Level Up Your Brand: Effective Influencer Campaign Strategies for Businesses in the Philippines

24 March 2023 — Merr Fe Painagan In the world of marketing, influencer campaigns have become a popular way for brands to boost their visibility and reach new audiences. Brands typically start by identifying popular and polished influencers who can promote their products or services. To measure the success of the campaign, marketers establish objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) such as building brand awareness or achieving specific sales goals. Once the objectives are set, marketers select the appropriate social media platforms and content mediums to utilize in the campaign. They then set benchmarks for expected data results to track KPIs. Finally, they create a list of ideal influencers to work with, considering their size, engagement rates, and content categories to ensure a successful partnership. Planning an effective campaign strategy is crucial for achieving desired results. The Drawbacks of Relying Solely on a Data-Driven Approach in Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing has become an effective way for businesses to reach their target audience. However, simply setting benchmarks, selecting platforms, and content types without considering the role of individual influencers can limit the effectiveness of a campaign. In some cases, marketers may focus too heavily on quantitative data such as follower count, engagement rates, and fees when choosing influencers. While these figures are significant, they should not be the only ones evaluated. As the business expands, it’s easy to fall into the trap of considering influencers as commodities, choosing a big number of them only on cost-effectiveness. This approach overlooks the importance of qualitative aspects such as content quality, brand affinity, storytelling ability, comment sentiment, and relationship with followers. While quantitative data is valuable, keep in mind that the most effective influencer collaborations are based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Many brands make the mistake of establishing their creative strategy, selecting platforms and content types, and setting benchmarks before choosing influencers for their campaign. This approach can hinder the success of the campaign as it fails to leverage the unique strengths of each influencer. Instead, marketers should focus on individual influencer qualities to create campaigns that feel authentic and collaborative, rather than transactional. Campaigns that don’t consider the individual qualities of each influencer can result in forced creative concepts and talking points that don’t align with the influencer’s content. This can lead to a decrease in engagement and prevent the brand from achieving the benchmarks set for the campaign. Today’s audiences are savvy to brand partnerships, and can easily spot inauthentic campaigns, leading to negative perceptions of the brand. Flexibility is key to successful influencer campaigns. By allowing for individual influencer strengths and preferences, brands can create campaigns that feel natural and engage to their audiences, resulting in better outcomes and greater brand awareness. Why an Influencer-First Approach Is Key to a Successful Campaign Starting with an influencer-first approach instead of focusing solely on benchmark metrics can help your brand create a more targeted and effective campaign. By selecting key influencer partners for their creative content and their ability to reach your brand’s target customers in an authentic way, you can better establish the “why” behind your campaign. This approach is platform agnostic, allowing you to determine where to market based on the profiles of individual influencers. Rather than limiting yourself to one social media platform, you can expand your campaign to include TikTok and YouTube content if an influencer has a larger following on those platforms. This allows your brand to reach a wider audience while measuring multiple KPIs across various social channels. Using an influencer-first strategy allows your company to collaborate with influencers that have a true connection to your brand and its values, resulting in more authentic content that connects with their audience. By prioritizing the unique qualities of each influencer, you can create a campaign that feels natural and engaging, leading to better outcomes and increased brand awareness. Choosing the right influencer When adopting an influencer-first approach, it is crucial to align the values of the brand with those of the influencer. This involves selecting influencers whose content is relevant to the brand’s category, whose audience demographics align with the brand’s target customers, and whose personality and values on their social media channels match the brand’s voice. While following size and engagement rates remain important metrics to consider when selecting influencers, they should be evaluated together with the qualitative aspects of the influencer. A large following or high engagement rate may not guarantee effective influencer marketing if the influencer’s content does not align with the brand’s identity or reach its target consumers. Furthermore, audience engagement does not always translate to purchasing power. It is essential to look beyond the numbers and analyze what they mean as they only provide part of the picture. Building Out Your Strategy An influencer-first approach in building your marketing strategy can provide significant benefits to your brand. Instead of solely focusing on campaign goals and key talking points, this approach prioritizes the individual strengths of your selected influencers, allowing them to guide your campaign strategy. To ensure authentic content creation, it is essential to align the influencer’s values with your brand and identify influencers who create content in the same category as your brand. While considering metrics like following size and engagement rates, also evaluate the qualitative aspects of influencers. A large following and strong engagement rate mean little if the influencer’s content does not align with the brand’s identity or reach the brand’s target consumers. Influencers know their audiences best, which is why it’s crucial to avoid overly-prescriptive talking points and allow influencers room for creativity. An approval process can be established, but keep an open mind and trust the influencers to create content that resonates with their audience. Collaboration is key in mapping out the types of content and platforms that will best achieve the brand’s desired results. By building a personalized creative strategy that caters to each influencer’s unique qualities, you can achieve authentic-feeling content that fits naturally within the influencer’s individual channels. This approach allows for a break through the oversaturated ad space by embracing creative content, even if it veers outside the expected. Don’t miss out on the biggest value of working with influencers – their expertise in content creation. Final PopStar Tip: Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly popular in the Philippines. Brands need to carefully select popular and polished influencers who can promote their products or services to expand their visibility and reach new audiences. However, selecting the appropriate social media platform, content medium, and benchmark for data is crucial for a successful influencer campaign. While evaluating quantitative data such as follower count, engagement rates, and fees are essential, they should not be the only factors considered. The influencer-first approach, prioritizing individual influencer strengths, is key to a successful campaign. Influencers must align with the brand’s values and content category, and qualitative aspects such as content quality, storytelling ability, comment sentiment, and relationship with followers should be considered. Flexibility and trust in influencers’ creativity and content are essential for creating authentic campaigns that engage with audiences and increase brand awareness. Send us a message or contact our Team at contact@pop-star.me for more information on how PopStar can help you in your influencer marketing campaign here in the Philippines.