campaign.

Keep reading below.

TL;DR

• Influencer marketing is essential, like planning a movie night.
• A successful strategy requires clear goals, target audience, and tactics.
• Benefits include reaching new markets, credibility, engagement, loyalty, sales, and a 400% ROI.
• Create a strategy by setting goals, understanding your audience, choosing the right influencers, campaign type, messages, channels, and measuring results.

6 Tips to Succeed with Influencers:

1. Do thorough research on influencers.
2. Personalize your approach and involve influencers in your product.
3. Offer value in return, like monetary incentives or exclusives.
4. Be clear with influencer agreements on goals, messages, and payments.
5. Build strong relationships with influencers over time.
6. Maintain professionalism in your interactions.

Wrap Up:

• Effective influencer marketing starts with clear goals and the right influencers.
• Establish your campaign goals, choose influencers wisely, and apply the tips and lessons learned.
• Consider working with a reputable TikTok or Instagram influencer marketing agency for assistance in building your campaign.

What Is an Influencer Marketing Strategy?

The days of traditional advertising are over. Thanks to social media, consumers now have the power to easily discover products and services through word-of-mouth recommendations from their favorite social media influencers.

Side note: Social media is rapidly replacing standard search engines. Many studies show that, for example, TikTok is the new Google.

Enter influencer marketing.

An influencer marketing strategy utilizes social media personalities with significant followings, also known as influencers, to promote and endorse a brand or product.

And just like any marketing initiative, it requires careful planning and precise execution to be successful. That can be achieved by planning strategy with a marketing calendar.

But if you do it right, you can reap all the benefits below:

6 Research-Backed Benefits of Influencer Marketing in 2022 and Beyond

Influencer marketing has been shown to:

1. Help Companies Reach New Markets

When it comes to influencer marketing goals, 86% of marketers set brand awareness as their main purpose. 74% want to reach new or targeted markets. And they do achieve those goals because 80% of shoppers have purchased something following an influencer’s recommendation.

2. Establish Credibility and Trust

Studies show that a trustworthy, authentic influencer can enhance brand credibility. The catch? Your company has to deliver the promised products and live up to the standard it created. Besides, marketers claim that influencer-generated content receives 8x more engagement than conventional branded content.

3. Create More Engaged Relationships between Brands and Prospects

Social media influencers offer insights into the minds of your audience that you can use to adapt your product and your communications strategy. Besides, influencers will also have more conversations about your product than you can do because they’re so engaged with their audience.

And those two factors combined lead to a tighter relationship between you and your target audience.

In the example below, Eddie Motta is shown as one of Dr. Zenovia’s brand ambassadors:

Dr. Zenovia always partners with micro and nano – influencers that can have more genuine conversations with their followers. Eddie Motta is one of them, as you can notice from the comments to this post:

Notice the genuine comment, Eddie’s authentic reply from his own experience, and how he tagged the Dr. Zenovia brand in this conversation.

The company immediately responded, and that’s how influencers can create a direct bond between brands and people.

Side note: A more personal reply from Dr. Zenovia would have been better, so remember to do that in your conversations.

4. Build Long-Term Loyalty

Studies and experience show that influencers can build brand loyalty. But if that content creator’s audience stops believing in them, your relationship with those people will take a hit too.

5. Decrease Shopping Cart Abandonment

Social proof and needing more time to research are among the main reasons for cart abandonment. Conversely, an effective influencer marketing strategy can solve those issues; content creators are trustworthy and genuinely connect with their followers.

That’s how they can help you build that social proof and offer people the research they need in advance.

6. Increase Sales

Every $1 invested in your influencer marketing budget brings you a $4 return. That’s a massive 400% ROI. And it also explains why 90% of marketers believe in the power of influencer marketing.

How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy

Want to reap those advantages? Learn to create an influencer marketing strategy from the ground up.

1. Determine Your Goals

Setting your goals correctly is the first step of every influencer marketing campaign. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you won’t be able to set the other stages of your strategy.

Your intentions are the backbone of your entire strategy. Besides, these goals define your campaign’s metrics; you know the variables that help you monitor your campaign and measure its success. You can brainstorm with strategic planning consultants to guarantee your objectives are clear and achievable, ensuring a well-defined path to success.

Possible goals include:

• Brand awareness: Having more people know about your brand and products. It’s what inBeat did for Phone Loops, as you can see from the plethora of Instagram Posts popularizing these loops. We based our influencer content strategy on having more people discover these functional straps and associate them with awesome selfies.
• Brand identity: Getting people to understand what your brand stands for.
• Audience building: Influencers can help you reach more people to increase your audience size. That was inBeat’s strategy for Deux Par Deux, a brand selling children’s clothes.
• Sales: Influencer marketing can boost sales in the short term by popularizing various discounts and rewards. However, do it correctly, and this campaign will increase your ROI steadily in the long run.

inBeat’s Deux par Deux campaign featured product seeding to momfluencers to reach a broader audience.

Of course, you shouldn’t limit yourself to these goals. You can focus on creating more engagement, product launches, link building, etc. Practically, the world is your oyster.

Remember: Regardless of the goals you’re setting, you should always break them into smaller, attainable objectives. If you want to talk strategy, you can always schedule a free call with our influencer marketing agency, and we’ll assist you happily.

2. Identify Your Audience

You should be very clear about who you’re speaking to. You can’t hook your potential customers without understanding your audience’s interests and needs.

Once you research and grasp those things, you’ll have to speak their language.

That means you’ll know which types of content will motivate them best to meet your campaign’s marketing goals.

Take what Carter Sullivan did for Mogo. This young woman speaks articulately about her financial problems and how this app helped her solve them. She not only addresses an entire generation (Gen-Z) but also represents it.

An example of inBeat influencer content: a YouTube campaign with Mogo.ca

That’s another thing you’ll want to consider:

Don’t just throw your messages into the vast black hole of social media. Instead, create a buyer persona based on demographic and psychographic factors.

As a result, you’ll reach these people’s hearts and minds to:

• Guarantee more user engagement
• Build a loyal brand community
• Boost your sales

3. Choose the Right Influencers

Sifting through hundreds of influencers can seem daunting. We get it. That’s why we’ve created a free influencer database so that more marketers can find the right content creators.

But that’s not the point.

The point is understanding what makes someone a potential influencer. Content creators:

• Shape and define the conversation
• Advocate for the matters they care about with passion
• Ask the right questions that nobody else dares to put forth or thinks about
• Challenge the status quo

The biggest mistakes you can make at this point are to:

• Choose compliant influencers with large follower counts without looking at other engagement metrics
• Impose specific messages and perspectives to these influencers instead of asking them to challenge your perspective

Apart from that, the right influencers:

• Own a particular niche, such as travel, wellness, or fin-tech.
• Can persuade other influencers, not just a larger audience. From that perspective, the best target audience is the one that can convince different, smaller groups.

How do you choose the right influencers?

• Ensure those content creators you’ve found are suitable for your target audience, brand, and goals. If you are in the world of NFTs, finding relevant influencers for your  campaign can be difficult. So, it is better to work with an NFT influencer marketing agency to find and engage with the most suitable influencers for your brand.
• Choose influencers with a high engagement level. Micro - influencers represent a great choice, as they are a cost-effective way to reach your audience. Plus, their average engagement rates are higher, they create quality content, and they have credibility.

This visual from Later shows how engagement rates drop when the follower count increases.

Here are free tools to verify the quality of your influencers:

• Instagram fake followers checker
• TikTok engagement rate calculator
• Instagram engagement rate calculator

And here are the variables you should consider:

• Follower number
• Comments
• Shares
• On-site metrics
• Pageviews
• Time spent on the website
• Bounce rate
• Number of visitors
• Number of websites linking in

4. Choose the Right Campaign

You need to set the campaign type according to your goals. For example:

• Contest influencer campaigns build fast awareness
• Discount-based campaigns increase sales
• Value-based campaigns boost engagement

Other variables that help you set a successful campaign type are:

• The marketing channels you’re using
• The types of influencers you’re working with

Setting this campaign type will help you:

• Work towards your goals more consistently
• Set the right key performance indicators (KPIs) that help you measure results
• Build a memorable campaign through cohesive messages instead of confusing people

Successful influencer marketing campaigns leverage the strategies below:

• Product seeding: You give specific influencers free products to test, and they write about them. Gifting products is one of the most common strategies.
• Sponsored content: Pay an influencer to feature your brand on their social media platforms.
• Co-creating content: You and that influencer create specific content together. This strategy works well on TikTok, but you can also try it on other social media.
• Challenges and contests: These contests are highly motivating and can produce extra user-generated content.
• Discount codes: Mobilize your influencer’s audience to buy more of your products.
• QR codes: Create a unique QR code and include it in the influencer's post or story, allowing their followers to easily scan the QR code and instantly access your page to learn more about your product or service.

5. Choose the Right Messages

Once you know the type of influencer marketing campaign you want to run, choosing the right messages is essential.

At this point, you have to think about whether:

• You will establish a creative brief that the influencer has to follow or:
• You’ll give more creative freedom to your content creators

In the first scenario, you’ll have more control over the creative process, but the content your influencers publish may sound too salesy.

The second alternative means relinquishing some control for more natural-sounding social media posts.

Pro tip: In this case, you can use our Creator Studio to partner with the top 1% of influencers on social media that create authentic user-generated-like content.

6. Choose the Right Channels

Each audience is on a different (mix of) social channels. You and your content creators have to be where those people congregate.

For some, this is Instagram. For others, it would be TikTok or YouTube.

Why is that important?

Because the content will look differently depending on the channel:

• YouTube allows you to explain your product’s characteristics and benefits more in-depth.
• TikTok is best for short social media content – be it funny and relaxing or incredibly powerful.
• Instagram can help you reap the best of both worlds thanks to the lengthy-enough videos and right-side descriptions.

7. Measure Your Results

Tracking your campaign performance and measuring its results is paramount.

If you haven’t done an influencer marketing campaign before, know there’s a hidden trap you have to be wary of:

Fame.

When you see your brand’s name on Instagram Stories or sung by famous TikTok influencers, it can feel dizzying. Still, you shouldn’t lose track of what truly matters:

The numbers.

Despite the initial hype, these numbers tell the real story. That’s why we’ve urged you to set attainable goals and create a thorough strategy to reach them.

You’ll want to compare the results you’ve achieved on these metrics below:

• Brand Awareness:
• Website traffic
• Page views
• Social mentions
• Time on site
• Website users
• Building Brand Identity: social mentions, PR coverage (number of articles or links)
• Audience Building: opt-ins, new followers
• Engagement: shares, following, comments, and likes from social media users
• Lead Generation: opt-ins
• Sales: new sales, revenue changes, promo codes
• Customer Loyalty: customer retention rates, renewal rates
• Link Building: number and quality of links

As you can see, these numbers are precise and easy to monitor. You should track this data for all your influencer marketing campaigns and never omit them from your strategy.

This data tells you:

• What worked
• What didn’t work
• Who your loyal customers are
• Who are the most relevant influencers for your brand
• What messages and rewards are successful
• How you can improve certain aspects regarding communication or even your products

Pro tip: Influencer tracking software is a powerful tool for easy reporting.

How to Collaborate With Influencers – 6 Tips for Success

If you want to collaborate with influencers, you must follow the tips below:

1. Do Your Research

• Know who you’re reaching out to and what their interests are. You can try using LinkedIn email finder to easily find their emails, get some insights about these influencers, and ensure you reach out to the right people.
• Make sure they can fit your brand and audience.
• Ensure these content creators have high engagement rates and beware of phony followers. Our free fake follower checker will help you sleuth them out instantly.
• Check who they’ve worked with before. Make sure they don’t represent anyone whose profile or values might clash with your brand.
• Research their work ethic. Make sure they can deliver the desired results in the timeframe you need.

2. Keep It Personal

• A generic message is more likely to be ignored. Instead, try to bond with your content creators.
• Ask for their input regarding your product, the packaging, and brand communication.
• Ask for their insights regarding your audience.
• Try to keep those suggestions in mind.

3. Offer Something Of Value

What can you give them in return for their help? Consider:

• Monetary incentives
• Access to exclusive products and events
• Recognition
• The chance to make a difference for a value or an ideal they believe in

4. Be Clear About What You Want

You need an influencer agreement to make everything as clear as possible:

• Goals
• Type of campaign and messages
• Deadlines
• Payment
• And all other expectations, rights, and obligations

5. Build A Relationship

Take the time to get to know your content creators. Whether you’ll work with them in the long-term or just on a one-time project, remember:

Influencer relationships are everything in this world.

If you do not build that closeness, your content creator won’t be able to convey your intentions to your shared audience.

And you’ll get a glorified ad instead of compelling content with a high potential of becoming viral.

Here’s how to strengthen that relationship:

• Build rapport by engaging with the influencer’s content
• Offer something of value (e.g., a discount, exclusive access, or behind-the-scenes content)
• Consider gamification to ensure your influencer stays motivated to create the content you need
• Be patient; building relationships takes time, so don’t expect results overnight

6. Be Professional

Influencer partnerships are still business transactions, so act accordingly. Yes, you need to build that relationship, but professionally.

Your content creators aren’t your besties; they are your business partners and/or employees. So, treat them as such.

Make sure your interactions help with/lead to:

• Social listening
• Content creation
• Goal reaching

Examples of Amazing Influencer Marketing Campaigns

We have already discussed some examples of influencer marketing campaigns we at inBeat built above. Let’s see what the competition is doing, shall we?

1. Punto Criollo

You may not have heard about Punto Criollo before, but they’re pretty famous in Miami. This restaurant retails filled pastries and Venezuelan dishes.

Their influencer marketing strategy relies on collaborating with central figures in Latin culture.

It can be as simple as:

• Inviting a micro – influencer like registered nurse Damian Pastrana and his husband for a meal:

Pro tip: Notice the authentic-sounding text on the right; this type of promotion works especially well with content creators like Damian Pastrana, who don’t usually recommend brands or products.

• Inviting a celebrity, the tally of TV presenter and broadcaster Carolina Sandoval, with her 2.8 million Instagram followers:

What to learn from this campaign:

• The same influencer marketing campaign can include different types of social influencers.
• The follower count is less important than the goal.
• You want to pick a theme and stick with it. In this case, it’s authenticity.
• Show that your brand can meet your audience’s needs. In this case, it’s all about going back to your roots through culinary and cultural experiences.

2. Shortform

Shortform is an app that gives people access to short summaries of non-fiction books. The premise behind this app/ website is the “ultralearning” technique that helps people learn faster by delivering concentrated information to them.

So instead of reading a 400-page book in eight hours, Shortform gives you the essence in eight minutes.

And who better to help them do it than this Scott Tatum, nomad, hiker, explorer, and founder of @ucanoutdoors. Scott has built his entire Instagram account around his “self-care savage up” friendly reminders.

And those reminders are exactly like Shortform’s summaries.

In just a few seconds, Scott will remind you to ditch toxic influences, put yourself first, and start living the life you want.

That’s why he is the ideal influencer (or among the ideal ones, anyway) to represent Shortform:

What to learn from this campaign:

• Finding the right influencer that speaks to the ideal audience is the best way to ensure the success of your campaign. It’s even more important than producing 100% creative, authentic content. Notice, for example, that the text to the right of both these posts is identical.
• Offer an incentive and discounts to get more people to purchase your products. In this case, Shortform provides a 20% discount.
• Make sure your product page is easy to reach. Scott Tatum offers the link-in-bio option and the actual link inside the text.
• Create unique links for each content creator. That will help you monitor your campaign more efficiently.
• Have a bullet point summary in the post’s description. This strategy will increase product recall and social proof. People will also better understand how your product’s main characteristics solve their needs.

3. Specialisterne USA

Specialisterne USA is an organization that helps companies hire neurodiverse employees and build an inclusive work environment.

Nano – influencer Jaime A. Heidel is an Autistic Communication Translator that helps neurodivergent and neurotypical people understand each other better.

So what is the influencer strategy in this case?

• Jaime Heidel publishes an article in this magazine and then:
• She writes about it on her Instagram page.

The results are multi-fold:

• Increased visibility: The magazine now has more readers
• Enhanced expertise: Jaime’s followers read the article and the organization’s website. They now transfer Jaime’s credibility and knowledge to Specialisterne.
• Higher brand recall: A whole conversation is created, with viewers sharing their experiences and engaging in debate. This engagement leads to higher brand recall, especially because the organization is specifically named and recommended.

What to learn from this campaign:

• If you want a transfer of knowledge, reputation, and expertise to happen, choose the right influencers.
• Don’t position your brand in the limelight, but don’t disappear in the background, either. Make sure your audience knows you’re there and understands the values you identify with.
• If you want to rally people around certain values, pick engaging topics. This content can either create controversy, bring back memories, or push specific triggers.

Wrap Up

If you have read so far, you now understand how an effective influencer marketing strategy can help you and how you can build a campaign from the ground up.

Remember that it’s essential to establish your campaign goals and pick the right influencers.

The rest will follow if you stick to the tips in this article and enforce the lessons from the examples we reviewed.

Need help to start?

Try inBeat for free, or book a strategy call to start working on that campaign today.