Most people don’t get how hard it is to be an influencer marketing manager or social media manager. They think you just sit around eating snacks and posting on social media all day.
If only they knew…
You have too many clients to manage and not enough time in the day. You need to come up with amazing campaigns on a tight budget, and with only a small team to help you (or none at all). And you’re under the constant pressure of hoping your campaigns get good results.
Your job is not easy. But even if others don’t get it, we do. And we don’t want you to stress all through 2025! So right now we’ll show you how to optimize influencer campaigns so you can save time and get better results for your clients.
7 steps to optimize your next influencer campaign
- Focus on building long-term relationships.
A great way to optimize influencer campaigns is to build long-term relationships with influencers. This is a major time-saver because instead of having to constantly find new creators, you can work with your top producers over and over again. You’ll be working with people who are familiar with your brand and can easily create content that fits seamlessly into it.
Another plus to long-term relationships is that the influencer’s audience gets used to seeing your product over time instead of seeing it once and letting it slip out of their minds. The repeated exposure helps people remember your brand and trust that your products are high quality.
Finding a good long-term partner can be tricky though. It’s not about finding someone who has a massive follower number or fancy photos. It’s better to work with someone who’s genuinely interested in your products and believes in your brand values. Those are the influencers who will create content for you that actually appeals to their audience, instead of generic, forgettable content.
GRIN can help you find influencers who are right for you. Once you’ve found someone, try working with them for a one-time collab to see how things go. After that, you can set up a longer contract. Long-term relationships are a win-win for your company and for influencers—not to mention for the audience, who will keep enjoying quality content.
- Find ways to automate and streamline the process.
You’d be amazed how much saving time can save you money. There are lots of ways to automate and streamline your campaigns so you can smoothly handle several clients at once.
The most important thing is to have a process in place. If you haven’t already, create a standard operating procedure that outlines your steps to creating an influencer campaign from start to finish. Keep in mind that the SOP doesn’t have to be perfect. You can always add details and change things later.
Of course, you’ll need to organize your to-dos in a way that matches the SOP. But don’t just think about yourself and your team here. It’s critical to give your creators visibility into your running task list, so they can see what’s done and what still needs doing. Offering that kind of transparency will cut down on a ton of time spent answering questions or in meetings.
It’s possible to streamline your content management too. Because let’s face it, trying to remember tons of videos and posts and links that get all mixed up is way too confusing.
And when it comes to streamlining and optimizing, a crucial step is pinpointing which tasks take the longest time. Depending on what each task is, try delegating to a team member or contractor, or using AI and automation tools to get the job done. Investing money in delegation and automation is worth it to have that sweet relief of extra time.
- Make the most of market research.
When you have good market research on your side, there’s no need to stress about what the results will be from your campaigns. Knowing your audience on a deep, emotional level increases your chances of getting conversions.
Try to find out all you can about the intended audience for your campaign, including their lifestyle, goals, pain points, and values/beliefs. There are plenty of ways to do market research, such as exploring niche online communities, reading industry publications, creating surveys and giving people an incentive to take them, researching other brands in your niche, and doing individual interviews with people in your audience.
And since you’re creating influencer campaigns, another part of market research is studying other content from the influencer you’re working with. Look at which kinds of content resonated with their audience the most and least. Pick up on patterns to figure out what their audience likes, and keep that info in mind when you create your campaign.
So, you have the data. How do you optimize based on your market research?
Delegating market research to team members or to an outside firm can give you breathing room in your schedule. But if you’re doing the market research yourself, you may want to focus on sending out surveys, reading industry publications, and checking out online communities related to your niche. Be sure to organize info in spreadsheets and docs that will be quick and easy to find later—you’ll be glad you did.
- Create a content idea bank.
You can optimize your influencer campaign by creating fun and engaging content that gets results, and there’s more than one way to do that.
While content creators are experts at creating content (hello, it’s in their name), collaborating means you can contribute ideas too.
To make this much easier, you can create a content idea bank. This could be a document, a spreadsheet, or database that lets you write down content ideas any time you happen to come across one you really like. Include links, screenshots, and notes. You and your team can add to this idea bank over time, so when you need a content idea for an influencer campaign, you have plenty of ideas at your fingertips.
To get the best results from your influencer campaigns, brainstorm ways to make your campaigns more fun.
A couple of quick thought-starters:
- Launch a content series that makes them eagerly await the next part.
- Surprise the audience with an unexpected product reveal.
- Let your audience vote on what kind of content they want to see next.
- Invite the audience to submit user-generated content.
These are just a few of many ways to spice up your campaigns and boost conversions in 2025. Don’t be afraid to get creative!
- Encourage audience participation and use automation to respond.
In your influencer content, encourage people to comment, click, share, vote in a poll, enter their email… whatever kinds of engagement would be best for your campaign.
When people take small actions—especially if they respond to more than one of your campaigns—they’re more likely to feel comfortable taking the bigger action of buying something. That’s why it makes sense to automate what happens after the content is posted and people engage with it.
One idea is to use an automated messaging tool like ManyChat. You can ask your audience to comment or DM with a specific word and they’ll get an automated response with a link to a video, a signup page, a coupon code, or whatever you want to give them. No need to waste precious time manually responding to everyone.
Then there are automated email sequences, which are a powerful, incredible time-saver. Your influencer content can encourage people to sign up to your email list and receive more free content. Then everyone who signs up will receive an automated email sequence to be sent out over multiple days. This lets audiences dive in and explore your brand, which builds brand loyalty.
You may also want to consider retargeting ads. These are ads from your company that are shown to people who have already engaged with your website or content. This lowers the chances of people seeing your influencer campaign and then getting distracted and forgetting about your company.
- Study data to optimize campaigns in real time.
There’s a reason we’re obsessed with helping companies track influencer campaign data in real time. Running an influencer campaign without much real-time data is like trying to paint a picture blindfolded. You probably won’t end up with a masterpiece.
Having enough data is important to staying nimble and adjusting your strategy as needed. Real-time data helps you know how much revenue your campaign is bringing in and which pieces of content are bringing in the most. This means you’ll be able to promote the most successful content more and adjust the content that’s performing a little less. That’s how you can maximize your results and create a wonderful painting, er, campaign.
- Network with other social media managers and influencer relationship managers.
That’s right. Never underestimate the power of networking, especially getting to know people who do the same type of work you do. If you’re stuck on how to optimize your influencer campaigns, talk to other influencer relationship managers and social media managers. Ask them what they’re doing that’s working for them. You’ll get insider tips from people who know what it’s like to be in your shoes.
Ready to start networking with industry pros? Join the GRIN Community!
Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions. There’s a lot you can learn from other marketing professionals, and the advice you get can make your influencer campaigns better.
Key takeaway: There’s always a way to make life easier when you’re struggling to optimize an influencer campaign.
You may feel like juggling multiple creators is like juggling multiple plates in the air and hoping they won’t crash. But it’s possible to make influencer campaign management less like a juggling act and more like smooth sailing.
In 2025, be strategic about how you can organize, automate, and delegate. This speeds up the campaign creation process, but it doesn’t mean sacrificing quality and results. Optimizing influencer campaigns is what we do here at Grin, because we want your job to be easier and your influencer campaigns to be even better than they already are.
