Influencer Marketing Pt. 2: How to Launch Your Campaign
So you’ve chosen your influencer, determined your goal, and now you’re ready to put your plan in action. Where do you even start? Baby steps, friend. Here’s how to execute your influencer campaign step-by-step.
Build a strong relationship with your influencer
Positive collaborations with influencers require a relationship. No one trusts the brand that leaves a comment saying “We love your style! DM us to collab!” That’s a highway to Sketch Town. Instead, take the time to get to know the influencer and their brand.
This way when you email them an introductory message, you’ll be sure to come across sincere and knowledgable. You need to break through the spam clutter and let the influencer know you’re serious about working with them.
Pro-tip: Include “paid” in the subject line of your email so the influencer knows you mean business.
Now you could play all your cards right and still get turned down by the influencer. You should still follow up to their response and let them know that the door is always open if they change their mind.
Hopefully the influencer will recognize your dedication and agree to work with you! In this case, you’re ready to start further communication to determine budget, mutual goals, and the details of the campaign.
P.S. It never hurts to send some freebies from your company! This gives the influencer a chance to try your product and learn more about your brand.
Here’s an influencer box we designed for Screenflair.
2. Hash out the details
If you’ve planned your campaign well to align with your overall goal, you should already have a list of services you want the influencer to perform as well as a detailed schedule and requirements the influencer needs to meet. You can catch up on the pre-planning in our previous blog on influencer marketing.
After you’ve negotiated what services the influencer will be providing for you, it’s time to talk money. No one likes dealing with the dollar signs, but it’s important everyone is on the same page in terms of compensation. Here are some questions to be sure to answer when figuring out payment:
Does the influencer have a media kit with pricing for different services to reference?
What are other influencers with similar following and engagement being paid?
Is payment required upfront or after the collaboration?
Does the influencer just want free products? Free product in addition to monetary compensation?
If the influencer works with an agency - are there any agency fees?
Hashing out the details and making expectations crystal clear is key to maintaining a positive relationship with the influencer and meeting the goals you’ve set for your campaign.
3. Trust your influencer with creating content
One of the hardest things to imagine in marketing is relinquishing creative control. However, your influencer is popular for a reason and has taken the time to develop their own personal brand and aesthetic. The last thing you want to do is have them post something that sticks out from their normal content. Followers can sniff out inauthentic content and your marketing will lose effectiveness as a result.
Plus, if you’ve done your influencer research thoroughly, you should have chosen someone who’s aesthetic fits with your brand story. However, trusting an influencer to create content doesn’t mean you have to leave them completely in the dark from your expectations.
To help your influencer content you can:
Invite them to your offices
Invite them to your events
Share stories about your brand
Give them detailed information about the product/service they’re promoting
Create a mood board to help guide their creative direction
Sending an informational insert in your influencer box helps inform your influencer on the product/service they’re promoting.
4. Monitor and measure the campaign’s success
While the campaign is ongoing, you’re going to want to monitor it. This means checking to make sure the influencer posts when they’re supposed to and meets all the requirements you’ve set. For example, have they tagged you in the post, added a branded hashtag, and made it clear that it’s sponsored content?
Consider sharing the content your influencer is posting to your brand’s page as part of the campaign as well. This mutual sharing will continue to strengthen the bond between you and your influencer as well as alert your followers to the collaboration.
Finally, measuring your campaign’s success is a crucial step that most people skip. While it may be tempting to jump into the next project, it’s important to outline what went right in the previous campaign and what could use some polishing.
Your influencer should be able to report their analytics from posts they did for you sometimes through programs like Julius or NeoReach. Review analytics like views, likes, comments, shares, and leads generated from the post.
Pro-tip: If you provide an affiliate link or code for your influencer to give to their followers, you can directly track the traffic from that link and see how many sales used that code in checkout. Giving a kick-back to the influencer for any sales they made with that link is also a nice way to reward them for their work.
Executing an influencer campaign takes clear communication and thorough planning. Doing all of the above well will land you stellar results. Need a little more help with your influencer campaign? Shoot us an email at contact@thesampsonhouse.com and let us execute your campaign flawlessly.
