The Influencer Marketing industry has long evolved from being limited to celebrities and a few dedicated bloggers, to what we see now as a digital content creator space evolution. We see different creators and communities from broad categories such as beauty, fashion, and travel, to more niche categories such as gamers, NFTs, live streamers, parenting, vegan, and sustainable lifestyle advocates. These creators are positioned as influencers because they are the key opinion leaders within their communities.
If you have researched Influencer Marketing before, you may have discovered various (and often conflicting) information, with recommendations that tell you that either it is the key to your brand marketing success, or that influencers are not necessary for your business growth.
Indeed, Influencer strategies are more challenging to navigate than ever as a brand, but here’s a guide to help you determine why and how it plays an important role in your brand growth.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing is a type of Social Media Marketing that maximizes the community reach and engagement of influencers. These influencers are content creators who have a strong following and audiences who viewed them as experts within their niche. The more common ways an influencer would promote or endorse a brand are through product reviews, creative shoots, and mentions with call-to-actions that encourage or elicit a desirable response from their audience. These influencers work hard to build relationships and establish trust within their communities by being open, honest, and transparent on their pages, which also benefits the brands they are promoting, as their recommendations are often viewed as a potential purchases by their followers.
The Return-of-Investment From Each Influencer Tier
Influencers also vary in tiers, and each influencer tier has engagement best practices to achieve maximum brand ROI. Let’s do a breakdown of each tier and how they can help you in your influencer marketing.
Nano Influencers
Nano influencers are those with a minimum of 500 to 10,000 followers on their social. They are emerging content creators with a close-knit community that is often niche or category-specific. And because of this, they are more likely to have stronger engagement and more potential to convert audiences to users or consumers. Nano influencers can help your brand reach a more targeted audience to deliver your message and push acquisition.
Micro Influencers:
Micro influencers are those with a minimum of 10,000 to 100,000 followers on their social. Similar to Nano influencers, they also are emerging content creators but with a more diverse range of niches that are connected, such as beauty and fashion, beauty and wellness, or travel and lifestyle. Micro influencers can help your brand reach broader audiences to push product promotion and purchase at a more affordable cost compared to the higher tiers.
Macro Influencers:
Macro influencers are those with a minimum of 100,000 to 500,000 followers on their social. These influencers have established their branding within their communities, giving them an advantage point when it comes to reaching and engaging more audiences for your brand. They are also experienced with brand collaborations so they know the ins and out of influencer partnerships. However, they also cost more and are likely to have an established rate.
Mega Influencers:
Mega influencers are those with a minimum of 500,000 followers and up. These are your online and offline celebrities. They are best for brand awareness, specifically for product launches, long-term promos, and brand ambassadorships. Given their high following and more established personalities, they tend to cost more and have brand lockouts.
Now that you know the different influencer tiers and their strength metrics, let’s now discuss how you can start building a strategy for your brand’s Influencer Marketing plan.
How To Create An Influencer Marketing Strategy
As with any marketing strategy, an influencer program takes intentional targeting and planning. It is more than sending free PR kits and hoping bloggers will post about it. Let’s get to it!
- Determine your campaign objective and metrics
The first step in achieving your campaign goal is to set your objective and key metrics of success. Are you launching a product, and want to get support in brand awareness and engagement? Are you looking to acquire new users or customers? Do you want to start a community page and are looking for ambassadors to lead? Once you have set your objective and metrics, this will guide you in choosing the right influencer tier for your campaign.
- Set your budget and management strategy
Setting your budget can be done in two ways: 1) Reach out to an influencer or management to gain an insight into the estimated scope rate per influencer tier. 2) Set your budget’s minimum or maximum capacity after factoring in planning, products, and delivery fee.
Influencer management also needs a hands-on style as they are human and are frequently balancing multiple partnerships, so some may need more reminders in their post commitments, and to double-check requested tags and hashtags or call-to-actions. You’ll need to spend time working on establishing and cultivating relationships with them so they can best understand your brand and support you in full. Eventually, you’ll apply all your learnings to your next influencer campaign, and be better prepared for it.
For brands that need a wider pool of influencers, partnering with an influencer marketing agency that will look, coordinate, negotiate and monitor their performance for you is your best bet.
- Find the right influencers and negotiate compensation
Looking for the right influencers can be quite a challenge, but also fulfilling. You can start with whom you already follow or research online for emerging personalities that promote similar products, or even those of your competitors. After deciding on your influencer list, you can then email or message them directly. Most brands hire agencies or talent management companies to do this for them, which saves them time, energy, and more opportunities to explore cost packages. PopStar Philippines offers Influencer Marketing services that connect you to qualified influencers that have the creativity and community to support your brand.
- Review and apply learnings to improve your strategy
Remember, establishing an effective influencer strategy is progress. Always strive for progress over perfection! Have a pre-determined timeline when you’ll measure its progress, and apply your insights and learnings to your next campaign.
Conclusion
Influencers can help boost your brand awareness, engagement, and acquisition. With the rise of community-led campaigns through influencers and creators, investing in them will only bring your brand more leverage in reaching and forming connections with your target markets.
There are more ways and different approaches you can explore to strengthen your influencer strategy. Again, progress is key! You will always find more ways to improve it when you are open to trust and bond over creative collaborative spirit with your team of influencers.
Visit www.pop-star.me or email our Account Group Head at jamie.garcia@pop-star.me for more information on how PopStar Philippines can help you start your Influencer Marketing strategy today.
