Influencer marketing can be a valuable asset to any company’s marketing plan. Not only will a well thought-out influencer marketing plan help a business increase the number of visitors their website receives, but it will also offer a remarkable increase in their brand awareness and may also lead to thousands of additional sales.
More sales should be the most attractive feature of a marketing plan for you and your business; thus a plan that includes some influencers is essential for the success of not only your business but also your brand’s identity.
Unfortunately, a lot of people consider including this type of strategy in their existing marketing plan, but they often do not know what exactly it takes or how to get started.
In this guide, you will learn all the basics of influencer marketing in a step-by-step structure.
1. Determining Your Target Audience and Budget
Determining the target audience and budget of your marketing strategy should not only be the first step to take if you want to include influence marketing, but it should be a general step you take at the start of your initial marketing plan.
Without knowing your audience and without knowing how much you can spend on advertising, you will not be able to be successful in promoting your business as you would not know who to target.
Without these details, you may also end up spending much more than you expect, which can lead your business towards a negative balance.
2. Identify Marketing Channels
Once you know who you are going to target and how much money you can spend, it is time to identify which marketing channels will best work for the niche you are targeting. This will also help you find potential influencers that you can approach as part of your influencer marketing strategy.
To complete this step, you will need to do some research to find out which social media networks work best with your specific industry – for example, if you are selling weight loss products, you will have more success if you connect with an influencer who is active on Facebook than an influencer who has a large following on LinkedIn.
3. Find Potential Influencers
After identifying the best marketing channels for your business, it is time to connect with potential influencers. During this process, you should be patient and take the time to get to know each potential influencer as they will be promoting your brand to their followers. If you own a professional company, you don’t want someone who tends to be unprofessional on their marketing channels promoting your brand.
Search for influencers in your industry and connect with them. Ask them questions about how they can help you, tell them what you want and ask them how much they would charge you if you would like to include them in your influencer marketing plan.
Remember that you have a certain budget, so you need to find influencers that are within your budget range and who can provide effective exposure of your brand.
4. Filtering Process
Chances are, you will end up with a list of different influencers that have the potential to help your business grow.
Depending on your budget, you will most likely only be able to work with one or a small number of influencers at the start of your strategy. This means that you should now filter through the list of potential influencers you have.
Keep the ones that seem to have the most potential and delete the ones who doesn’t seem like they would be able to help expand your outreach as much.
5. Negotiation
Now that you have a smaller list of influencers you can use for your marketing plan, it is time to choose the ones you will definitely use and negotiate a final price with them.
You should note that some influencers charges thousands of dollars for a single mention – be sure you get one that is able to provide you with real results at a price that suits your budget.
Once you have negotiated a price, you should get a lawyer to compile a legal contract for you, which should be signed by both you and the influencer.
6. Content
After signing a contract with an influencer to include them in your marketing plan, you should start to compile the content that should be used in the outreach strategy.
Some influencers do offer to compile the content themselves, but since it is your brand, you will be able to provide content that is of better value since you understand what the business is about.
The content you compile should be relevant to the network or platform the influencer you connected with is going to use.
7. Scheduling
Apart from the content itself, the schedule at which the outreach is made also plays a vital role in the success of your influencer marketing strategy.
If you target people in the United States, but your content is posted at a time that they are all asleep, chances are not as many people will see the content compared to posting at a time when the majority of the population is online.
Sometimes, the influencer will be able to advise on the best time of postage, but you should also do some research on your own to ensure you know when to post on which networks.
8. Publishing
The final step is to give the influencer the “go ahead” signal. Tell them that you are happy with the content and scheduling, and that they can publish the content.
Once published, you should not sit back and wait for results to flow in though. Even though you may start to notice results soon after the content has been published, you should continue to monitor the progress of the strategy and see if any improvements can be made.
If the influencer you are working with is publishing content on blogs, ensure they use blogs that match your niche. For example, Proven SEO, a digital marketing agency, has a network of popular niche blogs that they can post content on to increase brand awareness through influence marketing.
See More: 9 Best Successful Influencer Marketing Trends of 2017
Influencer Marketing Guide – Final Words
Influencer marketing may be difficult to master if you are only starting out, but it can be add a lot of value to your digital marketing strategy. The technique will allow thousands to millions of people to notice your brand, your products, your services and your cause through the influence of someone they already trust.
