Great marketers are always analyzing their strategies and adjusting when opportunity presents itself. If you’ve found that your influencer marketing plan hasn’t been delivering the results that you deserve, take a look at the following strategies that can help maximize your individual marketing plan’s performance.
Using creators as brand advocates is a decades-old concept. If you remember, Madonna and Michael Jackson were hired by Pepsi to increase the popularity of this beverage among the younger community. Fast forward a decade or two, and the same thing happened with Nike and Michael Jordan, or with Calvin Klein and Justin Bieber.
Luckily, nowadays you don’t have to hire celebs to make your brand stand out in the digital crowd. By hiring digital creators, you can connect your brand with the public and achieve wanted results.
However, the world of influencer marketing has been changing over the past few years. The creator community has been expanding. More and more brands have been using influencers to reach more audiences and drawing attention to your brand has become harder with such fierce competition.
If your influencer marketing strategy hasn’t been working for you lately, it is time to make some upgrades. Here are several changes you can make to your marketing approach that will put you right back into the spotlight.
Think Small
While choosing a famous influencer to collaborate with might seem like the best strategy, it has many downsides. Although these individuals have massive followings, their engagement level may not be too high.
On the other hand, nano- and micro-influencers with up to 100K followers usually have a higher average engagement rate. Also, they have niche communities around them, so when they recommend a product, followers feel like the recommendations are coming from a trusted friend.
Therefore, it is no wonder that according to a study from Linqia, only 22% of the companies want to work with celebrity influencers at the moment.
Focus On Video Content
Up until recently, a photo with a nicely written caption was all you needed to promote your brand via influencers. However, ever since TikTok became popular and Instagram launched its Reels, video has become a far more important format.
Adding more video to your marketing strategy is a step in the right direction and will engage your target community on a deeper level.
Collaborate on Multiple Levels
More and more influencers are becoming entrepreneurs. As being an influencer is a full-time job, some have decided to take their influence and turn it into a business.
This is something brand owners should keep on their radar, especially since this opens a lot of opportunities for collaborations. If you have a new product or campaign coming up, you can partner with the influencer’s account as well as their brand account.
Less Is More
Overly-filtered photos are slowly making their exit and making room for in-the-moment pictures. Creators and their communities are turning away from curated feed aesthetics and going with less polished but far more realistic photos of their lives. It is most likely that this trend will continue evolving through 2022.
In the beginning, when social media was a new concept and influencers were just starting to launch their content, anything less than perfect was not welcome on their profiles. However, nowadays when everyone is calling out overly photoshopped photos and as reality is making a huge comeback, it is no longer necessary to look for influencers whose profiles look picture perfect.
Instead, look for those who know how to create sponsored content that will not look like an ad.
Making a Commitment
While making ongoing partnerships is not a new trend, it is still an important one that will continue this year as well. Creating more sponsored content is a win-win situation.
While single sponsored posts can look staged and fail to build trust among the influencer’s community, a partnership on an ongoing basis can feel more authentic. When followers notice that the person they look up to stands behind one brand and believes in it, they will begin to believe in it too.
Let Them Take the Wheel
There is a reason why the influencer you want to work with is popular among a certain crowd. They spent years working on their image, developing their voice, and finding a specific way to communicate with their audience. Most of their followers will notice if their idol suddenly changes their style or the tone they usually use.
Controlling what the influencer posts to boost your campaign’s performance can result in a lot of backlash. If a sponsored post looks like somebody else has created the content, the message is going to seem very fake, and followers won’t just lose faith in the brand, but in the influencer as well.
Therefore, to make sure that your campaign truly reaches the audience in the best possible way, you need to let go of the wheel and let the influencer take charge.
Introduce them to the brand rules and let them know what the message needs to include. Then, let them use their unique voice to get through to people and deliver the message in their unique way.
Stay Trending
There is no doubt that new trends will take off in the following years and it is important to keep track of them so you can upgrade your influencer marketing strategy on time.
In the meantime, make sure to track your campaign’s performance so you can determine what works for your brand and what needs to change.
