How to Develop an Influencer Marketing Strategy?

Have you ever heard of influencer marketing? If not, you might be familiar with influencers, and marketing that involves an influential personality or a person with a great fan following is called influencer marketing. You might have seen your favourite influencer or vlogger promoting a product (it can be related to beauty, fitness, or any other industry) – it’s a part of their influencer marketing strategy.

By leveraging the authority and the bond they share with the audience, influencers convince their target audience to invest in a product or service. The term “influencer marketing” might seem new to you; however, it is not a new concept in the market. Previously, big brands were using celebrities to market their services and brands; this market has just become saturated.

The brands employ suitable influencers to market their products or services and convey their message to the audience. However, selecting an influencer that resonates with your targeted audience is crucial to leveraging influencer marketing to elevate your business. If you plan to reach new heights in your business using the potential of influencer marketing, this blog is just right to read.

This exclusive blog will help you determine whether influencer marketing is the right way to achieve your business goals and how to create an effective influencer marketing strategy to succeed. So, read on!

1. What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing refers to a brand’s services or product promotion by an influential personality or a social media user with a huge fan following on social platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc. According to the statistics, about 3.96 million people are happily scrolling through social media. Those individuals are trusted in a niche community by a loyal follower base, and their audience respects their opinions.

Hence, the products and services mentioned or reviewed positively by them are more likely to be purchased by their loyal followers. Influencers, in general, work in two ways. Either they sell their merchandise or utilise the trust and loyalty of their fan following to promote other businesses on a platform where they have good authority.

Every influencer has an audience interested in the topic that the influencer talks about; for instance, if a person talks about beauty, it is more likely they will have a fan following of women aged between 20-29 years, while a tech influencer will attract technophiles aged between 15 to 34 years. You must build relationships with influencers relevant to your business or products to ensure the success of your business.

The first step to creating an effective influencer marketing strategy is choosing an influencer that resonates with your target audience. Also, bear in mind that influencers work independently, and it is crucial to ensure that the influencer you choose for influencer marketing can convey your message to the audience and create a good image of the brand in the market.

2. Should You Invest in Influencer Marketing?

In order to determine whether investing in influencer marketing will prove to be a beneficial endeavour for business, it is imperative to consider a few things before you conclude:

Whether your business’s target audience is active on social platforms.
Whether or not you can afford the fees of an influencer and how much funding you have for it.

If your customers are on social media and you have enough funds, give influencer marketing a shot today. In addition to platform alignment, you will also need to consider whether your business and products fall under the category of the most common types of influencers, including:

Lifestyle Influencers
Fashion Influencers
Beauty Influencers
Fitness Influencers
Entertainment Influencers

If you are concerned about the fees and expenses of influencer marketing, sending an influencer your product for FREE is fair compensation as long as the influencer agrees upon the contract. However, the condition is that the product’s value must be equivalent to the general fees of the influencer.

3. What Types of Influencers Exist and Their Reach?

Instagram and every other social media platform are getting flooded with influencers; some have millions of fans comprising broad audiences and demographics, while others have a smaller audience but their audience is engaged and targeted. Therefore, determining what each influencer can offer you and choosing the best out of all is the first step to a successful marketing campaign.

To figure out what influencer type will suit your needs perfectly, first, you must understand how many influencer types exist and their reach. Here’s what you need to know about influencers:

Type of Influencer	Reach
Mega Influencers	1M+ Followers
Macro Influencers	100K - 1M Followers
Micro-influencers	10K - 100 K Followers
Nano-influencers	< 10K Followers

Now is the time to take a deeper look at the profiles of these influencers so that you can make an informed decision about which to select for your next marketing campaign.

Mega Influencers

It is the first type of influencer to exist in the market, and they have a huge fan following of over one million. The list of mega influencers is long and often includes famous athletes, musicians, actors/actresses, and other infectious personalities. Collaborating with mega influencers gives your business unparalleled exposure. However, employing them to market your business can burn your pockets.

In addition, the fan following of mega influencers is quite broad and includes people of various races, languages, places, or genders; for instance, Cristiano Ronaldo. Therefore, the engagement you may get after partnering with them might not be satisfactory. That’s where other than mega influencers get a plus.

Businesses that may consider partnering with mega influencers include

Top-notch brands attempting to create a sense of exclusivity.
Large incorporations with enough budget and resources.
Big businesses trying to capture the interest of a broad audience.

Macro Influencers

The fan following of Macro Influencers typically ranges from 100K to 1M, and they earn the badge of a thought leader in their respective niche through consistent content creation. These influencers have an established personality in their niches and often have a more targeted audience compared to mega influencers or celebrities.

By collaborating with macro influencers, you can reach your targeted audience substantially and quickly. Though macro influencers are costly, their compensation depends on your goals and the exposure amount. The businesses’ macro influencers are a good choice for including the following:

Business startup looking to get rapid exposure and growth.
Organisations planning to raise awareness and funds.
Entrepreneurs attempting to target a specific and large audience.

Micro-influencers

The darlings of influencer marketing, micro-influencers typically have 10K to 100K engaged and targeted followers. With an online presence on popular social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, these influencers can help a business with highly targeted messages or marketing campaigns.

Most marketers prefer partnering with these influencers as they have a passionate, loyal, and targeted audience in a particular niche. Micro-influencers gain followers after posting relatable and creative content. For instance, a corporate influencer with an audience of people working in the corporate world and a company selling corporate goods can partner with them to sell their products.

These micro-influencers charge less than mega and macro-influencers. However, that doesn’t imply that collaborating with them is ineffective since they can drive 60% more engagement and 20% higher conversion than macro influencers.

Nano-influencers

People with a fan base of less than 10K followers on any social media platform, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc., are referred to as Nano-influencers. Despite having fewer followers, they can prove to be a great help for small businesses in generating more revenue or leads by utilising their genuine engagement and relatable content.

If you want a partnership that doesn’t burden your finances and helps you grow your business effectively, nano-influencers could be your final destination. In light of the fact that nano-influencers have fewer followers and get fewer offers for promotion, they have enough time to dedicate to a single partnership and drive quality leads.

Affordability and a targeted audience are the only reasons why more and more businesses are inclined to partner with nano-influencers. Here are the brands that can consider partnering with nano-influencers for the promotion of their brand:

Small businesses with limited budgets for marketing.
A business planning to target local customers, communities or a specific region.
Individuals who want to target a niche community interested in their one-of-a-kind product. For instance, an artist or a home-based restaurant.

4. Creating an Influencer Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Now that you are familiar with influencer marketing and whether investing in it is beneficial, let’s delve deeper into this blog to determine how to create a successful influencer marketing strategy for your business that turns around its fortune in no time.

Understand Your Goals

Just like any other form of marketing, the first step to developing an influencer marketing strategy is to determine your specific business goals. What do you want to achieve by investing in this form of marketing? Which demographics do you want to reach via influencer marketing?

In general, brands adapting to influencer marketing want to target and reach new customers. Investing in social media marketing and influencer marketing is an easy and quick way to do it.

You have to figure out the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) once you get answers to all the above questions. Do you want to intensify your sales or create awareness among people about your product or service? Increasing sales and revenue generation is the most common goal of all businesses adapting to influencer marketing.

To ensure the success of your influencer marketing campaign, you must set specific and measurable goals. By doing so, you will be able to track the progress through reporting on platforms you choose to leverage, i.e., Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. You are free to set different goals for each product. However, the goals must be measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.

Competitor Research and Finding an Influencer

Once you define the goals for your influencer marketing, you are ready to find an influencer that suits your needs. However, before jumping into the market to find an influencer for the marketing campaign, do your homework properly. You must spend a handsome amount of time determining whether or not your competitors are spending their money on influencer marketing.

If they have partnered with influencers, get an idea of how much they are spending and are involved in influencer marketing. You should also research the influencer landscape to develop a foolproof influencer marketing strategy to succeed in your business. Observe how influencers are promoting businesses in your field. This way, you might find an influencer who can help you with effective promotion of your products and services.

The criteria to figure out whether an influencer is a good fit for your business include the 3 Rs, which are as follows:

Reach: The amount of exposure you get after partnering with an influencer.
Relevance: How perfectly their content aligns with your brand and its goals.
Resonance: What amount of engagement can they create utilising their fan base?

Connect with the Influencers

After understanding what your competitors are doing to achieve their business goals and how influencers are helping businesses grow, take some time to create a list of influencers suitable for your marketing goals as well as the allotted budget. Then, shortlist the perfect candidates and observe their content for a few days in order to ensure their eligibility for the profile you’re recruiting.

Once you are confident in your decision to partner with someone for influencer marketing, attempt to connect with them. You can initiate organic interaction first, including liking their posts and dropping comments. Then, you can directly send a direct message or an email if they have mentioned the address in their bio.

If you are reaching out to a big influencer or celebrity, chances are they might have a manager, so you have to drop a formal message citing the potential they have to help brands grow with their fan following. Remember to personalise the messages you send to each influencer. Here is an example of how you should approach an influencer and how you should not.

How to Approach an Influencer? (Example)

Hey (Insert Name), I really liked your previous video on (topic) and was impressed by how you inspired your audience to (action taken/goal of the video). We are a (your niche/industry) company interested in an influencer just like you who can help us (your goals). If you are interested, let me know a suitable time to have a video meeting regarding the same.

How not to Approach an Influencer? (Example)

Hi, we are really impressed by your content. Reply with “Yes” to grab a marvellous opportunity!

Start Creating Content for Marketing

Once you’ve found the perfect influencer for the promotion of your brand or business, it’s time to partner with them to create engaging and attractive content that contributes to the overall success of your marketing campaign. Typically, influencers create content around your product or service on their own, and it might include how to use the product and its benefits.

You can also help the influencer with content curation; you can tell them your expectations and the type of content you need for the promotion of your business. You might need to provide the influencer with a brief that generally includes the following:

Brand Information
Purpose and Values
Overview and Objective
Message to Convey
Channels and Deliverables
Examples of Ideal Content
Review Process of Content
Payment Process

Though you can guide the influencer to create a piece of content according to your specific needs, the creator will have creative control over the post or video content throughout and after the influencer marketing campaign. Once the influencer comes up with a content idea, you can select one of the best pieces of content and launch your influencer marketing campaign.

Review and Revise Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

After launching your influencer marketing campaign, you may want to measure its success and how it progresses over time. You will not get the same results on each platform you choose to market your products. First, you have to invest and test what would work best for your business. Then, you can stick to that platform or pattern and reap the perks.

Once you get enough insights about the influencer marketing campaign, you can make an informed decision about how to promote your business and select an ideal platform for that. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself to give your influencer marketing campaign direction or make the influencer marketing program cost-effective:

How much business and engagement did you get from this form of marketing?
Did you get more leads/business from one influencer compared to the others?
Which platform offers you more business if your influencer has many media platforms to market?

The ideal way to optimise and cut your costs for influencer marketing is to stick to the platform, influencer, and content pattern that has given you the best results. And this is the only way to refine your influencer marketing strategy and make your influencer marketing campaign successful.

Bottom Line

Business entrepreneurs nowadays are leveraging every form of marketing in order to make their ventures grow by leaps and bounds, including influencer marketing. You should also utilise this marketing method to reach new heights in your business; however, without enough knowledge, you might not be able to develop an effective influencer marketing strategy.

This exclusive blog outlines the steps to developing an influencer marketing strategy that helps you achieve what you have envisioned for your business. So what are you waiting for? Read it carefully, partner with a great influencer, develop a perfect influencer marketing strategy, create attractive and engaging content, launch your campaign and skyrocket sales. Best of luck!