What is influencer marketing?

Influencers, content creators, paid partnerships, collabs… These words probably sound familiar as influencer collabs are flooding social media but do you really know what influencer marketing is? If you don’t, it’s totally okay and you should definitely keep reading this article as we will teach you all the basics of influencer marketing. Working with content creators can truly take your marketing strategy to the next level. From increasing visibility, boosting your sales to increasing your SEO, there are many reasons to implement it into your strategy. But for your influencer campaign to be effective you need to select the right influencers and be able to analyze the results of your campaign to adjust your strategy. 

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Influencer Marketing Definition

Influencer marketing is a marketing technique where brands or companies work with influencers, internet celebrities or content creators to create content and reach their objectives. 

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Influencers and content creators is a relatively new job as it is greatly linked to the creation of social media. How do you become an influencer you might ask? On the paper it is pretty simple: you create content and you build yourself an online community. Obviously, there are many other factors that impact if you will be successful or not, otherwise everyone would be an influencer.  

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Influencers usually have a very engaged community that supports them. Therefore it is interesting for brands to work with them. When promoting a product or a brand, it is most likely that their followers will follow their recommendations. 

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How to integrate influencer marketing into your strategy

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Now you need to have a precise plan if you want to implement influencer marketing into your strategy. You cannot work with influencers simply because you think it will have a positive impact on your business. You need to define your objectives and then you will be able to determine what influencer marketing strategy to put in place. 

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Define your goals and budget

The first step is to define your goals. What results do you want and expect from working with influencers? Define precisely your KPIs. It can be the number of followers of your brand Instagram account, the number of visitors on your website, the number of sales…

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There are typically 2 main objectives you can reach by working with influencers: 

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• Gain more visibility 

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Because influencers have a large community, working with them will increase your brand’s notoriety. However, you should always remember that getting exposure is useless if you are working with the wrong people. You should collaborate with influencers that match your brand’s values and/or have a similar audience to yours. 

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• Boost your sales 

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Working with content creators can also help you sell more. But for that, you need to select your influencers carefully. If your objective is to boost your sales, you don’t necessarily need to work with mega influencers. In fact, working with smaller influencers will probably be more effective. Nano or micro-influencers tend to have more engaged communities as it is easier for them to respond to most of their comments and DM’s. Thus their followers usually feel closer to them. An influencer  with a high engagement rate is most likely to have  a community that will follow their recommendations. 

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When defining your objectives, it is also important to establish your budget. Depending on your budget you will be able to determine which influencer tier you can afford but also how many influencers. Also, don't forget to check out how much an influencer costs.

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Find the right content creators

Now if you want your collaboration to be effective, you need to select the right influencers. This means working with influencers who share your brand’s values and match your brand’s image.

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Now I agree that it can be hard to find the perfect influencers if you are only researching on social media, especially if you are targeting a niche audience. Luckily, there are tools to make your life easier. 

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On Favikon, you can research millions of influencers by influencer tier, key word, engagement rate… Then you can see the profiles that are most relevant to your needs. 

Once you have selected some interesting profiles, you need to check their social media statistics. This will make sure that you aren’t wasting money. 

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The important metrics to look for are the engagement rate, the saturation rate, the number of fake followers…

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Set up original collabs

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Great, you have selected your influencers! It is now time to contact them and discuss which type of partnerships you would like to put in place.

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First, see which social network is more relevant to your business. Of course, your choice might depend on the type of collaboration you want to do. 

Then you need to choose the type of formats: video, stories, pictures…

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You also need to find a collab idea that will match the influencer’s organic content. It will be more effective. 

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If you want your collaboration to be more impactful, try suggesting an original collab. Social media users are getting used to paid partnerships as it has become more and more common. If your collabs look like simple product placements, it is most likely that people won’t be interested and will keep scrolling. 

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To be effective, a partnership needs to look genuine and/or catch people’s attention. This will also help people remember it. 

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A good example of a successful partnership would be this partnership by Noémie Pino for Rhinoshield.

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Noémie is a fashion influencer but she collaborated with a phone case brand. In her reels, she coordinates her phone cases with her outfits. Her reel is always well edited and dynamic. This partnership matches with the rest of her content, so it made perfect sense for her to collaborate with the brand.

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How to follow your influencer marketing campaigns

As a brand, it is also important to keep an eye on your influencers’ campaigns, so you can make sure they respect what you have agreed on. And I’m sure you would also like to know if your campaign was worth it or not. 

The good news is you can also do that on Favikon!  Select your influencers and add them to your campaign. 

Once they are added, you will be able to keep up with their publications and also see how well the campaign is going. You have access to precious KPIs: total reach, EMV, brand account growth…

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Long-term influencer partnerships

If your campaign is a success, it can be interesting to implement long-term partnerships with your influencers.  

Working with an influencer in the long-term is a good strategy as you know you can trust them. Moreover, the influencer will probably be more invested as it is a long engagement. 

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As a social media user seeing that an influencer often collaborates with the same brand brings a feeling of trust. 

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Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that implies working with online personalities or content creators in order to reach your company’s objectives. Often less costly than traditional advertising, it can be a real advantage to work with influencers. It allows you to reach a wider audience and if you select the right influencer you can target your niche audience, which typically isn’t possible with traditional advertising. There are 2 main objectives you can reach with influencer marketing: gaining visibility and boosting your sales. But it can also help you boost your SEO, assert your brand’s image…

More and more brands are thinking long-term when working with influencers. One-deals are slowly getting replaced by long-term partnerships.

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